Page 60 of No Going Back

“All of it?”

Maddie pressed her lips together. An innocuous enough question, but lurking beneath was the real question. “All of it,” she confirmed. “I knew you wouldn’t put me in an embarrassing position. Make my heart race, yes, but not embarrass me, even if it didn’t quite seem like that at the time.”

“It didn’t?”

“Someone could have come into the box at any time.”

“Unlikely.”

“That’s what I told myself. And even if they did, I knew you’d protect me.”

“Always.” He offered her his hand. “Let’s have a nightcap, then we can head for bed.”

Curled up on Guy’s lap, Maddie immersed herself in the sheer peace of being with him, her only thought to please him. There was an intimacy beyond price about the way he held the glass of cognac to her lips, and then drank from the same place himself. She laid her hand on the solid, muscular pane of his chest, his skin separated from hers by the crisp white linen of his tailored shirt. The rise and fall of his breathing soothed her as much as the shield of his arm around her did.

“I could get used to this,” Guy murmured into her hair, brushing her temple with the lightest of kisses. “Dinner, the theatre—”

“A nightcap before bed?”

“And a beautiful woman in my arms. Life is meant for moments like this.”

Her sadist was mellowing? A decade could do that to a man, especially when he carried the kind of burdens Guy did. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget this one,” she whispered.