Her rain-cooled fingers slide to my jaw, pulling me down into her kiss. She kisses me like I’m something to be reclaimed, to be possessed and never let go—and I let her claim me as hers.
37
Genevieve
The rage and hurt of my mother’s betrayal is nothing compared to the need burning through me—to take Kieran as mine once again.
Nine years.
Nine years of wanting him, of never letting go of what we once had and what we lost. All for naught. All because my mother lied to me. She watched me mourn the man I loved and forced me into loveless arrangements with other men, leaving me more broken and lonely than before. She made me think there was something wrong withme, when all this time it was her—her selfishness, her greed, her betrayal—that caused the heartbreak I’ve carried for nearly a decade.
Kieran presses me back against the cold brick of Huntley House, and I wrap my legs around him, canting my hips to feel the hardness between us, the desire he still has for me evident even through my damp, rumpled skirts trapped between us.
“Kieran, I need you. I need to feel you inside me,” I breathe into the hollow of his neck. His response is part moan, part grunt as he sweeps me off my feet. I wrap my legs around his waist as he pushes open the door to his home.
I don’t care what the staff think. I can’t comprehend anything beyond his touch—his lips on my bare skin—all of it without my curse distorting his reaction to me.
This is nothing but our own pure desire. A need I’ve harbored deep in my heart and spent the last few weeks denying, despite the stolen glances, the way he was drawn to me even in the night. Only he can fulfill the hunger in my body and the ache in my heart.
“Out!” Kieran barks, and a maid scuttles from the doorway. “Don’t worry about them, Gen,” he says softly against the shell of my ear. He knows me well enough to realize that, normally, all I’d be thinking about is propriety and everyone else’s reactions.
“Kieran, for once I don’t even care who sees me. All I want is you—now,” I reply, my voice husky with want. I slide my hands through his thick, wavy hair, and he lets out another moan against my ear.
“Can you make it to the bedroom, Princess, or should I take you in my sitting room?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he bars the door to the well-appointed room off the foyer. With deliberate, agonizing care, he lowers me onto the plush carpet near the crackling fire. My breath leaves me in a rush as he braces himself above me, sweeping one hand down the dripping fabric clinging to my body.
“No bedroom then?” I ask, my voice already frayed with need. I know there’s no waiting for a bedroom. I would have fucked him in the carriage if he’d let me—long before I realized everything that’s kept us apart. The well of emotion he showed me yesterday was only thebarest edge of what I feel for him. Nearly a decade of broken hope and heartbreak, and I’ll be damned if I have to climb the stairs for a bed.
He feels the same—his hands are already working at the cold, wet fabric of my dress.
“No time,” he says, voice rough, “not with you trembling in these wet clothes.”
“I’m not trembling from the cold, Kieran.”
He cocks his head, a knowing smile tugging at his lips. “Yes, I know, Princess. You’re trembling for me. And I cannot endure another moment with these clothes between us.”
Kieran looks at me expectantly, as if waiting for permission to ravish me. It’s endearing—one of the few things that hasn’t changed about him, despite everything else in his life being upended. He still touches me the same way he always has: in whatever manner keeps me comfortable, always placing my needs above his own.
“May I?” he asks quietly, fingers poised at the first button.
I know exactly what he needs to hear.
“Yes. I want you, Kieran Greenbluff.”
“Yes?” he breathes.
“Yes.” My voice is confident, unwavering, as he holds my gaze.
“There’s no coming back from this, Princess. I’ll hoard you away if I must, but you’ll be mine—only mine.”
I draw my hand up to his cheek, stroking gently as I see the doubt hiding behind his eyes. He still isn’t sure he can trust me. That realization cracks something raw and aching inside me.
“Kieran,” I whisper, “you are all I’ve ever wanted. This is the answer to every dream I’ve ever dared to have.”
As if the last fragments of control he’d been clinging to snap, Kieran kisses me, and I feel myself falling weightless into our shared desires. What I said is true. Heisthe answer to my dreams. All my fantasies asa young woman were of him, and even after he left, I kept hoping he would return.
Not even his death stopped me from yearning for him. I’ve longed for a dead man for nearly a decade, and now I finally have the proof I always dreamed of—the truth I always carried in my heart. Kieran is here. He is alive. And he still wants only me.
