She bit her lip. “Wh-what do you need?”
“It turns out what I need is you,” he said. “As much as I fought that, as much as I tried to deny it, as much as I pretended it was for some ulterior motive, the fact is that I couldn’t walk away. Even when I tried, you were always there, pushed into my heart and my space and my everything.”
“You sound like that is a bad thing,” Rosalinde whispered. “Something you regret.”
“Am I not making myself clear?” He dropped to his knees before her and leaned up into her. His arms came around her, tugging her close until there was nothing but breath between them. “I love you, Rosalinde Wilde. I may have tried not to love you, but I do.”
She smiled, joy swelling up in her. She cupped his cheek, stroking her fingers over the harsh lines of his cheeks, his jaw, her thumb across his lip as if to memorize the feel of him in this moment. “You aren’t just saying it?”
He shook his head solemnly. “I may be many things, but I’m not a liar.I love you.”
“But you still frown,” she whispered, leaning in to press her lips to that frown.
He returned the kiss briefly. “I do. Because I don’t know how to do this. To love you so that I won’t hurt you. So that I won’t disappoint you. So that I won’t make you regret giving me the precious gift of your heart.”
Gray’s whole body hurt from the weight of the words he had just spoken. He’d never allowed himself to voice that fear. To allow himself to imagine that he would hurt Rosalinde. But now that she had given her heart so freely, now that he had accepted it because it was so precious, terror gripped him.
Rosalinde tilted her head and speared him with a loving yet questioning glance. “That’swhat you fear? That you might hurt me?”
He nodded. “Yes,” he said, his voice cracking with the weight of those words and the consequences they might hold.
She touched his face, her fingers so light against his skin, so warm. “Gray, youwillhurt me.”
He flinched and tried to pull away, but she held him steady with a deceptively strong grip.
“Don’t run. Pain is inevitable in this life. But if you never risk the pain, you will also never find the joy or the pleasure or the true connection. You’ll never hurt me with ill intentions, never with cruelty. And I may hurt you in return out of misunderstanding or by accident. But more often than not, you’ll heal me. You’ll complete me. And I hope to do the same for you.Thatis life, that is love.”
He mused on that for a moment before he stroked his hands along her spine. He felt her shiver beneath him, felt his own body react to the press of her, the weight of what they had just said to each other.
“Celia once told me you live your life with your arms wide open,” he said, his voice soft and rough. “It is one of the things I have loved about you. Will you teach me how to do that?”
She nodded. “It’s easy enough, my love. Just trust that you’ll survive the flightorthe fall. And trust that I’ll always be there to catch you.”
He pushed her back against the settee, his mouth finding hers, his body nudging between her legs. He had wanted her too many times since he’d met her, but never more than now. Now he wanted to feel her wrapped around him when he knew he had her heart. When he knew she held his.
“We have less than an hour before we are declared man and wife,” he whispered as his lips dragged against her throat. “Just enough time to show you how much I love you, just enough time for us to try out our wings together.”
She hesitated. “I want more than an hour.”
He laughed even though her words made his cock even harder. “Mmm, one more thing I love about you. This time will be fast, but I promise you that tonight, when you are my wife, you will know it in every way.”
“I know it now,” she said, drawing him closer. “I know it forever.”
He pushed up her skirt with one hand, splaying his fingers across her satiny flesh, marking it as his as he inched higher and higher. He so wanted to strip her bare, to take his time worshipping her, but that was not to be this afternoon.
Still, he had the rest of his life.
He smiled as he pushed his fingers through the slit in her drawers and stroked them over her sex. She was wet, hot, ready.
“Thank God,” he groaned, covering her mouth as he unbuttoned the flap of his trousers. Her fingers tangled with his, and together they worked to free him.
She made a soft sound against his lips as she stroked him once, twice, then guided him to her entrance. He pulled away from the kiss as he slid forward, breaching her, feeling her slick folds tighten around him and welcome him home.
“I love you,” he whispered.
She smiled up at him, her eyes filled with tears, but happy tears. Joyful tears. “I love you.”
He drove forward on those words, taking her slowly, rotating his hips to give her the most pleasure. He watched her face as he moved, marking every hitch of her breath, every gasping moan, every contortion of her face as her pleasure built.
