“I . . . had a lot of help.”
He took my hands and kissed my fingers reverently. “You’re magic, Sophie.”
My heart thundered so loudly in my chest I was sure he could hear it. I thought about the way the flowers bloomed in our secret garden, and the way he talked to them when he thought I wasn’t paying attention, and how our hands weren’t so different when we laced them together, telling similar stories with similar calluses, though mine had dirt underneath my fingernails. “I think you’re magic, too.”
He smiled at that. “At least we’re in agreement, then,” he said, and kissed me slowly. I sank down against him, and we savored the feel of each other. “It’s so strange,” he murmured against my mouth. “Kissing you feels like déjà vu. I know we’ve done this before, but . . . it’s beginning to feel more and more like a dream.”
“I promise you, I was no dream,” I said, my hands slipping to his chest to unbutton his charcoal shirt. He unzipped my dress as he kissed my neck, my shoulder. Then, when Juliette’s dress was off, he planted his mouth in the space between mybreasts as he undid my bra, and took his time exploring them, as if he hadn’t already charted that course. His fingers slipped beneath my underwear, tugging it below the swell of my hips, and then he stroked me there, soft and slow, as he brought his mouth back up to mine. I stifled a gasp against his lips.
“If you were a dream, I’d never want to wake up,” he said, and I remembered how this felt in the garden with all those lovely flowers blooming around us. This wasn’t as magical, but we still bloomed. Over, and over, and over again.
“Me neither,” I admitted, feeling my soft and vulnerable heart beating bright against my ribs.
He pressed a kiss against my cheek, my jaw, my ear, before he whispered, “Then let’s make sure this is real. We have to be thorough, I think.”
“And then?” I wondered, hopeful. “Once we make sure we’re real?”
He pulled away a little. Just enough for me to see the spark of challenge in his eyes, wild and feral. His fingers stroked me again, his thumb circling. “What would you want? Within reason,” he added, echoing that promise from weeks ago.
I wasn’t sure if I could fall deeper in love with a man I had only met a month and a half before, but I was falling, nonethe-less. “You,” I replied simply, earnestly. “All of you.”
And so that was exactly what he gave me.
I awoke as morning light streaked through the room.
It bounced off the crystal chimes that were hung in front of the window, slinging prisms across the walls. I didn’t rememberwhen we left the couch and came to bed, but here we were. The alarm clock on my nightstand read 6:37 a.m. I needed to get up soon—until I remembered that I didn’t.
That the bicentennial was over.
My job was done.
I still hadn’t signed the new contract from yesterday. I wasn’t sure about it. I wasn’t sure about anything. Quietly, I went back to my pillow and turned to watch Rus sleep. His hair looked golden in the morning light. I still couldn’t believe he was here in my cottage, after I’d only seen him in a magical garden, and only in that same charcoal shirt and black trousers. I realized quite a few things last night when we returned to the cottage.
One, that I rather liked the roughness of his five-o’clock shadow.
Two, that I much preferred him either in nothing at all or in navy blue, because it brought out the storminess of his eyes.
And three, I was ridiculously and hopelessly in love with him, and I wasn’t sure how to tell him.
He cracked open an eye and caught me staring. “That’s not creepy,” he mumbled sleepily.
“When did we go to bed?” I asked. “I don’t remember.”
“Late. We took showers and I came to bed with you,” he replied. “My back was starting to hurt on the couch—ow,” he hissed as I poked at the bruise on his cheekbone. “Stop, it’s tender. Does it ruin my good looks?”
“Tragically,” I reported.
“There goes my modeling career.”
I curled up against him, my head on his chest. His handsgently combed through my short hair, and it felt grounding. Like we could stay in this moment forever. I wanted to grow roots. I wanted to be here.
Maybe in a way, we could.
“Let’s stay here forever,” I muttered into his chest as it rose and fell with each breath.
His fingers stilled against my scalp. “You know I can’t, sunshine.”
I propped myself up on my elbows, studying his face in the early-morning light. “Can’t, or won’t?”
