In other words, she was everything…his everything.
Her eyes on his, she pried his hands from her hips.
“Let me,” she said.
Her sultry request set his blood on fire. He was hot—bloody sweltering—as she rose, keeping just his tip inside her. He groaned as her cunny tightened around his sensitive knob, bliss blazing through his veins. Before he could recover, she sank all the way down, taking him to the root and swiveling her hips until he saw stars. He had the urge to flip their positions, to plow his naughty girl until she screamed his name. Despite the molten pleasure pouring through him, he needed more. Wanted more.
“Give me the words, Evie,” he rasped.
The flames in her eyes turned to shadows. He sensed her fear—felt it in the way she froze.
“You don’t want them from me,” she whispered.
Egad, the woman was a mystery to him.
“I do,” he insisted. “Say them.”
For an instant, she said nothing, biting her bottom lip. Despite the scorching pleasure of their joined bodies, he felt emptiness swell inside him.
“I love you.” She sobbed it. “I love you. Always and forever.”
Joy exploded. “I love you, Evie.”
He bucked his hips, driving into her while pulling her down. His need for her was visceral, endless, the pleasure beyond imagining. He felt her come and groaned as her pussy milked him. His eyes closed, he pumped into her, chasing his finish?—
“You will regret it.”
“Regret what?”
Frowning, he opened his eyes…and the sunlight refracting through the glass made hers blaze too brightly. Her gaze was so painfully intense that he had to look away. Confused, he felt desire morph into a different kind of heat…one that was searing him from the inside out.
Alarm and bewilderment spiked. What the bloody hell is happening?
His blood was boiling in his veins, his skin steaming. His head pulsed, and when he tried to move, the floor of the greenhouse fell away. He plummeted—into a boiling vat. Groaning, he flailed in the punishing heat until it vanished. A chill took its place, shaking him until his teeth rattled. Then a new pain began. The ache started inside his bones, burgeoning until he felt his spine begin to crack. Agony fissured through him, reaching his head. He groaned as a hammer pounded inside his skull, threatening to break it wide open?—
“James, darling. Don’t leave me.”
The sobbed words came through the haze of pain. He tried to open his eyes, but they were crusted shut. The razors in his throat shredded his voice.
“I’m sorry.” Evie’s voice drifted to him like a buoy. “I love you…more than anything. You know that, don’t you?”
Did he know that? He wasn’t sure. Everything was a blur.
“Don’t leave me, James. Please don’t go. I love you so much?—”
Was he going somewhere? He didn’t want to. Yet his head was spinning, his body burning, and suddenly, he found himself at the very edge of a cliff. For a moment, he teetered and glimpsed what lay below: a fathomless void.
Then he plunged.
Chapter Fourteen
Evie awoke with a start.
The light from a lamp warded off the darkness before dawn. She was in her night rail, curled up in the chair by James’s bed, where she had fallen asleep. She’d kept vigil for the last three days while her husband battled what the physician had diagnosed as influenza. A severe fever had seized James, followed by bed-shaking chills. He had been out of his mind and unable to keep anything down. Evie had tried to make him comfortable, applying cool washcloths that steamed against his burning skin.
Evie had never seen him in such a state. Normally, he was as robust as an oak, but the physician had said that the hospital James had visited had experienced an outbreak of similar cases. The doctor had cautioned Evie to have the sickroom linens changed regularly and to keep the windows open to dispel the noxious miasma. She was to alert him if any other household members developed symptoms.
Xenia and Gigi had visited frequently, offering to relieve her. While Evie appreciated their support, she refused to leave James. Seeing him in this fragile state terrified her. It also made her realize the extent of her self-delusion: she could never bring herself to leave him, under any circumstances.
