He caught her hands gently when they moved to her breasts.
“No,” he said. “Let me see all of you. Do not flinch away from what I adore.”
Adore.
She forced herself to be still. To lie back, bare, under his gaze.
Blaise let his eyes travel slowly down her body. A flush rose up her neck, but his expression held no mockery. Only hunger and awe.
“You are perfect,” he said hoarsely.
“That is a dangerous word,” she whispered, though a foolish, pleased warmth spread through her.
“Then allow me to be reckless for once,” he said.
He stripped then, shrugging out of his coat, his waistcoat, his shirt. When he bared his chest, the candlelight caught in the ropes of muscle there.
She reached for him without thinking, her fingertips tracing the taut skin. Blaise groaned and moved over her, balancing hisweight on his forearms so as not to crush her. This, too, was new—the carefulness and tenderness. He touched her as if each brush of his hand were a question, and her responding shiver, her breath, her soft sounds were the answers.
When he finally slid inside her, it was with a slowness that made her arch and open up for him. Iris bit her lip against every cry as Blaise watched her face the whole time.
“Look at me,” he murmured.
She forced her gaze to stay on his as he filled her completely, and pleasure bloomed hot and sweet and terrifyingly intense. There was nowhere to hide. And, she realized with a jolt, nowhere she wanted to.
They moved together, building a rhythm that felt like a conversation their bodies had been waiting to have in this quiet room. His hand found hers and laced their fingers together, pinning her hand above her head.
“Iris,” he whispered again and again, like a litany. “Iris. Iris.”
When she climaxed, it tore through her in bright, shuddering waves. She did not try to swallow the sounds it dragged from her. She let them spill, raw and helpless, into the dark. His name broke from her lips in a gasp, and she felt him shudder inside of her. She heard his own rough groan as he followed, burying his face against her neck.
They lay tangled afterward, breath ragged, limbs heavy. Her cheek rested against his chest, the steady thud of his heart beneath her ear. His hand stroked her hair absently, as if he could not quite stop touching her.
“Iris,” Blaise said her name like a soft and sweet prayer.
“Yes, Blaise?”
He lifted her chin gently so that she was looking into his deep blue eyes.
“Marry me?” he whispered.
EPILOGUE
Blaise stood alone in the narrow vestry, where vestments hung like pale ghosts along the wall, and a single small window admitted a square of uncertain light. His waistcoat had already been fussed over, his cravat threatened twice by Skelton’s meddling fingers, his hair smoothed so ruthlessly by the valet that it almost behaved. Almost.
He should have felt tightly wound, like other men said they did on their wedding mornings. Instead, there was a strange calmness in him. A feeling that he had been walking, out of breath, and finally reached the top of the hill.
The door creaked. Marcus ducked through it, too tall for such modest spaces, shoulders only half-tamed by his brand-new coat. His nephew wore a Knoxford black better than Blaise ever had. It fit him as if the wool itself recognized the rightful owner.
“You are supposed to be with the vicar,” he said coyly. “Practicing how not to bolt.”
Blaise snorted. “The poor man explained a million times that I must say ‘I will’ rather than ‘if I must.’”
“That seems fair,” Marcus conceded. “We must not terrify Aunt Iris before she has signed the register.”
Marcus leaned back against the paneled wall, the movement careless in the way young men were careless when they believed their bodies were immortal. Once, the sight would have struck through Blaise with anxiety. Now he only watched, standing easily with his hands behind his back.
For a moment, they said nothing. The muffled swell of the organ bled through thick stone. Outside the door, footsteps passed, and hushed voices traded last-minute instructions. In the close air of the vestry, the ticking of a small brass clock sounded indecently loud.
