That feeling, to have him inside me after so long, after giving birth, after feeling like that whole area was compromised and weird and put-upon by a baby barreling through it, was so intense. I had chosen not to worry or think about it at all because my thoughts had been on baby and mothering a baby, but now Magnus was pushing inside, joining me.
I held his head, my fingers in his hair, and held on as we pulled and pressed against each other, quiet and barely moving, a breadth away in every place. Sometimes we were light and bouncing and athletic, but this time was heavy, compressing. It had been so long — I had meant this first time again to be an epic lovemaking full of long plans and lingering, but instead there was this — he had told me I was grace and had sounded reverent on it all and now I was on him, a breath and a moan escaping my lips.
Pulling and pressing and pushing, we were prostrate, bound, pressing our lips together, a promise to keep quiet... don’t wake the bairn... enveloped in darkness. All fear left us, just this, us, in the wee moments of darkness before dawn.
Sweat on my brow I rubbed it along his beard, those sensations, wet, slick, beside his soft lips, with rough and hard, oh god. I moaned before I remembered, shhhhhhhh, be quiet be quiet, oh god, the words held just inside my lips and it soothed me, kept my moans from tumbling out. Shhhhhhhhhhh, not a shush but compressed and kept inside pent up. Sweetness oh sweetness, I pressed my lips to his cheek and held them there — licking, tasting, while my shhhhhhhhhh, went on and on. Until he finished, his hips thrusting, his breath quickening. My breath caught and we silently roared to the end. I collapsed heavy on him.
Gone from solid to liquid, spreading across him and filling each other’s grooves and valleys, our lips gone from pressing to sliding, gravity pulling us both, all down. Deep and so fucking down in love.
“I love you, that was a good way to begin again.” I yawned and truly believed I would fall asleep right there on him.
“Aye, twas verra nice tae hae ye ridin’ me again. I may finally be able tae sleep once more.”
“Me too, that was so necessary.” Isla shifted in her cradle. We quieted and watched her. She shifted again. I squiggled my foot over and nudged the railing, setting it rocking.
She quieted.
I slid off Magnus to cuddle against his side. I whispered, “So necessary. Did I work?” I added, “I mean, did I feel the same — was it all good?”
“Ye mean yer hidden garden?” He raised his head to look down at my face. “Twas. Twas exactly as I remembered it.”
“How did you remember it? Say something nice, so I won’t wonder if you don’t like me anymore now that I’m a mom.”
He chuckled. “I remember it as a soft sweet place. Tis bound in sin and exultation in equal measure, and is mysterious and shrouded, like an altar in the forest. I spend a great deal of each day desirin’ tae find m’way back tae it.”
I nestled in. “Sin and exultation? So religious of you.”
“Aye, tis our lot in life, coarse and barbaric, yet also rapturous — ye speak tae God during it, ye ken.”
“I do ken.” I added, “And so my um, parts were just how you remembered them, full of sin and rapture, but most importantly, I believe you used the word, and it’s what I’m really driving at — bound?”
“Aye, ye can add it tae yer list of miracles, ye are bound up nicely, just as I remembered ye.”
I kissed his chest closest to my lips. “I’m so glad.”
I twisted to see the wee’uns, they were still sleeping soundly.
I nestled back to his chest.
He said, “I hae been thinkin’ on somethin’ and I am wantin’ tae speak tae ye of it.”
“Oh...?” I leaned up to see his face, but I couldn’t make out his expression in the darkness. “Is it a bad thing?”
“Nae, but it might frighten ye.”
“It’s hard to believe I could be more frightened than I already am.” I clamped my eyes shut and tensed. “Okay, tell, me.”
“Ye ken there is a danger, and I daena ken what tis exactly. I am verra worried that I hae ye and the wee’uns here and I am worried that somethin’ will...”