He couldn’t turn back the clock.
But they could reset it to zero.
A sound caught his ear—a muted squeak, followed by door hinges turning. He sat up, covered only by the sheet that came to his waist, but didn’t call out. Soft footsteps padded lightly across dense wool, carrying across the room awash with the cool blue of night. A figure clad in diaphanous ivory silk moved across a shaft of soft starlight.
Artemis.
No words passed between them as she reached for the sash of her robe and tugged. The garment fell open, and she shrugged it off her shoulders, allowing it to drop to the floor in a softshush, revealing she wore nothing else.
Before him, at the foot of the bed, she stood, naked as a goddess.
As if they were in a dream together, she leaned forward and planted her palms on the bed, lifting her feet off the floor and crawling onto the rumpled coverlet. Bran’s lungs went still, as if even a single breath would break the spell that ribboned through fragile night air.
Slowly, she closed the distance between them, her hair falling forward in a curtain, the heavy sway of her breasts just beyond.
His cock went hard as stone.
She hesitated inches from him, their gazes connected across the scant distance. Her scent of crisp salt and fresh lemon drifted to meet him, and he breathed her in. Before him, within reach, was everything he’d ever wanted before the world had gotten in the way.
When it was only the two of them, it was right.
So, why should it be any way other than the two of them?
With the certainty with which one moved inside a dream, he reached out, cupped the back of her head, and drew her forward. Their lips met—soft and tender, a light brush of breath coolacross damp sensitive skin. Instinct reared its head, pulled at him to deepen the kiss, to grab hold of certainty and take it fast and sure to its natural resolution.
He resisted instinct.
He wanted Artemis—to become so wrapped inside her until there was nohimand noher, onlythem.
He wanted to go deeper—beyond the boundaries of the body and mind and into the realm of the spirit, into the soul.
So, he kissed her—slow … long … deep—and the world around them faded into nothingness.
She shifted, easing onto him so she straddled his thighs, her hands now clasping his face as she gave her all into the kiss. “Artemis,” he spoke against her mouth.
She pulled back and met his gaze. “I want you,” she whispered.
She might’ve been speaking only of his body—only of the pleasure he could offer her.
But they’d come too far for such lies to himself.
She wanted him—allof him.
That was what she was saying.
“And because I’ve spoken my want aloud,” she continued, “aren’t you bound by your own words to give yourself to me?”
He gave his head a slow shake without releasing her gaze. “No.”
She blinked. Her brow creased. “No?”
He slid his hand around to caress her cheek. “I’m bound by more than words, Artemis.”
For the split of a second, her eyes searched his, as if looking for the truth there. Then she brought her mouth to his in sudden urgency, her lips hot and demanding as she shifted forward, her breasts soft against his chest, and lowered down him, her cunny along the hard length of his cock, separated only by the thin cotton sheet.
The slow, languorous lovemaking he’d envisioned wasn’t meant to be, as a responding urgency seized him, need and ache and utter want too strong, pummeling his resistance to bits.
Someday, they could do slow and languorous.
