The careful one—precise, attentive, cataloguing every response.
The rare, lighter one—unexpected, disarming.
The one that came after difficult days—when need sharpened into intensity, when he held her as though she might dissolve if he loosened his grip.
Tonight was none of those.
Tonight was something else.
He moved with a desperation that turned every motion into defiance. His forehead pressed to hers. His breath came harsh and uneven, swallowed by her answering kisses. His hands—scarred, steady despite their tremor—held her as though he might anchor her to him by sheer force of will.
“Harder,” she said, because she needed it—needed the urgency, the undeniable reality of it. “Dominic—”
He obeyed.
The rhythm deepened, sharpened, until the world narrowed again—to breath, to heat, to the relentless insistence of presence. She held him just as fiercely, drawing him closer, refusing distance, refusing gentleness.
“I love you,” he said, the words rough, broken, absolute. “I love you. I do not care what it costs. I do not care if it is impossible. I am not letting this go.”
The words—spoken in the dark, between gasps, while his body moved inside hers—undid her completely. She came with a cry that she buried in his shoulder, her nails scoring his back, her body clenching around him with a force that pulled him over the edge after her. He buried himself deep, shuddering, her name torn from his chest like something essential being surrendered.
Afterward, they lay tangled in the too-narrow bed, their breathing slowly evening, their skin cooling in the candlelit air.
Lorraine’s head rested upon his chest. Her fingers traced idle, absent patterns across his skin—circles, spirals, the shapes of words she did not speak aloud. He held her with one arm, his other hand moving slowly through her hair, and tried not to think about how many more times he would be allowed this.
He failed. He always failed at not thinking.
“I spoke to a barrister,” he said quietly. “In York. About Thomas.”
Her fingers stilled.
“The law favours the Hardings. They are blood. I am not.” He stared at the ceiling. “I have no legal claim.”
Silence followed. Long enough that he braced himself for it—for anger, disappointment, grief.
“Then we shall find something that is not legal.” Lorraine’s voice was calm. Measured. The voice of a woman who had endured three years of quiet ruin and refused to be governed by it. “We shall speak to them when they arrive. We shall show them what Thomas needs.”
“And if they do not listen?”
“Then we shall try again. And harder.” She pushed herself up slightly and looked down at him, her hair falling forward to frame their faces. “You stormed a fortified city at Badajoz. You can manage a conversation with two grandparents.”
Despite everything—the ticking clock, the dead end, the certainty that the coming weeks would test them both—he laughed.
“You are formidable,” he said. “Has anyone ever told you that?”
“Mrs Whitmore once called me relentless. I chose to take it as praise.”
He drew her down and kissed her—softly this time, unhurried, as though time were not already slipping through their fingers. As though this were not one of a finite number, but simply one of many yet to come.
“Again,” Lorraine murmured against his mouth.
“Again?”
“I am not done with you yet.” She shifted closer, and his breath caught despite himself. “We have four weeks. I do not intend to waste a single night.”
This woman,he thought, as she pushed him onto his back and climbed over him, her thighs bracketing his hips, her hair falling around them like a curtain against the world.This impossible, magnificent, terrifying woman.
She settled over him slowly—deliberately—holding his gaze as she drew him into her, inch by measured inch, until they were fully joined and she rested against him, both of them trembling with the effort of stillness.
