“Don’t call me that, if you please,” she said tartly, fidgeting with her skirt as if she could sense the war raging within him.
“Sweetheart?” He gave her a look. “I thought it was onlydearthat caused you to dump vases over me. Fortunately, there are no filled vases within sight.”
Court was daring to tease her again. For all the years he had known her, since she’d been but a girl—Percy’s intrepid little sister who nattered on about birds and poetry and butterflies and dogged their every step—his relationship with Vivi had been easy. They had been friends first. And later, when she had grown into a woman, his feelings for her had altered, and he had seen her as so much more than the girl who had gamely raced him across the fields and who had once hidden a frog in his left boot. He longed for the same easiness between them, for the ice to begin thawing.
“You deserved far more than a dumped vase for leaving me this past year,” Vivi told him solemnly.
Very likely, he did. He wouldn’t argue the point, for it would serve neither of them. He had already explained to her why he had left. Why he had stayed away. Vivi would have to choose whether she could forgive him. Whether she chose to give him a second chance to set their marriage to rights.
“A frog in my boot, perhaps,” he suggested, striving to keep their conversation from descending into heavier subjects.
He wanted to remind her—to remind them both—of how it had been between them before. Of how it could be between them again. An easy camaraderie. Husband and wife. Lovers. One thing had become abundantly clear to him in his absence, and it was that he wanted a future with Vivi. He wanted happiness, laughter, lovemaking. One day, he hoped, children.
“I tried that tactic once before,” she said, plucking at her skirts in a gesture he instantly recognized.
She was conflicted.
“And you feared I would step on the frog and smash him when I put on my boots,” he reminisced. “So you slipped back into my chamber and laid the boot on its side.”
“But then, the frog hopped under your bed and kept you up all night with his croaking,” she finished, smiling at him.
God, her smile took his breath. Took him back in time to that pivotal moment when he had watched her whirling beneath the chandeliers with another man at the Marquess of Needham’s ball. The golden glints in her hair had shone, and she had been wearing a silk gown that matched. The need to dance with her had consumed him.
And when he’d taken her in his arms, the need for Vivi had supplanted all else. It had never ceased, even if he had struggled to keep his distance in deference to Percy.
He chuckled softly as he forced himself to think of the frog instead of the interceding time that was forever lost to them both. “By morning light, I was about to rout the little beggar and force him from under the bed, but not without a dreadful night’s sleep. When I returned him to you, you told me quite sternly that his name was Frederick the Frog and not This Pernicious Creature, as I had been referring to him.”
“It was hardly Frederick’s fault that you gave him such a fright,” Vivi said. “I expect he was quite terrified of you bellowing at him all night. You were terribly Friday faced when you came to breakfast that morning. Even Percy said that he would hide from you if he were me, for fear of the retaliation.”
“You would have been as well, had you been forced to listen to Frederick the Frog’s nonsense all night long,” he drawled.
They smiled at each other, lost in the silliness of the past. Fond memories. All the ties, so inextricable, that bound them together.
Desperation and desire seized him then, and he surrendered to the need to move closer to her, hauling himself across the counterpane with a complete and utter lack of grace and not giving a damn. He didn’t stop until he was at her side, sweeping plates and serviettes and serving trays aside to make room for himself. Court reached for her, cupping her cheek, running his thumb slowly over her sleek, soft skin.
“Wh-what are you doing?” she stammered, but she made no move to extricate herself or push him away.
Her eyes were wide, still pools of endless blue, and he wanted to drown in them. “God, I’ve missed you, Vivi,” he confessed, instead of answering her question, for it was apparent what he was doing.
He was touching her.
Touching her as he had yearned to do all their time apart.
He lowered his head, his mouth seeking hers.
And kissing her. For the simple reason that he would perish from wanting her if he did not.
* * *
Court’s lipswere on hers, hot and firm and right, so very right.
The last time he had kissed her, she hadn’t responded.
But this time, she had no choice. Vivi had lost control and all sense of pride. Because Court was being his old, sweet, teasing self, and because he was dredging up dear memories of how everything between them once was, and because she was feeling desperately raw after his sudden return and revelations. She reached for him, her hand finding purchase on his broad, muscular shoulder while holding herself upright with the other, her palm flattened on the blanket, the coolness of the bailey ground seeping through. And she kissed him back.
Opened for him, sighing into his mouth as his tongue slid inside hers. He groaned, gliding his fingers from her cheek to the back of her head, cupping her nape in a possessive hold that would have made her knees knock together had she been standing. Instead, liquid desire pooled between her thighs.
He had missed her?
