He beamed a smile so full of love it made her heart almost stop.
“Megan.”
“I know,” she said. “You said tomorrow.”
“I wasn’t complaining.”
She looked at him in the doorway. She had meant to have something prepared. Some architecture around it. But then, he hadn’t had architecture around it in the garden, and it had been more effective without, and she understood now why that was. Because the architecture was a hedge against the other person’s response, and she did not need a hedge, because she had made her decision and it was not conditional on anything he did with it.
She loved him. That was true regardless of what he did with it. It was hers to say and to give. No one could take that from her.
“I don’t need until tomorrow,” she said. “I tried very hard to. I went to your grandmother, which was not a neutral exercise, and then I stood at the window in the corridor for a considerable amount of time being very sensible with myself. And it didn’t take.”
Something moved in his expression. He was watching her the way he always watched her, fully, without managing it into anything more comfortable.
“I love you,” she said. “I want to be exact about that because I’ve spent my life in a house where language was used imprecisely on purpose and I refuse to do that. I am not saying that I’m grateful, though I am. I’m not saying that I feel safe with you, though I do. I’m telling you that when I tried to imagine tomorrow morning without you in it, I couldn’t do it. Not because of what you’ve given me or what you’ve protected mefrom.” She paused. “Because you are the most—” Her voice caught slightly on the word and she let it catch, because she was done managing visible things at the expense of true ones. “Because you are the most real person I have ever known, and being near you makes me feel as though I am real as well. And I did not know, until very recently, what an extraordinary thing that was.”
He had gone very still.
“I would be so honored to be your wife,” she said. “If you still?—”
He stepped forward and she stopped talking because his hands were on her face, gentle and absolutely certain, and he was looking at her with an expression that she did not have a word for yet but thought she might spend a considerable amount of time learning the name of.
“I still,” he said. “I love you so much.”
He kissed her.
It was different from the other times. Not better, not more, but different in the way of something that has changed its quality because of what surrounds it. She had been kissed before by a man who owned her and called it love, and she had learned to be absent from those moments, to go somewhere else inside herself and wait for them to be over. She was entirely present for this. Every particular of it, his hands and the warmth of him and the slight roughness at his jaw, the way he pulled back fractionally and looked at her as though making certain she was still there, as though she might have become theoretical and he needed to verify.
“Still here,” she said quietly.
“Good.” He said it against her mouth, and it was not articulate and she didn’t need it to be.
She had chosen this. That was the extraordinary thing, she thought, even as thought became less possible and more irrelevant. She had walked down a corridor and knocked on a doorand spoken the truth of herself without armor and the ceiling had not fallen and the floor had held.
She had chosen this and it was hers.
Capturing her trembling hand, Oliver enfolded it in his. “You honor me by simply being here.”
He led her to the bed, and they both quickly removed their clothes. Then he tumbled them onto the mattress.
His hands rose to her breasts, cupping their lush swells. Megan closed her eyes and sighed. Yes, tonight would be memorable. And it would banish Penharrow from her memories for good.
His hands were a murmur against her body, like a blind man his fingertips glided over flesh, fanning over her breasts in deepening strokes; she could not resist the exquisite languor that had stolen through her limbs.
Like the Pied Piper he called to her, to her senses, to her body, to her heart. She responded without thought. Her mouth sought his while she strained to get closer, straining to feel his flesh against her. A gratified murmur sounded deep in his throat.
She could not tear her gaze from his face. His eyes half shut, compelling, he worshipped her aching breasts again, his palms rubbing the taut globes, his fingers kindling arrows of impossible enrapture in her tight nipples.
She found it easy to surrender herself into his care. It was magical to lie in his arms like this, to breathe in the warm, masculine scent of him, to feel his incredible touch. Then he bent his head, savoring her stiffened nipple with his mouth, and her breath fled her body. His hot mouth suckled and savored. Her head fell back. Her gasps shivered through the room. He was feasting like a starving man. He laved her breasts, suckled, nipped— sending arrows of heat to her core. His hot mouth gave such pleasure she prayed he never stopped. Her handsclosed on his skull, holding him to her.Shewas never letting go. His mouth was heaven on her flesh.
She gloried in the feel of his hard body, the evidence of his desire never more real. Megan reached down and stroked his cock once, and he growled deep in his chest. He urged her back into the mattress and she went willingly. Her skin was flaming, her body melting, all her senses heightened and in scattered disarray. He followed her down, one knee rising and pushing between hers, parting her thighs, exposing the musky scent of her arousal to the room. Megan was momentarily embarrassed when his muscled thigh, raspy with masculine hair, rode against her dampness, but his groan of admiration saw her glory in wanton incitement. He deliberately shifted, pressing against the most sensitive spot, knowingly winding her tight… Her breath tangled in her throat.
She traced the rock-hard muscles in Oliver’s arms as he braced himself over her, his other knee joining the first, pushing her legs apart, spreading her thighs so he could settle between them.
Their eyes locked and silently communicated. He looked down to where their bodies would join. The angles and planes of his handsome face were sharp with desire. There was an elemental rawness of conquering male, and it thrilled her. She cupped his face and nodded. She was putting herself into his hands, into his body, knowing she’d found a place in his heart.
He lowered his head to place a gentle kiss on her lips as he shifted between her thighs. The hardness she had been caressing probed her slick entrance.
