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He rounded the side of the great brick home, moving through a domed garden wall, making his best guess as to where the swing was.

He came around the side of the hedge, and stopped. The swing was suspended from the branch of a great willow, and he could see the bright white of her gown bathed in moonlight, her blond hair loose around her. An angel.

But he would’ve said that he didn’t believe in it, and yet…she made the case for it.

“What are you doing out here?”

She looked up, and he could see that her eyes glittered in the light.

“I was hoping you would find me.”

“Were you? Or were you hiding from me?”

“I was not hiding from you. Or maybe I was. Maybe I thought you would benefit from a chase.”

His heart began to beat faster.

He took great strides toward the swing, his long legs eating up the space between them with ease. And yet it still seemed slower than it should. He just wanted to be with her.

Wanted to be near her. He reached out and wrapped his hands around the rope that held the swing to the tree branch. His hands just above hers.

“Well, I have found you.”

“Yes. You have. Adonis, I…” She looked up at him, and when their eyes clashed she stopped talking.

“What is it?”

She shook her head. Keeping one hand on the rope, he circled around behind her and drew the swing back slowly, then let her fly free.

Her blond hair streamed behind her, the dress flowing in the breeze. His heart ached. She was free, sort of. She was also bound to him. Which made it so that she would never really be free.

She would be the mother of his child, forever and always.

That was quite a burden he was asking her to bear.

Though she had chosen it.

But he did wonder how much either of them was really capable of making good choices surrounding their own lives.

He did wonder.

He pulled her back one more time and let the swing go, and as it was about to reach its landing spot, she took a small jump off, and looked behind her shoulder. “Come with me.”

He watched her walk a few steps away from him, and then he jolted out of his trance, moving along with her. She was leading him down the garden path. He was following. He had never followed in his life.

This moment was punctuated with memories of when he had met her at the club. Her in that dress that had revealed so much of her body. And now in this long, white flowing nightgown that fluttered on the breeze. That night he had led her to his apartment, he had held her down, and he had given her a taste of the sharpest edge of his desire.

She was the one leading now. And all of it was different. The softness that was Esme permeated the moment. His heart. His lungs.

He was bound by this. By her.

There was no pounding music, no blinding lights. There was nothing but the sound of crickets hidden in the flowers and the night breeze through the trees.

There was nothing but his beating heart and the driving need to get to her.

Esme.

He quickened his pace, and just as she got to the domed entrance to the garden, he captured her, putting her up against the stone and kissing her, pushing his fingers through her hair, consuming her, giving in to the wild beating of his heart, parting her lips and thrusting his tongue against hers. She gasped. She didn’t wrap her arms around him, but she didn’t resist him. She arched her back against him, and he could feel her breasts, the rounded bump of her stomach. His child.