Chapter 21 – A Dark & Stormy Night

A/N: YOU GUYS. Sorry, sorry, sorry. RL got SUPER busy in lots of ways, and I dropped all of the writing balls I was juggling. I am picking this one up first (by special request! ;-)) and because it's been languishing for TWO WEEKS now.

And now, let's join the Carsons on their fifth wedding anniversary getaway…and definitely M here, guys.

NB: Apparently, thunderstorms are rather rare in the UK compared to the US; learn something new every day!

~CeeCee

Sleep abandoned him abruptly, and he sat up, his heart pounding, unsure of what had caused his sudden jolt to wakefulness. He was further confused by the fact that he wasn't in his own bed, in his own room. He turned, and saw Elsie, awake as well, sitting upright, her back pressed against the headboard, her legs drawn towards her chest.

"I see ye're awake for the show," she turned her head towards him, smiling in the dim light. Before he could respond, the large rectangles of sky and beach visible through the windows flashed to life, the lightening, the star of the show, followed by a grumble of thunder, like an irritated afterthought. Elsie's face danced before him, light and dark in the shadows. "I always enjoy a storm."

"I'm feeling less than cordial towards this one," he responded, his voice fuzzy with sleep. He propped himself up next to her, took her hand in his.

"Not surprising, given your longtime devotion to order and form," she retorted, squeezing his fingers. It was the second night of their anniversary trip to Scarborough, her first full day of vacation, and her expression was relaxed, her eyes private, for him only. "Here comes the rain."

She turned her head from him, her braid sliding off her shoulder to the middle of her back. Indeed she was correct: the windows were suddenly, fiercely pattered with the sound of a thousand raindrops, like so many tiny finger taps against the glass. The storm wanted their attention, apparently.

Her profile was lit up again as another burst of incandescence illuminated the curved lines of her brow, her cheek, her shoulder. The thunder followed, always the laggard, trying to keep up with its spectacular partner. He took in the shape of his wife, reflected in the blue light of the storm; the dark line of her braid against her nightgown, a special gift from him, purchased for this trip: the color of the sea when the sun hit it, made of satin, with bits of lace everywhere.

Something she would never consider for herself, or, truth be told, something the unmarried version of Charles Carson would have considered for Elsie Hughes, no, not back then. But marriage, wildly unpredictable magic trick that he had found it to be, had altered him, in ways both insignificant and profound.

When he first presented the gown to her the previous night, she'd balked.

"What in heaven's name is this supposed to be, Charlie?"

"A gift," he replied simply. "From husband to wife."

"It's too…fussy," she held the slippery, cool fabric in her hands, then looked up at him. "I don't mean it as a slight against you, ye old booby. 'Twas very thoughtful of you, Charlie. But, if ye remember, I didn't even get my own wedding outfit sorted. 'Twas down to Beryl, Anna and Miss Baxter, in the end, that I looked presentable at all."

Her voice had been sensible, but he noticed her fingers rubbing at the soft fabric, petting it, almost. She was saying no, but wasn't. Not really.

He had stepped towards her, taking her face between his two hands, the strong one and the weak one.

"On our wedding night, when you woke me," he began, and she nodded. "I called you 'Titania', you were like something out of a dream, something ethereal," he paused, not sure how to get the words out correctly, not sure that he could fully manage saying them, but wanting to anyway. "You were so beautiful, in that moment Elsie, I don't know how to share that with you. To show you. This is my rather poor way of attempting to, I suppose."

He felt her cheeks dampen underneath the pads of his thumbs, and brushed them away, leaned in to kiss her. And for the moment, the beautiful nightgown was forgotten, as it fell in a silky whisper to the floor between them.

However, when they retired this evening, she'd returned from the bathroom wearing the gorgeous thing, making his breath catch high in his chest. And he had gotten lost, again, in the sort of wanton lust that had come over him, the very minute they'd boarded the train to this seaside haven.

It wasn't that he hadn't cherished and desired his wife, often and ardently, whilst in their sturdy, caster-iron bed of their snug little cottage, it was only that something in him, in the bedrock of who he always considered himself to be, shifted drastically here, in this place, this hideaway, this secret sanctum, where the illicit seemed to bind with the sacred, much like his cherished, loved, craved wife, flash-lit by purple lighting strikes: her known, usually sensible self, clad only in a thin envelope of sea green fabric, meant to show off the wanted, needed shape of her, in its entirety.

And so, even though they'd had every piece of each other mere hours earlier, when he'd first caught sight of her in the satin sheath of fabric, his body was stirring again for her, but his heart as well. Another zigzag of illumination burst from the sky as he reached out and unwound her braid. She leaned into the motion of his fingers as he spread her hair in a wavy fan down her back.

"What are you pestering me for, Mr. Carson?" She turned to face him, taking any hint of sting out of the words with a kiss.

"Well, there's not much hope of resting at the moment, is there, Elsie?" He retorted, brushing his fingers gently across the delicate lace along the rather low neckline of her nightgown, enjoying the texture of it in contrast to the softness of her skin beneath.

She sighed, whimpered. There was something in that sound that always drilled into a deep, long-forgotten part of him, simultaneously in the back of his skull, the cavity of his chest, and center of his groin. A concentrated, powerful part of himself that he'd nearly forgotten existed, until five years ago, in this very bedroom. For so many years, more than he'd really, consciously realized, feeding it with glances, and raised eyebrows, and witty retorts, and shared glasses of wine, and fleeting touches on starched sleeve cuffs and conversations comprised solely in a single glance.

Now he had all of those, still, of course, because he needed them, but there was also: his lips on her neck, breathing in the smell of her; his fingers, diving deeper into the frothy surf of lace at the line of her breasts, brushing them, feeling her heart beating quickly under the damp swell of skin.

"Again?" She breathed, as he pulled her down.

"Again," he replied, and laughed a little. "I'm not dead yet."

She laughed, her mirth spinning out into that sweet, sighing exhale he loved, and instead of taking the gown off of her, he ran his hand down the entire length of her body, with the fabric between his skin and hers. He then stroked her calf, strong and shapely from years of going up and down endless flights of stairs. The lightening halved the sky above again, and he looked down at his wife's face, the expression on it something he'd never quite imagined, even in that deep secret part of him.

The thunder rumbled again as his hand slid upwards, and her quivering matched the trembling of the skies outside as he carefully navigated that most sensitive, feminine part of her. He'd be daunted, no, mortified, if he was being honest, at first, when it came to touching his wife with any grace or knowledge; but he was a man that knew how to arrange a place setting for a black tie affair, blindfolded; he certainly was up to the challenge of navigating his wife's body. And now he knew how to read her face, her breath, the clenching and relaxing, like the pages of a favorite, well-loved novel.

"Charlie…"

"Elsie…Elsie…"

The storm surged on outside, and in. The tendrils of rain stroking the window panes, the lightening and the thunder gathering so closely together, it was hard to tell, one from the other.