“How many children would you like to have?” He turned his head and looked up at me, his fingers still tracing circles around my stomach.
My mind wandered for a moment, and I saw again the image of the dark-haired boy in the field, older this time and accompanied by a smaller girl-child with chestnut locks and bright green eyes. In my mind, I saw myself with a baby resting in my arms atop my swollen belly. I couldn’t help but smile at the image.
“As many as you will give me,” I finally replied. Branford’s smile echoed my own.
“I cannot wait to see you with your belly round with my child,” he said quietly.
My body felt warm at the sound of his words. His large hand splayed out over my stomach, twitching slightly and making a large circle. I could almost see what it would look like when I was with child, and he was running his hand over my full belly. I felt myself smile, and my thoughts focused. I wanted to carry Branford’s child, and now that I knew what intimacy was like, I was not only unafraid of what it would take to make one, but I welcomed it.
I opened my eyes as I felt faint kisses up my arm and shoulder until Branford’s lips reached my neck. He found the spot behind my ear and kissed it more firmly.
“Sleep, my beautiful wife,” Branford whispered into my ear as he rolled onto his back, pulling me with him. I lay my head against his chest and listened to the steady thrum of his heart and tried to picture what he may have looked like as a child. I quickly gave into the exhaustion of the day and closed my eyes. Branford rubbed my back slowly, lulling me to sleep. As I slept, images of children running in the fields, playing with the hunting dogs, and learning to ride on gentle ponies filled my dreams.
And that is how we consummated our marriage.
Chapter 5—Abashedly Interrupted
Branford had definitely not been jesting when he declared he would want me in the morning.
As daylight broke on the day after we consummated our marriage, I did not just wake to my husband’s warm embrace but also the warm moisture of his mouth on my breasts and the heat of his hand as he reached between my legs. He spoke only with his lips and fingers, covering my body with his touch and his kisses. Once his hands had brought me to panting cries, he rolled over on top of me and pushed slowly and gently inside of me.
There was a strange soreness between my legs and within my flesh. It was not particularly painful but certainly noticeable. Branford moved slowly, and I wondered if he knew I would feel this way, for he was even gentler than he had been the night before. I reached around his back as he leaned over me with his body propped up on his arms next to my shoulders.
He moved slowly against me, pushing and pulling as his breath coated the skin of my neck with wet heat. He wrapped his arms around me, holding me flush against his body from our shoulders to our hips. Rocking steadily, eyes closed, he continued to tell me, between his rapid, panting breaths, how good I felt and how much he wanted me.
He tucked his forehead into my neck, and I wrapped my arms around his head as he reached a furious pace and cried out into my skin. He stilled and continued to moan incoherently as I felt the warmth of his seed spread inside of me. Again, small kisses covered my neck in time to his slowing breaths as he caressed my hips and sides with his hands. He moved to my lips and kissed me softly before pulling back and gazing down on me a moment. He rolled to his side, and I winced slightly as he pulled out of me.
“Are you sore?” he asked quietly. He traced over my cheek with his fingers.
“A little,” I admitted. His eyes narrowed in concern, so I quickly elaborated. “Not much though. I am all right.”
“It will go away in time.” Branford kissed me gently. “If it is too much for you, you must tell me.”
“It is not,” I assured him. I didn’t want him to be dissuaded from repeating what he had done to me.
“Forgive me, Alexandra,” Branford mumbled against my neck. He continued to kiss me as his hands roamed freely over my skin.
“Forgive you for what?” I asked.
“I should not have taken you again so soon,” he said. His gaze darted away from mine for a moment before he looked back and smiled slightly. “I could not bring myself to wait any longer. Having you lying here, bare in my arms, is too much of a temptation.”
“You were hungry,” I said, biting my lip to hide my smile.
“Hungry?” he asked, obviously confused.
“Um…you said you had an ‘appetite,’” I said, reminding him.
Branford laughed and his eyes sparkled, showing no hint of the man who had been such a tyrant the day before. His smile and glowing expression made him look quite young, and he seemed to have transformed into a wonderfully handsome boy instead of the unpredictable and sometimes violent heir to the throne.
“So I did,” he acknowledged. His gaze turned dark as he looked at me though his eyes did not lose their playfulness. “And so I do. I may very well also make good on my threat to keep you here in this bed for the entirety of the day.”
“If you do not rise from the bed, you will have a different sort of appetite, I should think,” I said. I know I blushed, for though I understood such word games were common among couples, I had never engaged in one and was not at all sure if I was saying the right things. I then wondered if Branford had understood what I meant at all and decided to clarify. “I mean, you would eventually want your breakfast, would you not?”
“I suppose,” Branford said with a nod. With his fingers, he traced invisible lines on my skin from my shoulder and down over my breasts. “Though I think with you as my distraction, it would take missing more than a single meal before I felt any pangs in my stomach. You should probably be advised to remind me to eat. It may be your only way out of this bed. At the very least, it would be in your best interest to don your nightdress after I have taken you in the evenings lest you be awakened by my hunger every morning.”
I thought about what he was saying and about the feeling of him on top of me, preparing to take me as I woke. Though I was a little sore, he said that would not last long.
“So…what would happen if I, um…if I did not have any nightdresses at all?”