She moved through the door, and he turned sharply. He was standing by his dresser, shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of dark slacks.
“I missed you today.”
“Sorry. I had a lot of work to do.”
She began to strip her clothes off, wordlessly. He didn’t turn.
“I spent some time with Elizabeth.”
“I’m glad.”
She was completely naked then, standing there in the open.
“But mostly I was thinking about you.”
He turned then, and whatever he was about to say died on his lips. She was satisfied by the look on his face.
“Here we are. With the lights on.”
There was nothing unusual about that, of course. They’d had each other with the lights on, out in the sunshine, any number of times when they were in the Bahamas. But here, here she was making a stand. Making a statement. This had been a palace filled with so many terrible memories. A palace filled with his grief. With her sorrow.
She was wanting to change that.
While they could.
She breathed in. The scent of him, heavy in the air in his room. She looked at the way he drew breath, the shift of his chest, the way his lips parted.
She was entirely in the moment. With Onyx.
There was nowhere else that she would rather be. And no one else she would rather be with.
“Be with me,” she said.
“I’m with you,” he said.
She shook her head. “No. Be with me in this moment. And nowhere else. There’s nothing but us.”
She moved toward him, putting her hand on his bare chest, stretching up on her toes and kissing him on the mouth.
She could feel the moment he surrendered. He wrapped his arms around her, drawing her close to him, and she capitulated in return. Opening for him. Softening for him.
Inside, she made a vow that it would always be like this. That she would always do this.
That she would be his, and she would give whatever he needed. Whenever he needed it.
Onyx might have to learn.
That love was worth the risk.
Do you even know if it is?
Maybe not. But she hoped that it was. It was the world that she wanted to live in. The love she wanted to believe in.
He was a good man. He was a good man whose life had been upended by loss and tragedy. And complicated by his position.
His grief around his marriage was so complicated. So much about what they hadn’t been, but then also the sudden loss of his wife had affected him. He dismissed it, in conversation, because they hadn’t been in love, but she could see that it was another thing that hurt him. That made it hard for him to trust the world. To trust life.
To feel safe with anything.
