“I… Cassian!”
“Let go,” he growled. “Look at me, Juliana. You can let go for me now.”
His voice had a way of pushing her to the edge. Finally, she let go of the last bit she was holding on to, letting her peak crash in pulsing waves. She felt herself clench around his rigid length.
“Juliana,” he said her name in triumph, yet it somehow sounded like a prayer answered. “Mine.”
She was his, and he was hers. He was shaking now, his thrusts no longer controlled. They were more frenzied, as if she undid him even as he undid her. She was still convulsing around him, her whole body a point of pleasure.
“You are such a good girl, Juliana. You take me so beautifully that I cannot…”
She felt him jerk inside her, pulsing hard as it took a moment for him to empty his seed inside her. His eyes were clenched shut as he gave in to the pleasure, and his body went weak. When he collapsed against her, she welcomed him into her embrace and soothed him by tangling her fingers in his hair.
For a moment, they merely listened to their ragged breathing and the rain that seemed to decide it should fall against the window in near torrents. He did not move to pull away, their bodies still half-joined, his arms around her as if she would otherwise disappear into thin air.
They were not asleep, each fully aware of the other. For Juliana, it almost felt as if Cassian had become truly and completely part of her. When he finally stirred, her body woke once more. He supported his weight on his elbows as he gazed upon her.
“There is still so much to do,” he teased, pulling at the collar of her chemise to reveal her breast. “I did not get to savor every inch of you. All I wanted was to claim you as mine.”
“I am yours,” she reassured him, her hand touching his cheek. An overwhelming emotion came over her, and before she knew it, a tear rolled down her own cheek, hot and quick.
“Are you?” he asked, his tone still playful, then clamped his mouth over her breast and sucked.
Juliana was still a little sore, but the movement of his mouth as he suckled sent pleasure between her legs. She was almost ready for him again.
“That feels so good, Cassian,” she admitted as he sucked with his teeth and laved with his tongue.
“You are delicious,” he praised, as he darted a tongue back and forth over her pebbled nipple.
She felt herself stir once more, another release threatening to break. She did not know this was possible, but as his mouth continued its ministrations and his hand rubbed between her legs, spreading their juices, she realized it was.
“Oh. Oh, Cassian…”
Her second release broke over her in long, rolling waves, her back arching off the chaise, his name on her lips dissolving into something wordless and unguarded. He held her through every shudder, his mouth still at her breast, his hand steady and certain, until the last of it faded and she lay trembling and undone beneath him, her fingers clutching his hair, her chest heaving with the effort of simply breathing.
“There you go,” he said softly, pride in his voice. When her eyes opened, she saw that he was watching her earnestly. “You are the only one I have left. The only truth. My wife.”
“No. That cannot be, Cassian. There is more, but I am willing to remain there with you,” she said.
When had she guessed this was possible?
She had not expected this. Any of it.
She lay in the loose circle of his arms, listening to the rain against the glass, and thought about how certain she had been, the night she had walked into that bathhouse, of exactly what he was. A man who had bought her to wound her brother. Someone who saw her as a transaction and nothing more.
She looked at his face now, unguarded in the firelight, and could not reconcile that certainty with the man who had just held her as though she were something worth holding onto.
The fear came quietly, the way it always did. She had spent her entire life being the one who held things together—for Kit, for her grandmama, for a household perpetually on the edge of collapse—and she had done all of it without anyone thinking to ask whether she was all right.
And now here was this man, who had called her his only truth with a rawness she had not known he was capable of, and she had felt it land somewhere so deep and undefended that she was still trembling from it.
Would he be there for me as well?
Chapter 22
“Are you planning to fully enter the room, or do you intend to let the fire go out and allow the frost to enter?”
Her husband’s eyes were fixed on his ledger. His pen stopped mid-stroke on the page, leaving a blot. She imagined he would not be too happy. She also knew he had been fully aware of her presence even before the draft came in.
