“I didn’t choose my path to you,” she said. “I was forced to it. And yes, at the beginning you seemed the best option of the bad lot my father demanded I consider.”
“I know that,” he murmured.
“But I wouldn’t change a step I have taken along this road,” she said. “I need you to understand that. If I could go back in time, if I could have everything I desired, I would let Peter be taken from me, and I would choose you. Over and over.”
He stared, his ears ringing, his limbs numb. “I-I don’t understand.”
She smiled. The most beautiful smile that had ever existed in this world. The smile he adored to distraction every time she gifted it in his direction.
“Yes, I loved him. I love him.” She shook her head. “But his path has led him to a successful career, a confidence he certainly didn’t have as a boy, a life that has made him happy. And my path has brought me three children, who I am proud of and care for. It’s brought me pleasure and laughter and friends andyou. Most of all it’s brought me you, Elliot. You are my heart, my soul. I could never and would never give you up.”
Her words were becoming clearer, striking through the stunned fog, opening his heart in a way he’d never thought was possible. Breaking him wide open until all there was joy and certainty and happiness unlike anything he’d ever felt before.
He drew her in and kissed her, and it was like the first time. And in a way, he supposed it was. Because loving her and being loved by her would open a new chapter for them. No matter what else needed to be resolved, that was absolutely certain.
She shifted over him, straddling his lap, tightening her arms around him as their kiss slowed and deepened. He sank into the sensation of her mouth, of her hands as they smoothed around his back, over his shoulders, across his chest. He shivered as she sucked his tongue gently and the tenor of their connection shifted to the desire that had always come so deep and easy over the years.
“I want you,” she murmured against his mouth. “Please.”
He nodded because he could do nothing else. God knew he’d always been weak to her. Together they unbuttoned each other, shifting only to lift clothing away, only to remove boots and stockings. They came back together in the same position at last, naked emotionally and physically.
She drew back, holding his gaze as they aligned their bodies. As she eased down over him and took him in little by little, stroke by stroke, until he was hers. Truly hers.
“Elliot,” she whispered, and took his mouth. “I love you,” she said against his tongue.
He moved beneath her, she rolled over him and then it was all physical sensation. A slow building toward pleasure and release and vows they said with their bodies every time they made love. Truly made love.
He gripped her hips, guiding her as she ground against him, her breath coming short as her pleasure mounted. When her legs began to shake and grip harder around his thighs, he pulled from her mouth and watched her. He loved watching her come, loved every expression of her pleasure. He drank them in now as she dropped her head back and jerked harder against him. Riding him faster, her body milking him, sending sensation up his cock and through his body.
She was groaning his name over and over now, her fingers digging into his back as she brought him to the brink. And then he fell, lifting into her flexing sheath, pumping her full of himself as he brought her mouth back to his and kissed her again.
He lay back on the settee and she adjusted herself so she was lying on top on him, her legs tangled in his, her hand tracing his jawline as she smiled up at him.
He wrinkled his brow. “You…you know I love you, too, don’t you?” he asked. “I realized I didn’t say it.”
She surprised him by laughing, by pushing up to kiss the very tip of his nose. “Oh yes, I know. I was afraid to believe it, honestly. But…but Peter helped me see it before he left.”
“Peter,” he repeated, all but tasting the other man on his lips when he said his name.
“Oh, Peter,” Merritt said. “What in the world will we do about Peter?”
Elliot stared up at the ceiling and played out a dozen times with the other man. And not just moments they’d shared during this stolen week together, but before. Moments where he’d met Peter’s stare in a club and felt the same thrill in his chest that he felt when he met Merritt’s across a ballroom.
Moments when Peter’s enthusiasm about a play or a piece of art had coaxed a smile from Elliot’s lips.
The jealousy and heartbreak that had always gone along with his interactions with Peter, that tickled the back of his mind when he saw Merritt and Peter together, were…gone. He realized that now. Realized they had always existed not because Merritt loved the other man. It was always because he had believed she didn’t lovehim.
And now that he knew she did, there was more than enough room for her feelings for Peter. And for his own. The shadow over everything between the three of them was gone. Now that it was, he knew exactly what he wanted to do. What he had to do.
He sat up, forcing Merritt to do the same. She tilted her head, question in her eyes. “What is that expression?”
“Certainty,” he declared, and leaned forward to kiss her. “Perhaps for the first time in my entire life. What we are going to do about Peter is go to London and get him.”
“Get him?” Her eyes went wide. Wide and joyful and he knew that this was exactly what she desired, as well.
He nodded. “He is ours, isn’t he? Ours.”
She lifted a hand to her lips. “Yes,” she said on a broken gasp. “Yes, he is ours. Is that truly how you feel?”
