“Consider me surprised.”
“Do you dislike it?” She looked into his face, and he brought his hand to her chin, thumb brushing her skin gently. “I hoped you might come to like it.”
“I like it a lot,” he said, still looking down at her.
“I wanted this to be our house, one that we both love.”
His mouth twitched. He had changed in the days since she had discovered him half-dead as he searched for her. And perhaps she had changed too—the part of her so desperate to flee had withered and died as she had stared into his frozen face. Therecould be no leaving now, not when he had proven himself so desperate to keep her.
And he, in turn, had shown himself to be slower to temper, more open with his smiles and his affection. The last barrier between them, one she had not known existed before then, had fallen away.
Yet for all that, she found a new somberness in him. A new appreciation for the world around him.
“This is your home as much as mine—more, even,” he said. “I’ve had well over a decade to make it mine as much as I could want. Now you have a blank canvas. Draw on it as you would wish. I want you to be happy here, and truthfully, I’m attached to nothing here but you.”
“I should have known I’d married a flirt.”
His smile widened into something so bright, her breath caught. “Did you not know by the way we first met?”
“You swore then you had no aspirations in my direction.”
“Why, when I first arrived there, I did not. You intrigued me.” The thumb brushing her chin moved to her lip. “As you still do to this day.”
Scrunch chose that moment to burst from her pocket, running up to her shoulder. Sebastian reared back, and Eleanor laughed.
“Are you still afraid of him?”
“I am notafraid.” Even so, he regarded the rodent with a mix of trepidation and affection. “Would you mind putting him to one side?”
“Why?”
“Why do you think?” A smile creased his face. “So I can kiss you.”
She had to laugh, and she scooped Scrunch into her hand. Fortunately, she had somewhere to put him now.
“Come with me,” she said, taking Sebastian’s hand and leading him back up to her bedchamber where the wooden cage Sebastian had ordered to be made stood ready. Carefully, she deposited her pet through the door fashioned for him, then closed it properly.
Then she spun back to her husband.
“Well?” she asked archly. “Were you not about to kiss me?”
“Indeed I was,” he chuckled, sliding a hand around to the back of her neck. He brought his mouth down on hers.
His kiss was soft and gentle, tender, saying everything he had already put into words. He loved her—she knew that,understood it in her heart, but he reminded her through her body as he parted her lips with his.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, kissing the corner of her mouth, then her cheekbone, then her eyelids, her brows. “I am the luckiest man to have ever walked this earth.”
“I love you,” she whispered, her breath leaving her lungs.
“I love you. More than I could ever have imagined loving anyone.” His fingers pressed into the small of her back, bowing her body into his. They had not been intimate since the night of that awful ball, and even then, there had been something mechanical about it. As though they were following familiar paths without thought or emotion.
Now, she felt the way he bared his heart to her.
She ached for him.
And predictably, her body turned to liquid in anticipation of how he could make her feel.
“Eleanor,” he said against her lips. “I hunger for you. Will you let me?”
