He glanced at her sideways.
“I expected to feel like a guest in my own life,” she admitted. “As though everything happening to me was happening to someone else and I was simply watching from a very polite distance.” She pulled a slim volume from the shelf and turned it in her hands without reading it. “It isn’t quite like that."
“What is it like then?”
She looked up at him. He was watching her now, with the same focused attention he gave to ledgers and maps.
“Like standing in a room where I don't yet know where everything is,” she said. “But I’m beginning to learn the shape of it.”
Something shifted in his expression. He reached past her and took the book gently from her hands, examined it, and tucked it under his arm.
“We’ll get this one,” he said, as if the previous conversation had not happened at all.
But when they stepped back out into the pale morning light, his hand found the small of her back to guide her around a puddle, and she felt as if she were floating on air.
Later that evening, Eliza stood at the window of her private chambers, watching the sun set over the sea, when she heard the connecting door open. She turned to find Morgan standing in the doorway, still in his shirt and trousers from dinner, his eyes dark with desire.
“May I come in?” he asked.
Her heart began to race. “Yes.”
He crossed to her slowly, giving her time to change her mind, to ask him to leave. But she didn’t. Instead, she met him halfway, rising on her toes to kiss him first.
“I want you,” she said against his lips. “I’m ready now. I want this.”
“What about supper?”
“Food can wait.”
“Are you sure?” His hands cupped her face, his thumbs stroking her cheekbones. “We can wait. There’s no rush.”
“I’m so sure. I have never been more so, Morgan.” She looked into his eyes, letting him see the truth of it. “I want to be yours completely. In every way.”
Morgan’s expression softened into something tender and fierce all at once. “Then come to bed, darling. Let me show you how much I want you too.”
He led her to the bed, undressing her slowly, reverently, as though unwrapping something precious. When she was bare before him, he shed his own clothes, and Eliza’s breath caught at the sight of him—all lean muscle and masculine beauty.
“You’re beautiful,” she breathed.
“So are you.” He climbed onto the bed beside her, gathering her close. “More beautiful than anything I could have imagined.”
He kissed her deeply, his hands roaming over her body in ways that were becoming familiar now. He knew what she liked, that was evident. He could intuit what made her gasp and arch into his touch. He’d spent the past week learning every inch of her, and now he used that knowledge to build her pleasure slowly, carefully. And for that, she was eternally grateful. When his fingers found her center, she was already wet, already wanting.
“That’s my girl,” he murmured approvingly. “So ready for me.”
He worked her with his fingers and mouth until she was writhing beneath him, desperate for more. Only then did he settle between her thighs, his weight a delicious pressure.
“This might hurt at first,” he warned, his voice strained with the effort of holding back. “Tell me if you need me to stop.”
“I will. I trust you.”
“We’ll go slow.”
“Not too slow…”
He kissed her deeply as he began to push inside, slowly, giving her body time to adjust. There was a sharp pinch of pain that made her gasp, but Morgan stilled immediately.
“Breathe, darling. Just breathe through it. I promise, I will make you feel good.”
