“I don’t.”
“You…” She blinked back the tears that had begun pooling in her eyes. “You loveme, don’t you?”
“I…yes.”
“Well, I love you, too.”
It was likely the most unromantic declaration of love in history.
This wasn’t the stuff of poets.
It was better.
Their love didn’t need flowery adornment.
It was simple and true.
“You showed me love, Dev. That I can love and be loved. That love—truelove—is a safe harbor. I can surrender to it—with you.”
“Beatrix—”
She held up a hand, staying the words in his mouth. She wasn’t finished. “Dev, you excite me in ways I’d never thought possible from a good, solid man.”
“Now, wait a minute,” he protested.
A good, solid man…
Him?
They would have to discuss that.
She went on, undeterred. “You’ve shown me I can have it all. I can have the good in life, and the love, and the magic, too. The fact is you’ve ruined me for any future that doesn’t involve you.”
She’d erased the distance between them, her head tipped back so she could hold his gaze.
At last, she’d come to him.
His plan hadn’t been rubbish, after all.
Yet still they didn’t touch.
Which had to be rectified—immediately.
“Can I please touch you now?” he nearly growled.
“Yes, my love,” she whispered, as she hooked her arms around his neck.
He just held off from kissing her. There were words he must speak to her, too. “All my life,” he began, “I’ve had this ability to narrow my mind to a singular focus and use it to inspire and drive me. A drive to vanquish and a craving for more beyond—to have what I wanted when I wanted. Somehow, Imogen became tangled inside that idea, and I used her—the idea of her—as fuel. But that was all she was. I never knew the true her, you were correct on that point. I only saw a fantasy, but I was too blind with my own drives to understand that—until I met you, Bea.”
A smile wobbled about her mouth. “Oh, Dev, how I do love being correct.”
His own mouth gave way to a smile. “I didn’t know what caring and friendship and love were before I met you,” he continued. “I didn’t know that love—true love—could be intense and fun and every emotion between. I want to please you…love you…make love to you. From the moment I met you, there was no other, only it took me too long to see it.”
She gave her head a firm shake. “Not too long. We both had the blinders on.”
“Now, they’re off.”
“At the right moment.”
