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“It is only what I have done inside you talking,” he says softly, almost mournfully. Though I notice his eyes don’t leave the hand working between my legs. The other hand I still have on my breast. The way I spread, so he can see better. And when I reach up and cup the back of his head, he doesn’t stop me. He lets me urge him down, until his mouth is agonizingly close to my clit.

Then he licks, he licks.

Only I know what he’s doing when he does.

He’s trying to get what he’s done out of me. To stop me doing anything that he thinks I don’t really want. But really he should know by now that all of this is my choice. I choose him. I know I do, because when the delirium finally starts to fade, a new one simply takes its place.

And this one makes me say yes when he offers me a sweet embrace.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I know I am in big trouble when I wake in his arms. No debating it this time, no splitting hairs about what constitutes a cuddle. Just straight up opening my eyes and there he is, pressed against me. One hand in my hair and his chin on the top of my head, just as I imagined. Though somehow, the reality is far more intense than the mere idea of it.

It almost seems like fucking.

Or, at least, the version of fucking we did last night.

Filthy seeming, or trying to be, but somehow something else all at the same time. Making love, my memories of Madison suggest. And unfortunately for me, she was the most cynical of the three. She rolled her eyes at romantic movies, and clocked the vampire threat in her town long before she remembered Halsten. But her sense of these things is there all the same. It’s there in all of them.

They all stand behind me, silently, observing the deep softness in his gaze and the sense of being so held by him.

I’m sorry I let you down, I want to say to them.

But strangely, I don’t think that’s what they need.

The shadowy memories of them seem as undone as me. As confused as me. How was it so easy, they seem to say. And not in a judgmental way. In a way that tells me it genuinely was and is and should be. I shift in his arms so I can look at his face, and all I feel is the strongest familiarity and affection.

It’s fucking weird.

But more important: it makes me want to throw away any vow to keep things simple, or let it just be sex, or whatever else I’ve told myself over the last few weeks. In fact, all I want to do is extremely soppy things—like touch his face and kiss his mouth and stroke his hair.

After all, I’ve already broken most of the rules I set.

I kissed. I cuddled.

All that’s left is open affection.

And apparently he knows it.

“Oh, please do, I am dying of wanting you to,” he murmurs, eyes still closed, body still so asleep seeming that it makes me jump. My cheeks heat thinking of him just lying there, sensing my eyes on him and my hand hovering close to his cheeks and all this longing coming out of me.

Even though he’s obviously worse on that score.

His breath is held now. I can feel him trembling, minutely—practically on tenterhooks for me to make contact. Maybe even agonized about it, in a manner that just wraps around my heart. It gets me the rest of the way, before I can even think too much more about it.

And I touch him.

I stroke him.

I pet him.

I run my fingers through his hair and whisper soft words against his cheek.

Then finally, finally I let myself sink into a kiss. Gently at first, just a brush of my lips. But after a moment of this barely there contact, he breaks a little. I feel his hands slide up over the curve of my back, bunching up my nightdress as he goes. And he parts his lips. He lets his tongue flicker over mine, so soft and sensuous and seductive about it that it makes me gasp.

He draws back to hear it.

“Sorry, I shall stop,” he says.