What Were You Expecting? (34 page)

Chapter 16

By Wednesday evening, Maggie was finally feeling like herself again, despite a lingering cough, and things between her and Nils had resumed the rhythm they’d established before the camping trip (and her own personal sojourn in flu hell).

“Want coffee?” she called into the living room.

“Sure,” he answered from the loveseat where she’d join him as soon as she finished washing up. It was the first night she’d felt up to cooking and she’d insisted that he not lift a finger after taking such good care of her during her illness.

“I know how you take it.”

“Of course you do,” he answered and she grinned at the easy warmth in his voice. “Hey, did you know I didn’t even like coffee that much? Not until about a year ago. That’s when I acquired a taste for it.”

She turned on the Keurig and peeked into the living room. “What’re you on about? You been comin’ into the Prairie since I got to Gardiner. That’s four years of coffee.”

He grinned at her as his cheeks flushed salmon.

“You came in to see me.”

He nodded, shrugging sheepishly.

She turned back into the kitchen, unable to stamp down the burst of joy she felt at his admission. They were getting closer and closer to telling each other how they felt—how they
really
felt—about each other. She knew it in her heart, but she forced herself to let him move at his own pace.

Returning to the living room with two cups of coffee, she settled beside him on the loveseat, tucking her legs beneath her pajama shorts and grinning at him. “Didn’t like coffee.”

“I swear. I hated the stuff. But, you offered me a cup. I couldn’t say no to those green eyes.”

She placed her cup on the coffee table then looked at him, batting her eyes. “These?”

“Those. Tease.”

Giggling, she reached for their questionnaires, handed his to him and turned to a page somewhere in the middle. “High School.”

He looked down at the packet on his lap but didn’t make a move to open it. “Is that where we are?”

“That’s where we are,” she said, sensing the change in him, the sudden tension that the words “high school” elicited.

“What do you want to know?”

Who did you date? Did you fall in love? Who was the girl in the prom picture?

“What was your favorite subject?”

“Phys Ed.”

She gave him a look. “
Academic
subject.”

He shrugged. “English, I guess, for the reading, though I didn’t much like being told what to read. Would’ve liked it better if I could’ve chosen for myself. You?”

“Math, I guess. Teacher said I had a head for numbers.”

“And a bod for sin,” he retorted quickly. He shook his head in surprise and chuckled softly. “I heard that in a movie once.”

“Stop flirtin’. We have to do this,” she insisted, trying to get them back on track, despite the rush of pleasure his words provided.

“Fine. What else?”

“Did you have a girlfriend?”

His blue eyes were searing as he stared at her, and she could see the conflict behind them. He was protecting something, or someone, from the rest of the world. He was hesitant to talk about it. But, Maggie wanted to know. She needed to know. She stared back, impassive, in spite of the fierce thumping of her heart.

“Yes,” he finally answered in a low, measured tone, all traces of teasing gone.

The hardest thing Maggie ever did in her whole life was to not ask questions, just stare back at him and wait for him to continue. He looked away from her, clenching his jaw over and over again, and she couldn’t bear it—she reached out and placed her hand on his arm. He glanced down at her hand then took it in his, lacing his fingers through hers.

“You saw, um, you saw her picture that day in my pop’s attic. Veronica. Olsen. Veronica Olsen. She was a transfer student my senior year and we had chemistry together. She was my, um, my lab partner.”

Maggie squeezed his hand gently, adjusting her grip, and he looked up from their hands to catch her eyes. The pain in his made her breath catch, and she winced.

“She died,” he said softly. He blinked quickly twice, but he didn’t look away from her. “She died the summer after senior year.”

“No,” sighed Maggie, reaching for him, pulling him into her arms. He wrapped his arms around her, too, resting his cheek on her shoulder as she trailed her hands soothingly up and down his broad back. “I’m so sorry, Nils. I didn’t know. I didn’t know you’d lost her.”

“It’s why I… Well, I must have looked pretty upset when I saw her picture. I hadn’t seen a picture of her in a long time.”

“How did…” She felt the muscles in his back tense as she started her question.

“It was…it was, um, an operation. There were terrible complications and she, um, she lost too much blood. She lost—”

“Shhh, now.” Her heart twisted from the pain in his voice and her hands crept from his back to the nape of his neck which she cradled gently, softly caressing his hair. “That’s enough. That’s enough, now.”

“I should tell you…,” he started in a broken voice.

“No. I dinna want to pry or make you talk about painful things. That’s enough for the interview. I shouldn’t have even asked…”

She drew back to look at his face, his downturned gaze, his cheeks that were slightly slick from an escaped tear or two.

She still had questions.

She still feared that they desired different things from life.

She still worried that he would break her heart.

But if his actions told her nothing else, they assured her that he was falling in love with her, that he cared deeply for her, that he wanted her as much as she wanted him. She was finished with barriers between them. He was the man she loved. He was, in fact, her husband. It was time to be his wife, in every single possible way.

She felt him grinding his jaw against her cheek and she knew he was bottling up his emotions, just as he had last Thursday right before he exploded at her on the couch, just as he had on Tuesday when he found her in the front hallway wearing a towel. She knew it was probably terribly inappropriate for her to kiss him when he was talking about a former love who he’d lost so painfully, but she didn’t know how else to offer him comfort, how else to let him channel his feelings into action.

She leaned forward and touched her lips to his gently then drew back and touched them again, lightly tracing his lips with feathery kisses. She could feel the change in him as he let go of his sorrow and was present in the moment they were sharing together, tightening his arms around her as his lips finally began to move beneath hers. His hands slid down her back slowly, cupping her backside to maneuver her onto his lap where she straddled his rock-hard thighs, scooting forward until her unbound breasts, in a flimsy sleeping sweatshirt, pressed impatiently against his chest.

Leaning back, she pulled it up and over her head, baring her breasts to him completely. As her shallow breath amplified in her ears, she looked up to find his eyes which feasted, hungrily, on the sight before him, reaching out to cup her soft flesh in his warm, coarse palm. She gasped as he bent his head and took her nipple between his lips, kissing it lightly before licking a circle around it and finally latching onto it with his mouth and sucking it into a proud red bud. She ran her fingers through his hair, trying to bear the sweet sharpness of the sensation when he suddenly changed course, taking her other nipple between his lips and loving it as he had its twin. Like a bolt of lightning from the tips of her breasts through her belly straight to her increasingly hot, wet core, the heaven of his mouth loving her so intimately made her arch her back, pushing forward against him. When she couldn’t bear the building pressure anymore, she cried out his name, frantically pushing his head back so that she could crash her lips into his.

As their kiss deepened, his hands skimmed the bare sides of her torso, over her waist, and into the waistband of her pajama bottoms. Finding no panties barring his access to her soft, rounded flesh, he emitted a groan of surprise into her mouth, kneading his fingers urgently as she rolled herself over his erection. Desperate to feel his skin against hers, her hands skated down his back, slipping under his polo shirt and pushing up. He broke away from her mouth to grab his shirt behind his neck and dispatch it to the floor with a quick tug over his head. His lips found hers again as he ran his hands over the soft skin of her back, making her shiver. His muscles flexed and relaxed under her fingertips and she lingered over his shoulder blades as he kissed her, mesmerized by the hard masculine beauty of the man in her arms.

She leaned back, still moving gently against his erection, still stroking the taut outlines of his back with her fingers. Leaning forward to touch her lips to his ear, she felt him shudder lightly as she tugged on the soft skin of his earlobe with her teeth. “Listen.”

“I—I’m listening.”

“I want you.”

“Maggie,” he groaned. “Are you sure?”

“I want you more than anythin’.”

She licked his ear again and his arms tightened around her.

“I’ve never wanted anyone in my life as much as I want you,” he murmured.

Her eyes burned with tears at the sweetness of his admission.

“Stay,” she breathed.

“Overnight?”

“Aye, overnight,” she said, drawing back to capture his eyes with hers, so that he’d see she had no reservations, no misgivings—so he’d know she’d have no regrets in the morning. And then—without even the slightest waver in her voice—she smiled at him and repeated tenderly, “Stay.”

***

Her words were the only permission he needed to give himself over to the sweet relief of loving her body as completely as he loved her heart. And after four long years of quietly yearning for her, he carried her in his arms to her bedroom where he laid her reverently down on her bed in the darkness. Unable to wait any longer to hold her naked body in his arms, he hooked his fingers into the waistband of her shorts and pulled them down the impossibly smooth, toned legs that had tormented him for months.

“Now you,” she said, lying on her back completely naked, leaning up on her elbows, as the moonlight bathed her pale body.

He unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans, and joined her on the bed a moment later as naked as she. Gathering her into his arms, he held her, gazing into her face as his eyes adjusted to the dim light, surprised by the strength of his self-control as he allowed them to get used to the feeling of their bare bodies pressed intimately against each other.

“Maggie,” he said, because she needed to know, because it was time, because he couldn’t keep the words inside anymore. “I would do anything for you. Anything. No more truce. You and me…this is real.”

Maggie answered in a low, raspy voice, thick with emotion. “Aye. It is.”

She reached up to cup his face in her hands as he swung his body over hers, lowering his head to find her lips. She thrust her tongue into his mouth to find his, and it was electrifying to him, making all of the blood that he’d used to form coherent words, travel south to one place that throbbed, hard and aching for her, for the release he could only find by joining his body with hers.

“Would you…I mean, do you need—do you
want
to go slow?” he asked through a thick haze of desire, kissing a trail from her mouth to her ear, running his lips against the sensitive skin at the tip of her jaw, then resting them in a small hollow of her neck that he wanted to own, that he wanted to make his home, that he never wanted to leave, ever again. His pelvis pushed gently, rhythmically against hers, making his desires known.

“Nae,” she said softly, and her voice broke with emotion as she arched up to meet him, pushing the soft folds of her sex into his. “Later. For now, I just need you.”

His fingers trailed down her side, over her hip to her belly, then lower, landing on the soft hair at the apex of her thighs. She moaned lightly as he skimmed lower, finding her wet and ready for him.

“We’ll take it slow next time, love,” he promised as he readjusted his position, bracing his elbows on either side of her head, dipping his head to kiss her.

“Please,” she said, her voice breathy and urgent. “I want you, Nils. No more waitin’.”

“Do we need…?”

“I’m on the pill,” she whimpered, arching up against him in readiness.

“You’re sure?” he confirmed, searching her eyes. There could be no accidents with Maggie. He couldn’t bear it.

“Aye. I’m sure.”

He swallowed, his self-control depleted as he positioned himself at her hot, slick entry. “I meant it, Maggie May. This is real.”

“This is real,” she half sobbed, half moaned, reaching for his face and pulling him down to kiss her as he thrust forward, burying himself inside of her in one smooth motion and surrendering to the awesome joy of making love to his wife for the very first time.

***

“Why’d we wait so long?” Maggie asked him as they lay side by side, facing one another, hours later.