"Dr. Harris says it was food poisoning. Probably the taco you stopped for on the way home Friday."
She ducked her head. "You weren't supposed to know about that."
"When you're feeling better, you can tell me why you stopped at a restaurant I told you just barely passed its last inspection."
"But I've eaten there lots of times before and never got the least bit sick and I've never heard of anybody else having trouble, either, and I really, really wanted a taco and that's the only place in town to get them and—"
"Hush," he whispered. "Doesn't matter anyway. All that matters is that everything is okay now and you'll be feeling better soon, from top to bottom. I promise."
"No, it's not okay. I've still got a cast on one arm and a needle in the other and you know how I feel about sticks."
"At least you didn't get one in your bottom. That would have really put you in a foul mood," he teased. "And the one in your arm is there to put some fluid back in your poor little dehydrated, banged up body and help with the pain. Looks like you could use something for that, too. What hurts most?"
"Everything," she said with a down-turned mouth. "I want to go back to sleep where it's soft and dark and nothing aches or stings and I can finish my dream."
"Give that little magic button a push and I'm betting you'll go right back into sleepyland. Meantime, I'll be right here. Even though every nurse who pops her head in the door frowns at me for taking up most of your bed."
"Don't let them bully you," she said, giving the button a couple of taps. "I need you right where you are, where I can see you, just like you look now, the minute I open my eyes. And tell them we'll be ready to go home, just as soon as I have another little nap. I miss our bed and our fireplace and the quiet. Is there still snow?"
He nodded. "About six inches more, in fact. But the roads should be clear by now, even up to the cabin. I called Justin Potter yesterday and asked him to see to it from the main road cutoff up to the front door, so you won't have to worry about slipping and sliding any more when I take you home."
"It's Sunday, isn't it," she said with a smile that was touched with the faintest hint of sadness. "I just sort of lost yesterday and I missed celebrating Valentine's Day with you. Our very first anniversary and I didn't even get to give you my present. I didn't have a single piece of chocolate from you, either."
He laughed. "Well, I can remedy the latter, as soon as your doctor says your tummy's ready for it. I'm sure there's a candy store somewhere in Knoxville that stocks your favorite. As for our anniversary, we'll have lots more of them to celebrate, but none will ever be quite like this one, I'm sure. Maybe we can turn it into a story. Not one for the blog. One for our family, some day."
"You can read it on snowy nights when we're all in front of the fireplace with hot chocolate and pound cake. We will be in front of the fireplace, won't we? We don't ever have to leave our little cabin in the mountains, do we?"
"No, sweetie. We can stay there always, if that's what you want."
"It is. It really is," she assured him over a yawn. "I love it and I love you and I love that dream I was having. I think I'm going to find it again in just a minute. It was all about… our honeymoon and… it made… me… so…" she mumbled before sleep claimed her once again.
Nick tucked her hand beneath the covers and smoothed her curls back from her forehead before he adjusted the feather-light blanket draped over his own chest and closed his eyes while stroking petal soft skin.
He thought about that honeymoon, a year ago and on the other side of the country from his Tennessee cabin, where they had been making their home in a mountain cove for the last six months.
That special time had begun, he remembered, in the same place they had made their vows. The idea had been Andee's once again, and her instincts had been perfect, he had to admit.
After their ceremony and a reception that spilled out of the tent where they were wed and across the wild peach orchard, the bride and groom had left their guests behind, presumably to make their honeymoon exit from town.
But hours later, with the revelers gone and the tables and chairs, improvised altar, dance floor and bar all hauled away, he and Andee had driven back to the orchard alone, under the stars. After parking the camper they had rented for their trip up the coast, he had brought out a special fire starter log. He arranged a supply of windfall branches they had collected days earlier during a walk through the orchard and laid a fire just large enough to ward off the faint chill creeping up the steep hillside.
Then they had zipped their sleeping bags together and spread them on the soft grass within the confines of the wedding tent he had arranged to keep for an extra day. Sinking down on them, they had stretched their toes toward the fire, where the smoke was being drawn toward a star-studded navy blue sky, just beyond the enclosure's entrance. The blaze made strange shadows dance on the pale green canvas walls as night sounds harmonized around them.
They had talked about the wedding, he remembered; about the possibility of a future for Leila and Evan; about Richmond's tears as he placed his daughter's hand in Nick's and kissed her tenderly; about the caramel icing the bride had smeared across the groom's lips and then licked off to the cheers of their guests at the reception.
And then they had stopped talking and simply sat and held each other until Andee stood and began slowly untying the knot that was holding her long blue wrap skirt around her trim waist. She had knelt before him, then, and unbuttoned his shirt, drawing it out of his slacks, and pushing it off his shoulders. She settled herself between his legs, when she was finished, leaning into his chest and letting him free her from her own mid-thigh length silk cream-colored peasant blouse. Beneath it, she had been completely bare and her skin had glowed in the firelight, he could still recall.
When she relaxed against him again, he had moved his hands to cup her breasts and tease the tips that were already offering proof of her arousal. She had smelled, ever so faintly, of peaches, with a scent so close to nature he thought even the orchards' insects might be forgiven for being confused.
She had pressed against him, murmuring at his warmth and the tickle of the hair across his chest that narrowed to a small trail and disappeared into the waistband of his trousers.
"You can see all of me," she had whispered as she tilted her head back and brought one hand up to stroke his face.
"And I'll never be tired of looking. You are so beautiful, you take my breath away."
"Is that why you're standing up so proud and tall," she had asked with a wicked little laugh as she shifted between his legs and found the proof of his own passion with her soft hand.
His body stirred, even now, when he remembered how she had teased him in the firelight, his own special wood nymph, ready to belong to him completely.
He had enjoyed her attention for a few moments, stroking the smooth skin of the hip she offered him when she moved her body to find the treasure he was bringing to their marriage bed.
When she tired of teasing him through his clothes, she had completed the necessary steps to free him from his trousers, had scrambled on to her knees beside him to work them off his long legs, and then had drawn him down beside her on their down-filled bed.
He had held her naked body before, had known her in all ways but one, but it was as if she were totally new to him that night.
Every view of her was a display of perfection, every movement of her firm but oh-so-soft young body, a beautiful flow of flesh. She had loved him with her lips and tongue, her fingers dancing across his face, through his hair, around his nipples and down the darker path to the aching length of flesh that was straining against the only clothing she had left him with.
When she had slipped fingertips beneath the elastic, he groaned and raised his hips, just enough for her to slide the last separation between their bodies out of the way.
Kneeling beside him, she had stroked the length of his legs, allowing her breasts to graze a path of their own across his skin
, and had taken his feet into her small hands, showing him erogenous zones he had never known he possessed before.
Then she had tenderly nudged him over and onto his stomach and sucked in her breath when he lay stretched out before her.
"You are a fine man, Nicholas Benjamin," she had murmured softly above him and then had swept her soft palms up his legs to the base of his buttocks, deftly positioning herself between his legs as she did so.
She had mounded his backside in her cupped hands and bent to trail whisper soft kisses across each cheek, teasing the divide with the softness of her breast and maneuvering a finger from each hand into the dark crevice, where she allowed them to dance across his own most secret place and then to scratch gently at the space just beneath his sack.
He had sucked in his breath at her erotic attentions. For months he had dreamed of the pleasure he would take from her own body and the passion he would show her with his attentions on their first night as husband and wife. He had expected to enjoy that exploration and erotic task and then to find his ultimate fulfillment in plunging deep inside her silken, hot, wet woman cave. He had never thought of the prelude she might offer him; but he remembered now that her plans had stolen his breath away.
Moments later, she had risen from her happy task, sucked a small bit of the flesh of his muscled haunch between her teeth and nipped him playfully when he moaned a half-hearted protest. Then she had stretched herself out over his back and pressed her breasts just beneath his shoulders while she repeated her brisk attentions to the back of his neck, marking him as her own.
He had stood the building tension as long as he could before he shifted beneath her and slid her off his body and onto her back beside him. He wanted her, in that moment, with a hunger beyond any sexual desire he had ever known; wanted to feel the warmth of her mouth and the exquisite heat of her body's other deep opening. Needed to invade both spaces at the same time and draw her so close to him that nothing could ever separate them.
It was for this heart-stopping moment that he had waited months; had called on every trick he had ever utilized or heard about to keep inviolate. But the time had come, and he needed to taste every part of her, as well.
His kisses had been long and deep and urgent and Andee quickly moved from lying quietly in his shadow to drawing him with urgent hands to crush her body and rock their flesh together.
He had not realized his knee had parted her thighs until he felt her hot, wet flow of passion against his skin. She ground her body into his and writhed in his arms, and when his fingers skimmed down her flesh and offered her a more refined form of sweet torture, she arched against him and cried out his name.
In a second, he had stretched out on his back again and pulled her over him, but this time with her woman's secrets fully open to his lips and tongue and her own mouth in perfect position to do what he already knew she loved so well with his swollen, aching flesh.
They had executed a wonderfully choreographed ballet of tongue thrusts and sweet sucks on tender, responsive tissue, of finger plunges in tight places and teasing strokes over corresponding nerve endings that reduced them both to frantic moans and sometimes thrashing limbs until, he knew, Andee had felt the fluid rise through the hot, velvet column she held in her mouth. In one fluidly beautiful move, she had rolled away from him and come back to straddle his loins, poised for a moment above his turgid manhood and then, when he reached to guide himself into the perfect position, had accepted his teasing swath from front to back along her yearning feminine path just once before she threw back her head, pushed against his chest with both hands and claimed what she had been yearning for, deep within herself.
It had taken seconds; it had taken years. Nothing would ever be quite that physically glorious in his life again. When Andee collapsed against him finally, still trembling and in happy tears, he knew it had been all he wanted for her, as well.
Now, lying beside her in a narrow hospital bed, hemmed in by the metallic bars that were keeping them safely enclosed, he kissed her forehead and hoped her dreams were as sweet as his memories.
It had been a magical year for them, he thought as shadows lengthened on her hospital room walls. Two weeks moving up and down the coast highway as they celebrated their union in a different location every night and a return to his bungalow where they settled into married life and Andee worked hard to complete her courses, as he finished yet another book.
Then as spring yielded to summer, they had made another change, and Nick had introduced her to the mountains of Tennessee. Andee had loved his simple cabin on first sight and, within days, they had decided to make it their home.
He teased her that she had been spanked the breadth of the nation, and, in fact, he had made it a point to see that she was, introducing her to the special pleasures of erotic spanking in most of them, with only occasional naughty girl discipline required.
And she had been close to perfect once they arrived in the mountains. All the tension that had driven her to seek his firm hand so often in the first months of their relationship seemed to have vanished as she discovered the joys of making a home with him and coming to terms with her father.
But Andee was not quite past being determined to have her own way in some things, he knew, and her foolish actions two days before had proven that. Not only had she disregarded his warning about her favorite restaurant in the small town closest to their cabin, she had decided he was wasting time gathering up her coat and a towel, damp washcloth and barf bag when it became clear she had more than an upset tummy and needed medical help. She had ignored his orders to stay put while he moved the car to the foot of the steps and, instead, had summoned all her energy and gone lumbering out the door and into a cold, freezing rain that was the prelude to a genuine snow storm. When her foot hit an ice-covered puddle, she had lost her balance and landed in a seated splat across a solidly frozen rut at the edge of the driveway, where she promptly threw up again and collapsed into a sobbing heap.
Nick was not sure how they had made the long drive to Knoxville safely, given the weather and his own terror over her condition. She cried all the way, with arms wrapped around her distended stomach, threw up a couple more times and was finally reduced to dry heaves while he tried to offer her some comfort and maneuver the car safely over narrow, slick country roads to I-40.
He cursed himself for having chosen a home so far from her doctor and tried to be a calm support for her at the same time.
"It's over. I know it's over. And it's my fault," she had sobbed between her bouts of sickness, and he was close to panic that at least part of her fears were correct. She was so fragile these days, and there was so much at stake in their lives.
He managed to call ahead and a team was waiting as they pulled into the emergency room entrance. He remembered dropping his keys into the hands of someone in a uniform, someone who looked official and who assured him his car would be taken care of. The automobile had been the least of his concerns at that moment, though.
That had been almost midnight on Friday.
Now it was Sunday. And everything was different.
Andee stirred again when the door to her hospital room swung open and her doctor stepped in. He greeted them in a voice that seemed to boom with good cheer.
"Are you ready to clear out, then?" he demanded, looming over the bedside and doing a quick visual check of his patient. "You've had yourself quite a weekend, with food poisoning and a broken wrist to top it all off. But I'm satisfied with both of you from my side of things and I've talked to your orthopedist and your family doctor. Both those ladies have given you the green light, too."
"Really?" Andee squeaked sleepily. "We can go? Everything's okay?"
"You can go. But only if you promise not to go running out into any more icy stuff. And to get your tacos only from first class restaurants in the future. And to mind what your husband says. He's got his hands full now, you know. Can't be worrying about his big girl 24/7."
Andee grinned into
her husband's face, still lying close to hers in the hospital bed. "I'll promise to be a lot more careful, but I can't guarantee I'll mind everything he says. That would spoil most of his fun in life, Dr. Harris. And he's got pretty big hands, you might have noticed. I think he can manage both of us just fine, can't you, Daddy Nick?"
He returned the mile-wide smile, shifting their day-old daughter—tiny, perfect Carlee Nicole Benjamin—a little higher on his proud chest, where she had been sleeping most of her brief post-uterine life, and pulling her mother in to snuggle even more firmly against him.
Neither of Nick's precious girls, safe in the shelter of his arms, could see them, but Andee's obstetrician would always remember the bright tears that slipped down Nick Benjamin's happy face.
The End
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Leading Her Home (Lessons From Nick's Firm Hand Book 2) Page 13