“It wasn’t a proper marriage.”
He blinked. “You mean…”
“There’s never been anyone but you,” she said tremulously.
He went still. So still that she began to worry.
“It was how my husband wanted it,” she said in a rush. “It was a good union in many respects, and I’ll be forever grateful to—”
He placed a finger across her lips, stemming the flow of words.
“You don’t owe me any explanations,” he said quietly.
He was right. Yet she felt compelled to ask, “You’re not…upset, are you? Because it doesn’t change anything. I just didn’t feel rightnottelling you.”
“The only thing that upsets me is the time we’ve lost.” He cupped her face in both his hands, as if she were the rarest treasure. “What we can never get back because I was too much of a fool to see what I found that night we met. To seeyou. Everything that you are.”
Although his words wrought a quivering pleasure, she said honestly, “We weren’t the same people we are now. Maybe we had to be apart to grow. Maybe this was the only way for us to find each other again.”
“Perhaps.” He paused before saying gruffly, “I know this makes me a selfish bastard, but I’m glad. Glad that you’re mine and mine alone.”
She gave him the truth in her heart. “I’ve always been yours.”
“I don’t deserve you, but I am never letting you go,” he declared with passionate conviction.
Heavens, this man. What was she going to do with him?
Spend the rest of my life with him, that’s what.
Never had she felt more wanted, more seen, moreloved. There would be no more hiding, no more loneliness. A heady sense of freedom washed over her…and with it a powerful rush of desire.
She brought her lips to his ear and whispered, “Why don’t we make up for lost time?”
He turned instantly hard.
What man wouldn’t when the woman he loved—and who loved him back, Praise Jesus—was looking at him as if she wanted to tup him then and there in a moving carriage? His misgivings that she deserved better than him fled, replaced by a surge of love and lust.
“What do you have in mind?” he murmured.
Her smile, that of a siren aware of her power, made his cock jerk to attention. He could feel his pre-seed dampening his smalls. Then her hands slid into his hair, bringing his head down to hers.
Their mouths fused in a kiss so hot it was a wonder they didn’t set the carriage afire.
When she broke the kiss, he growled at the deprivation…but she only smiled and sank onto the floor between his legs. Her gown was getting crushed, but she didn’t seem to care. She was too busy working on the placket of his trousers; his chest heaved as his heavy erection fell into her hands.
Her emerald eyes shone with excitement, with feminine hunger, and he adored it. Adored that their love had unlocked her vibrant sensuality. Just adoredher.
His love, who was his and had only been his. He didn’t care if his possessiveness was wrong, it justwas. He would kill anyone who tried to take her away from him.
It seemed she had similar thoughts.
“If I’m yours, then you’re mine too.” She frigged him firmly. “Only mine.”
“There’ll be no other for me,” he vowed.
“Good.” She sounded so satisfied that he laughed.
Then she licked him from root to tip, and he moaned at the decadent caress. The little tease did it again and again, lapping delicately at his veined meat. Making him stiff, wet, and aching from her kisses—but withholding what he craved. What she’d given to him with regularity ever since he’d instructed her on the finer points of fellatio. He counted it one of life’s blessings that his future duchess enjoyed oral pleasures as much as he did.
