THE HOTHOUSE
Dash held perfectly still, waiting for her answer.
The Season was not over yet but surely, she had to know. She had to know if she loved him or not. She had to know her own feelings.
“I’m afraid.” Her voice was calm, but her fingers betrayed her—worrying the edge of her sleeve, smoothing it, worrying it again. “I don’t want to be.”
“What are you afraid of, princesse?”
She drew a trembling breath. “Of being a fool. Of loving you again and finding myself… ruined by it. I don’t know how to step forward when I can’t be sure the ground won’t crumble beneath me.”
He nodded—once, then again—because though it cut him, he understood. “You would be a fool not to be afraid.” His gaze dropped to his hands; he flexed them slowly, then lifted his eyes back to hers. “I kept things from you, ma chère… truths you should have had the instant I knew who you were.”
“Who I was?”
“L’amour de ma vie,” he admitted freely. “You deserved to know everything. I told myself I was protecting you—when I was really protecting myself.”
Her throat moved, but she said nothing.
“I won’t make excuses,” he went on. “I hate that because of me, you spent a single second doubting yourself, that for even one moment you thought you were not enough.” He closed his eyes for a beat and then opened them. “Going forward, if you ask a question, I will answer it. If I am afraid or ashamed, I will tell you that too. No more shadows. No more… half-truths. I cannot undo what I did, but I can change what I do from here on. I can be better for you, if you will give me the chance.”
The smallest breath left her. “I want to believe that,” she whispered. “So much. That’s the worst of it. I’m torn in two. Part of me reaches, and the other…” She pressed a hand to her middle. “The other is frozen. Paralyzed.”
And what could he say to that? It looked as though she did not yet have an answer for him, but he couldn’t blame her. He’d left her a tangled knot of desire and pain.
Still, she had come to him today, and she had yet to leave. He would hear her out, however long it took, whatever she had to say. She’d done the same for him, after all.
But first…
Dash looked around and, not seeing any better options, tilted his head towards the work table. “Will you sit?”
She dipped her chin, and he lifted her easily onto the wooden surface, settling her so she perched nearly eye level with him. His palms smoothed the fabric of her skirts, a pretense for the brush of his fingers against her hips. He didn’t retreat. He stepped closer, filling the space between her knees. And then…
“Imagine me without you,” he said, and his mouth slanted in something that wasn’t a smile. “I have tried. It is a life in half measure. Breathing, but shallow. Eating, but without taste. I am not asking you to forget, Ambrosia. Only—let me earn a future where I never have to imagine that again.”
“I want to… But how?”
“By giving us a chance.” He leaned forward, dropped a kiss along the tender skin of her jaw. “Second by second. Minute by minute.”
When he trailed his lips downward, she tilted her head, sighing.
“Hour by hour.” He raised a hand to touch her sleeve. “Give it a day. A month. A year.”
The pulse in her neck fluttered like an anxious butterfly.
“Let me love you, princesse. We will fly—but I promise, you will always land on solid ground.” He whispered the vow against her skin as he peeled her gown from her shoulders.
His lips lingered on each new inch of flesh, teasing the delicate slope of her collarbone before dragging lower, along the curve of her arm.
She trembled. She did not stop him.
With one insistent tug, her bodice loosened, and her breasts tumbled free. “How is it,” he murmured hoarsely, “that God made you so perfectly for me?”
“Dash—” she gasped when his mouth closed over one dusky peak. His tongue lashed, circled, tugged, until she arched, pressing her breast harder into his mouth. He cupped her with both hands, kneading the soft weight, rolling her nipples between fingers and lips until they stiffened to aching points.
And then he suckled harder, pulling.
She moaned, dragging her fingers through his hair, wrenching, desperate.
