“I’ll likely be busy throughout the day but I’ll take dinner with you,” he told her.
“All right,” she agreed drowsily.
“Go back to sleep, dove,” he finished.
“Right, baby,” she murmured.
And this endearment, he had no idea why, he felt in his cock. Every time. Even when she gave it to him while he was searching a dead man’s pockets.
On this thought, his whole body stilled when she turned her head and touched her lips to the inside of his wrist, sweet, light, loving.
He had not recovered from her brief touch before she turned her face away and nuzzled into the pillows, mumbling, “Later.”
He didn’t move even as he sensed her slipping back to sleep. Instead, he sat there, staring at her, wondering what could move a man to strike her.
Cow her.
Make her live in fear.
Make her endure a life running.
Hurt her in any way.
Ever.
He could not allow himself to think of the other him raising his hand and killing the Christophe of that world while he grew inside his Madeleine.
He would think about that later, when he next saw Valentine. And then he would give her another Sjofn diamond, or a chest of them, to see to doing what needed to be done to the Apollo of the other world.
That was not for now.
For now, there was much to be done.
With reluctance, for he would much prefer to remove his clothes and return to her warm softness in the bed, he instead left her and the house. He went to the dower house’s small four-stall stable and saddled the horse he’d ridden there. He mounted the gelding and headed home.
The short ride to the main house of Karsvall should have been taken up with his thoughts of the many things he needed to do. And if not those, then of his children.
But they were not.
They were taken with Madeleine.
His Madeleine who rushed to avenge his children. His Madeleine whose shrieks of fury he heard as he ran to the gardener’s shed the night before. His Madeleine who he saw sink a blade in a man and heard threaten another, all in defense of his children.
His Madeleine who reared into his cock, whimpered and moaned as she did as he bid, cl**axing so strongly, her sex convulsed around his shaft, milking him and prolonging his cl**ax in a way he’d never experienced.
A way he liked very much.
Keeping the horse at a sedate walk, his thoughts turned troubled as they moved to Ilsa.
His wife had not been adventurous during play. He did not mind, her appetites were strong and healthy, regardless that they were conservative. She had aroused him greatly, and sated him almost nightly throughout their marriage.
However, it was not lost on him that there was often more that he wanted, desires he introduced to his marriage bed that were not spurned, but they were gently denied.
He had more than once considered suggesting adela tea to Ilsa when she was alive. In the end it was only time, and the fact that he’d run out of it, that disallowed that discussion.
With only two sessions, Madeleine had gone further with him than the years he’d had with Ilsa.
The first time—when she’d taken his shaft so deep he could feel the tip graze the back of her throat and when she’d taken his thumb in her arse, moaning and bucking into it violently—he could attribute to the adela tea.