“Not as aware as I’d like to be.”Constance glided her hand down the front of his shirt.“I could be so much more aware… if you’d let me.”
“Bloody hell, Connie,” Neil rasped.“You can have me any time you want.You don’t have to marry me for that.”
Constance cocked an eyebrow at this intriguing confession.“I thought you were more of a gentleman than that.”
“Not when it comes to you,” Neil bit back desperately.
“But youwantto marry me,” Constance clarified thoughtfully as her fingers traced the waistband of his trousers.
Neil closed his eyes, fighting an obvious war of self-control.“Yes.”
Constance’s hand stilled.“Why do you want that, if you know you could have me anyway?”
Neil’s gaze shadowed with vulnerability through the searing heat of his desire.“I think I already answered that.”
“Because you’re in love with me,” Constance filled in.
She slipped her arms around his waist, laying her face against the warm, solid plane of his chest.She fit there very nicely, her head just coming to his shoulder.
He slowly came to hold her in return, as though afraid that if he went too fast, she would startle and run away.
She spoke across his chest.“You know, I think you might really mean it—that you love me, I mean.And not just your own notion of who you’d like me to be.”
Neil laughed.The helpless sound hummed against her skin.“Connie, I couldn’t pretend you were someone else if I wanted to.You’d set me straight in a heartbeat.Probably in some way that would scorch my eyebrows or require replacing several of my reference books.”
Constance lifted her face from his chest to look up at him.“I know,” she said—the words coming from someplace deep.“But don’t you want me to love you back?”
Neil’s expression flashed with vulnerability once again.“I… yes.That’s what I want.If you think you could.But it wouldn’t have to happen right away.I… We could wait, if you like.To see if you…”
His words trailed off, and he looked up as though searching for strength.
“I mean, Idolove you already,” Constance mused.“I’ve loved you since we were children.Why else do you think I spent so much time trying to make you miserable?I don’t mean in a romantic way, of course,” she quickly corrected.“I hadn’t any notion what that looked like all those years ago.I loved you because you were my friend—even if you didn’t really want to be.And because of Ellie.”
“It isn’t that I didn’twantto,” Neil protested.“You just made it feel so bloody dangerous!”
“It still would be,” Constance warned him.“Just because I fall in love with you doesn’t mean I’m going to behave myself.”
“I am more than well aware of that,” Neil replied dryly.
“You are, aren’t you?”Constance gazed up at him wonderingly.“I wonder if you realize how extraordinary that is.”
Her hand glided up the back of his neck, her fingers threading gently into the soft waves of his hair.“I already love you.I amwildlyattracted to you.You know me, and you still want me, exactly as I am—even though it has to frighten you at least a little.”
“Yes,” Neil confirmed bluntly.
“And youarea scholarly wizard with a flaming sword,” she pointed out with wicked delight.
“I wish you’d stop calling me that.”
“Absolutely not,” Constance vowed.“You can see what all of that adds up to, can’t you?If that isn’t a recipe for falling in love with a person, I don’t know what would be.In fact, I wonder if I haven’t fallen in love with you already—only I didn’t really let myself see it.Maybe because you’ve been here in front of me all this time, in one way or another.Or because…”
Constance wavered on the edge of someplace more real—more true—than she had let herself go before.
And leaped.
“Because saying it would have made me realize how very much you had come to mean to me.And how terrible it would have been if you had decided to go away.”
Neil’s voice was rough.“Why would I go away?”
