Breathing hard we sink back on the bed, arms tight around each other. He kisses my cooling skin softly, wonderingly, wiping the sweat from his brow, pressing his hand to his chest. “My heart beats for you. I love you with everything that I am, my Rhona.”
I brush my lips across his warm mouth. “And I love you.” My heart feels so full, and here with him, with the crackling fire and his body warm around mine, I feel as if our happiness is complete.
I fall into a doze and wake a short time later with Meremon’s fingers playing across my naked body. He’s watching me with a smile on his face and an expression as sleek and pleased as a well-fed cat.
“What are you thinking about, my love?” I ask him, smiling, certain that I know.
He rolls one of my nipples with his circling thumb. “I have been going over all the new possibilities for pleasuring you. I had plans for new inventions to try on you, you see. But now that I am properly your husband there are even more possibilities.”
I prop my chin on my hand and affect an innocent look. “Nice, normal things? Like the nice, normal husband you are?”
Meremon’s smile widens and it’s a pointed, wicked smile. He pulls me against him and his mouth seeks my ear, and he whispers, “Soporus.”
My limbs grow limp and heavy and a feeling of such delicious lassitude spreads through my body. He rolls me onto my belly hold my wrists behind my back. With his other hand he scratches his fingers luxuriously over my scalp. I watch him out of the corner of my eye, my heart pounding in sweet anticipation. A moment later he takes his hand from my hair to catch a jar that has just floated in and I hear the unmistakable sound of Filax entering the room.
“Nice, normal things?” he murmurs. His knees part my thighs and I feel the cold drip of slime and then the hot, hard length of his cock sliding against my sex. Two cold hands take hold of my ankles. “Oh, not at all, my Rhona. Not at all.”
“There. That’s the last one.”
Meremon wades back to the bank of the river and hauls himself out of the water. His robes and hair are dripping and he shivers in the breeze. “I can feel the cold,” he grumbles. “I hate the cold. This business of being completely mortal again is terrible.”
“Is it?” I tease, glancing at my rounded belly. He pulls me into his arms and I laugh and squirm, trying to get away. “Meremon! You’re getting me all wet.”
“Can’t a man express affection for his wife anymore? Tsk.” He wrings out his hair with his free hand and it drips down my neck, making me squeal. Meremon licks up the wetness, and his tongue is as warm as sunshine.
“All right,” he concedes with a smile, rubbing his hand over my belly. “Maybe there are advantages.”
A handful of people are watching us from beside the nearest cottage, curious about the village girl who married the necromancer from up on the mountain. I wave at them and smile and one of them hesitantly returns my wave.
The villagers have been thawing out toward us a little these past few months. Curing the children helped, but what really made a difference is the magic traps that Meremon has placed around the wheat fields and in the river. They soak up the discarded spells that come downstream from the capital and now the crops are growing properly and there haven’t been any more illnesses. The bread is much better nowadays, too.
Every few months the traps need to be replaced and we come down from the mountain again. The villagers are getting used to seeing us and what a difference Meremon is making to their lives. The next time we come I’ll have a baby to present to my family. Or maybe Papa and my brothers and sisters will come up and visit us after the birth. Cerys thinks she can get Papa onto the family donkey so he doesn’t have to walk.
As Meremon and I make our slow way up the mountain I think about our home and the life we’re making between us. “Even if they never accept us for who we are, my love, I don’t care.”
Meremon keeps a tight grip on my hand, especially on the steeper parts of the track, mindful of my belly. He makes me rest often, his arm about my waist. He always enjoyed touching me but now that I’m pregnant he loves to place his hands on me, feeling for our child.
“You don’t?” he asks, helping me across a small stream.