“Yes,” she said.
My whole body forgot how to function.
“Yes?” I repeated, because no man as ruined as me should have been handed a word like that without needing one second to disbelieve it.
Her smile trembled. “Yes.”
That was it. Whatever restraint I had left died right there. I pulled her into me so fast the breath left both of us, then crashed my mouth onto hers with the force of a man who had just been handed back his entire future. She gasped against me and clung to my shoulders, and I kissed her harder because this was Edwina, my Edwina, saying yes to me in Washington with our daughter sleeping in the next room and another child growing inside her.
No power on earth could have made me take that calmly.
When I finally tore my mouth from hers, it was only far enough to speak against her lips.
“You have no fucking idea,” I said, breathless and half-lost beneath the weight of what she had just given me, “what you’ve done to me with one word.”
“My fiancée,” I murmured against her skin, tasting the word as if I had waited half my life for it. “Jesus Christ. Say it again.”
She shook her head, smiling through all that softness, and I loved her for that too. Edwina never gave me anything without making me work for it, even when she was already melting in my hands.
“Too much?” she whispered.
“No,” I said, my voice roughening because joy in me had always carried possession close behind it. “Nowhere near enough.”
I moved my mouth to her jaw, then to the place beneath her ear where her breathing always betrayed her. “You’re mine in every way that matters.” My hand spread over her stomach with careful awe. “My woman. My little Flare. My children. My whole fucking life.”
I lifted my head and made her look at me. “And before you start pretending otherwise, I’m not saying this sweetly. You already know I don’t love sweetly. I love you like a man who would burn the world for what’s his.”
A shiver moved through her.
I wanted my love under her skin. I wanted her to feel the truth of it so deeply she could never mistake it for anything less.
“And for the record,” I said, my mouth curving, “if you think I’m going to become civilized now that you said yes, you’ve learned nothing from me at all.”
That made her laugh again, and I swallowed the sound with another kiss, slower this time, deeper, full of wonder and hunger and raw gratitude I did not know how to speak cleanly.
When I pulled back, I pressed my mouth to her forehead and closed my eyes for one breath.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Her fingers moved gently into my hair. When I opened my eyes, she was looking at me with a softness so deep every darker part of me went still.
“I love you,” she whispered.
For one second, I only stared at her.
“I love you too,” I murmured against her mouth, wrecked all over again.
And when she smiled through tears and leaned into me, I knew I would spend the rest of my life chasing those words from her lips and never tire of hearing them
Epilogue
Hayden
Itwastheweddingday.
Edwina was on my arm, and for several dangerous minutes, I cared very little about the flowers, the guests, the music, or the groom who was supposed to be waiting at the altar.
All I could see was her.
