His shoulder muscles twitched, waking to tenderness he’d been denied. Want flickered in his belly, feeling almost like hope.
Penelope...Penelope...Penelope...
Silently, he chanted her name as if it were a torch that could keep the fear at bay.
No one had a touch like hers, so why was he frozen? Why did he wish to roar and, at the same time, to weep?
“I saw you,” she said, with tears shining in her eyes, “and all my words fell away.”
She’d said the same on the night they’d met. The young woman within her reached in and touched the boy within him.
The boy within him responded.
“I saw you, and you became the embodiment of words I never understood.”
“What words?” she asked
“Love.” He kissed her forehead. His inhale wrecked his body. Two people—children really. Brave-hearted. Foolish. And somehow wise. “I’d never seen anything so exquisite. Not then. Not now. Not ever.”
She soothed his neck with firm even strokes.
“This time, I choose you,” she said. “If you’ll have me.”
At stake, his marriage. His future. His heart.
“Yes,” he replied. “And I choose you.”
Penelope.
A benediction.
He bent his head, kissing the very edge of her cheekbone, just beneath her eyes. He tasted the salt trail of the tears she’d wept.
Penelope.
He kissed the outer corner of her eye. Her lashes feathered against his skin. Light and feminine. His lips found her brow, followed its curve. Then, he kissed the center of her forehead.
Penelope.
Yearning dipped low in his belly. The kind of yearning that made him believe he would one day be whole.
Penelope.
She glistened with need that had sweat through her pores.
Penelope.
He moved off the bed, allowing the towel to fall. He was naked. Erect. She wet her lips. Her gaze glazed with heat.
Penelope.
“Take off your shift.”
She stood, too. She withdrew her arms from her shift and then let it drop.
Nothing remained between them. Nothing but the scars he could ignore.
Her nipples peaked enticingly. He accepted the invitation.
