Then, like now, she fancied he could be hers.
But that was the danger, wasn’t it?
Even now, even after the terrible complexity of the wounds he’d revealed, even knowing he had not yet told her the truth, she would turn over her heart to him and accept him without reservation.
Once again, she’d pluck out his shiny pieces, and set them into a constellation of her own making, forgetting the terrifying power of the vast places between the stars, the emptiness that frightened.
But not enough to stop her desire.
“I don’t want to talk of the past, or the future. I just want...” She paused.
The power of their first night together mingled with the power of now.
“What, Penelope? What do you want?”
She unfastened her outer cloak and pushed it off her shoulders. “I want you.”
~~~
He shouldn’t comply. Before he walked through the door she held open, he should be sure she knew who he was.
She reached up and curled her finger around the back of his neck.
“You said you could not deny me.”
“No.” He concentrated on the small circles she drew. “I said Iwouldnot deny you.” One indicated helplessness. The other, choice. “If I acquiesce to your wishes, I will do so, not because I must, but because...”
“Because?”
He dropped his voice, “I wish to hear you laugh.”
“Make me happy, then,” she said. “Kiss me.”
Again, he could not breathe, even in the sea-scented air. Penelope, the moonlight, the desire that simmered low—they vined around his heart and squeezed.
“Would you like me to kiss you?”
“Would I have led you here if I did not?”
When he’d held Pen in the shadow of the standing stones, she’d been confused by her reaction to “the captain.”
Pen did not show an ounce of confusion, now.
He’d wager his last sixpence Pen knew who he was, though his secret wafted between them thin as candle smoke.
“I’m waiting,” she said. “Youcannotknow how much Ihatewaiting.”
With a rueful smile, he bent his head, brushed his lips against hers. A prickling sensation shot from his lips to his groin.
“Soft,” she said. “Like a whisper.”
“Like a secret.” He feathered his lips along her cheek to her ear, marking her sweet face as his.
“Secretsmustbe whispered, mustn’t they?” she asked. “Held sacred. Treated with the utmost care.”
Care, like she’d taken with his new shirt and coat.
Care, like she’d taken with his son.
