Caroline’s eyes fluttered open.Her hands came up to grip his waist, holding on tight as though they were caught in a maelstrom and only by clinging together could they survive the storm.
“You are,” she said, low and fervent.“You are that man.The man I love.God, Fitz, I love you so much I think I shall go mad if you don’t kiss me right this very—mmf!”
Fitz licked the words straight off her tongue, taking them into himself and swallowing them down like a life-giving elixir.His brain was on fire, his heart pounding hard enough to crack his ribs.He tore his mouth from her, smearing kisses across her cheeks, her temples, her forehead.
“Tell me again,” he demanded, starving for it, and she went up on her tiptoes to drag his head down and whisper into his ear, “I love you.I love you, you ridiculous man.I love you.Of course I’ll marry you and have adventures with you forever.What would I do without my co-conspirator, my beloved partner in crime?”
Beloved.Fitz wasn’t sure his heart could take this.Love was not for the weak, he could see that at once.
“I can’t promise to keep us out of trouble,” he warned, a joy almost too bright to be borne fizzing through his veins.“Because I’ve never been very skilled at that.But I can promise that whatever trouble we find, we’ll be in it together.”
“Together.”She smiled up at him, flushed and blissful and eager and so beautiful she made his head spin, and Fitz entirely forgot that he’d planned to be an utter gentleman and keep his hands off her until after the wedding.
He dipped his head to taste that smile, ravenous for her sweetness, for the hot, insistent clutch of her hands and the soft press of her body to his.
“I love you,” she murmured again into his mouth, as generous with her heart as she was with everything else, and Fitz knew he would never tire of hearing it.Those words would never be commonplace to him.They would always mean more to him than he could properly express.
Recent ravings aside, Fitz knew himself.He was no poet.Everything he’d said to Caroline that night, the truest words he could dredge up from the murky depths of his soul, and they were nothing but shades of the whole truth of what he felt.
He might never be able to tell Caroline what she meant to him, in so many words.But perhaps he could show her.
Fitz pressed his face into her hair and grinned.He would certainly enjoy trying.
* * *
Ever since she was a tiny child, Caroline had dreamed of flying.Inevitable, perhaps, when one studied birds, monitoring every swoop of wing and flick of tailfeather.She’d longed for the weightlessness of flight, the ecstatic freedom of soaring through the sky, untethered to the earth and all its heavy cares.
Standing here amongst the tropical plants, being kissed breathless by a man who’d given her his whole heart and asked for nothing in return except to stay at her side—Caroline thought she finally knew what it felt like to fly.
She wrapped her arms round his neck to keep her feet on the ground.
He loved her.He truly loved her.Caroline, who had felt alone for most of her life, finally knew what it was to choose and be chosen by someone.Fitz might not have asked for anything—but she wanted to give him everything.
When he bent to scoop her into his arms and carry her back to the chaise where she’d cried herself to sleep an hour ago, Caroline turned her face to the side of his throat and gloried in the strong pulse of his heartbeat she could feel there.
That heart was hers, she gloated privately, opening her mouth against the throb of the pulse and licking delicately at the salt-sweet skin.Fitz groaned, deep in his chest, and a thrill shot through her.
Caroline lay back along the chaise, her gaze devouring the length of the muscular body poised over her.All of him was hers.Hers to touch, and hers to care for.
An awesome sense of responsibility trembled through her like an earthquake, shifting the foundations of herself to make room for a new version of Caroline.A Caroline who had more than herself and her work to consider.
Now, she had Fitz.And she would do anything to make him happy, this man who smiled down at her as though he couldn’t believe his luck.
She would give him her body, yes, and revel in the gift—but more than that, she would never let him think for even one instant that she did not treasure him.
Too many people in Fitz’s life had failed to cherish him, from his careless mother and embittered father to his selfish, self-centered friends.Well, no more.Caroline would make it part of her life’s work to ensure that Fitz knew, at every moment of every day, that he was loved.
Never one to hesitate at putting a new plan into action, Caroline parted her legs so that he sank into the cradle of her hips with a shocked gasp.
“I love you,” she told him, already addicted to the fierce, tender flash of emotion in his eyes when she said it.“I’m yours.Make me yours, Fitz.”
They shed their clothes in a frenzy, exposing one another first to the warm, damp air of the orangery and then to the slick slide of warm, damp skin as they came together again in a rush, falling back onto the chaise in a tangle of limbs.The velvet cushions under her back contrasted delightfully with the prickly scrape of Fitz’s hairy chest gently abrading the sensitive tips of her breasts.Instantly overwhelmed, Caroline arched up to grind her breasts more firmly against him.
Fitz’s hands drew lines of fire up her sides and down again to her hips, hitching her closer.She felt the evidence of his desire prodding at the side of her thigh, hot and silky-hard, and she craned her neck to catch a glimpse.“I want to see,” she begged, making him moan and shut his eyes tight before kneeling up over her, one big hand wrapping around the base of his cockstand as though to hold back his passion.
Sighing luxuriously, Caroline looked her fill, allowing her mind to catalogue and annotate every detail as though she would need to write a treatise on it later.
Practical Observations on the Quality of a Gentleman’s Desire, she might call it.
