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“I think I will take that as a compliment,” she replied, as her chin inched upward. And the way her eyes flashed made him think he’d hit a nerve. “I was far too besotted with you to point out that no one particularly likes beingslotted into placeas mistress of the month. You do know how to make it all feel like a bit of an assembly line, don’t you?”
“I do not recall you complaining about it.”
She sighed. “I didn’t, did I? But then, I knew I didn’t fit in here, Crete. Much as I take that as a badge of honor, it only goes to show what I’ve been saying all night. Nothing has changed, or will. I guarantee that you will walk in here and find me far less elegant than required. Too messy. Too determined to not slot nicely into the little box you set out for the woman in your life. Eventually this will lead us right back to where we found ourselves two months ago. Why put ourselves through all that again?”
“I wanted to end things with you almost from the start,” he told her, as if the words were being pulled out of him, backward. “Every day I would come home to you, determined that I would draw a line under it. Be done with it. Get my life back at last, so that everything might run smoothly again. That’s how I like it, Timoney. Smooth, unchallenging, predictable in every way.”
Her eyes glittered. “I can see why you stormed the family estate to abduct me away from my own wedding, then.”
“And yet I didn’t do it,” he continued on, almost harshly. “Night after night, I didn’t.” He shook his head, almost as if he had lost this battle. When he did not lose. “Don’t you understand, Timoney? You broke all the rules.”
When all she did was present him with that smile again—so bittersweet that it made him wonder if he’d had a heart all along, for what else could ache like that—he did not wait to hear what other arguments she might mount.
Because there was only one argument that had ever mattered. Only one argument that ever could.
He swept her up into his arms again and this time got his mouth on hers, and he kissed the ache away. Again and again.
Until it made a new one.
Crete carried her over to the low, long sofa that she had often complained was the enemy of comfort and sitting of any kind. He broke the kiss, his chest working as hard as if he’d gone for a run, but he refused to analyze why it was he was so desperate tonight when he had already won.
He hadwon, damn it.
And this time, when she smiled at him, it was filled with heat and need, passion and longing.
Crete felt it echo in him like relief.
He set himself to the critical task of removing her clothing, at last. Finally, he tossed that cloak aside, with all of its yards and yards of fabric that had concealed her from his view on the drive here. Then he tended to the dress she wore. It was a pretty enough garment, but there was nothing on this earth as pretty as what he uncovered.
Timoney George, naked before him.
The way he always remembered her. The way he always wanted her.
“You, too,” she murmured, sounding impatient enough to make the fire in him blaze higher.
Her hands moved to his coat and then the two of them worked together, with what he was certain was the same sense of urgency, to strip him, too.
And when they were finally skin to skin, he tumbled her down on that couch she’d always hated and exulted in the feel of her. Here where she belonged, after the longest two months of his life.
Naked in his arms, at last.
Naked and wrapped all around him, and the singular joy of it was nearly enough to send him catapulting over that edge.
For another truth he had not told her was that the mistresses of the month had never been like this. None of them could hold a candle to her. He barely remembered them. Sex had always been a pleasant release, but Timoney was something else again.
It was the way her body fit to his, as if they were a set of interlocking parts that only made sense when they were together. It was her scent like honey. It was the way she smiled at him, hot and knowing, when he groaned. It was the way she traced her fingertips down his back, as if making certain he was okay. It was a thousand little things and only one thing, in the end.
It washer.
He wanted to take it slow, but it was impossible. There was a storm between them and Timoney liked nothing better than dancing in that rain.
While he liked nothing more than watching her dance them both into pieces.
They rolled, this way and that, until eventually she climbed astride him and took him deep into her body.
“Epitélous,”he gritted out.At last.
The perfection of it. The slickness. That snug fit, so tight that everything else he was and all he felt seemed to expand in response.
