“You didn’t believe him?”
“Do I look like an idiot, Venus?” He pulled a face of outrage that she could even ask such a thing. “But he always thought I was, so when he told me his harebrained plan to cheat someone else out of what was rightfully theirs, I went along with it. Not because I intended to reap any financial rewards, but because I wanted to make sure that he got what was coming to him. For my mother.”
“Revenge is sweet, or so they say.”
He shrugged, unrepentant. “He deserved it, and it helped me turn a page. Until I came here, I assumed I’d take the first ship back to New York once I’d delivered him to the authorities. I hadn’t factored in asecond chance with a family or meeting you…” His eyes rose to meet hers, bemused. “Do you remember flattening me that night in Giles’s garden?”
“It wasn’t a meeting easily forgotten.”
“You scared the hell out of me that night, Venus. Not because you seemed capable of killing me… but because something about you felt significant. You’ve always felt significant, and I guess that’s why I’ve always kept you at a longer arm’s length than I’ve kept everyone else. I knew, somewhere deep down, that if I didn’t, you’d be my undoing.” He lifted her hand to kiss her fingers. “I was right. You are. I adore you.” His gaze heated again. “By my reckoning, that’s all my secrets told, my soul bared, and yet youstillseem to be wearing too many clothes. Say adios to that chemise, Venus, and be a gracious loser.”
She hadn’t lost, she had won, and so much more than a silly game of cards. Even so, Vee stuck out her chin in defiance, making sure she stuck out her bosoms to torment him in the process. “You need to earn it with a pair.”
“Oh, I have a pair. The definitive pair, in fact. A pair that cannot be beaten…” He eased the fabric from her shoulders, then gently jabbed the newly exposed flesh with his index finger. “You.” His other finger touched his own chest. “And me.”
“Bravo, Galahad.” Emotion made her voice catch. “Well played. I concede.”
“So do I.” He twirled a finger. “Now put me out of my misery and take that damn thing off.” He sat back as if waiting for a show to start.
Emboldened by his obvious desire for her, she stood before she unlaced the front of the chemise, then took her time easing it from her shoulders. The fabric naturally caught above her breasts, and she left it there for a few moments before she shimmied out of it.
Galahad’s breath hitched as it puddled at her feet, then came out in one big whoosh. “You’re the most beautiful thing I ever saw.” Every nuance of his expression told her that he meant that; the intensity of his gaze so visceral she felt it as it skimmed over her curves.
He stood, too, his need for her as apparent below the waist as it was on his face, allowing his palms to explore everything his eyes admired. The gentleness of his caress set her nerve endings aflame. Her nipples puckered, almost painfully, as they awaited their turn to be worshipped. Her earthy moan was involuntary as he grazed them with his thumbs, arching against him as his lips found her neck, then her ear, and finally plundered her mouth.
Neither held back as they kissed this time. Vee didn’t have the capacity to stop and certainly did not want to. His skin felt wonderful against hers. Hers felt alive beneath his hands. So sensitive that every brush of his fingertips made her body crave more.
He filled his hands with her bottom to anchor her hips flush against his erection, and when that wasn’t enough for either of them, he lifted her again so that she could wrap her legs around his waist before they tumbled back on the mattress in a frenzy of teeth and tongues. Of mutual need and desire.
Of total trust.
Of its own accord, her impatient body shifted position to open in welcome and his instinctively knew the way. Her hips tilted and he stilled. “Do you want children?”
“A house full.”
He smiled and reached for her hand. “I’m glad—because so do I. I’m all done with being lonely.” That smile turned seductive and wicked. “But I’m gladder that I don’t have to keep enough wits about me to be responsible.”
He swallowed her surprised giggle with another kiss, lacing his fingers tight through hers as he slid all the way into her, filling Vee so completely, so perfectly that she gasped. Then sighed in utter bliss as he began to gently move inside her.
She smiled up in wonder, instantly losing herself in the intensity of his eyes.
“I’ve wanted you since the first moment I saw you, Venus.” They fittogether like a glove. His hardness gliding slowly along the walls of her softness as if he had been designed specifically for her.
He withdrew then slid deeper and she thought she’d died and gone to heaven.
Whatever she thought she knew about the physical joining was not at all what she experienced with Galahad. Her first time had been awkward. Impersonal, bizarrely, and in hindsight not at all right. It had been all about another’s needs, another’s passion, whereas this was a union of two hearts that wanted to beat as one.
Galahad moved again, his kiss as deep as his body was buried in hers, and she arched against him wanting more. And he gave it to her, until the tiny bead of nerve endings at the apex of her sex sang against the sublime press of his skin. She moaned her appreciation and he swallowed it in a kiss, groaning against her ear as her fingers raked his back and his delightfully pert bottom.
Within moments, there was so much passion, so much need, that it consumed them. Controlled them—yet still he loved her with all that he was. He came undone in her arms as he adored her with his body, denying himself his release until she was writhing beneath him and begging for mercy.
Even then he made them both wait. Both suffer. So that when it happened, and the walls of her body pulsed around his in surrender, Vee was so blinded by pleasure that she couldn’t see anything but him as they tumbled, holding hands, into oblivion together.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Galahad kissed me tonight on Brighton seafront, so thoroughly and so magnificently, I quite forgot how much I’ve always loathed him…
—from the diary of Miss Venus Merriwell, aged 22
