“Then why did you?” Rose couldn’t help asking as any previous answer he’d give her had not been satisfactory.
“God help me, I knew my returning would destroy everything you had gained since I’d left, whether I reached Boston before your marriage or after. Yet I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t let you slip away without seeing you again. Letting you know how much I loved you. Have always loved you.”
Rose flinched as if he’d struck her. His announcement of loving her — at long last — felt pointless, almost an insult, and certainly too wretchedly late. The wheels were in motion for their divorce, and like those of a fully stoked steam engine, she didn’t see how they could be stopped or even veer from the track. Nor did she even want to stop the proceedings.
Anger at his timing bubbled to the surface once again.
“You are a callous bastard to say that to me now. Yet I was a selfish child, who thought I was a woman. I should never have married you in the first place. No matter what you say, Finn, I won’t believe you ever loved me as I loved you. If you had, you could not have stayed away.”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and looked her in the eye.
“You’re wrong. My love for you and knowing you loved me, too, was the only thing that saved me from dying after the sinking. It was the only difference between me and the other men on that ship. When I got to Plymouth, I wrote a dozen letters while recuperating.” He glanced away, then back into her blue gaze.
“I destroyed them all. Each time I finished pouring out my love and explaining about the ship’s sinking and how I’d finally reached England, each time, I realized how ridiculous it would be for you to receive a declaration from a half-crazed, delusional dead man. I was still having vivid nightmares and didn’t know if they’d ever stop. Then when I got injured, I was barely able to stand upright. A penniless invalid, prone to wild imaginings. That was the man I’d become. I was, in short, a disaster.” His voice broke on the last word.
“It wasn’t fair to you,” Finn finished in little more than a whisper.
In the silence that followed, his grip relaxed, and he held her more gently. Rose stared into his stormy eyes, wishing impossible wishes as she did.
“I kept thinking of your joyful spirit,” he added, “and your family, so precious to you, and your life here. I didn’t fit in with any of it. Yes, I imagined you grieving though I didn’t comprehend the enormity of it because, honestly, I couldn’t conceive of you loving me that much.”
She gasped.How could he not have known what he meant to her?
“I was sorry to cause you pain, Rose, but I knew you would recover and live the life you were meant to have. With someone like Woodsom, not with me, a gentleman of the four oats, as they say.”
Without wit, money, credit, or manners— a ridiculous saying, Rose thought, and one that certainly didn’t sum up Finn Bennet.
Before she could speak, he placed one of his strong hands behind her head to cradle it and drew her forward.
“Through every minute of being away from you, I always loved you beyond anything.”
Then he kissed her, and the years fell away. They were simply Rose and Finn in a stolen moment, expressing their ardor as they’d always done.
With her eyes closed, with the familiar sensation of his mouth upon hers, in that instant, everything was perfect. She breathed him in and pretended.
When at last Finn drew back and she opened her eyes — and the memories rushed back of all that had passed — she recoiled, feeling as though she would burst into tears.
He frowned, most likely at seeing her devastated expression. Before she had time to do more than take in a deep breath, Finn kissed her again, this time teasing her mouth open with his tongue and then, with her small acquiescence, sliding it between her lips to taste her more fully.
Rose sucked gently on the invader, as a spark ignited low in her body. Instinctively, she lifted her arms and laced her hands at the back of his neck. The bodice of her gown restrained her breasts, grown suddenly sensitive, and the fabric rasped unbearably against her stiffening nipples. A vivid image of Finn’s mouth kissing her sensitive peaks shot through her.
When his teeth grazed her lower lip, biting it gently, the spark erupted into flames deep within her. Feeling as though she would incinerate, wriggling against the heated torture that burned at the apex of her thighs, Rose sucked harder on his tongue and moaned aloud.
His hands finally, blissfully, touched her breasts, stroking their plumpness, holding their aching heaviness through the fabric. It was not enough, only making her desire more frantic for release. She moaned again and whispered his name.
If only he could touch her skin.
She opened her eyes as he pushed her gently back to lean on the ropes behind her. Then he raised her skirts, his fingers trailing along her thigh-clad stockings.
Was he trembling? Or was that only her own shuddering she could feel?
His gaze reflected the desire she felt, as well as a mute question.
In the middle of this danger, with threat lurking literally on the other side of the wall, Rose wanted Finn Bennet more than she ever had before. She nodded.
A small smile played about his mouth.
As if they had all the time in the world — or perhaps because it seemed that time had suddenly stopped to give them a few minutes of paradise — Finn eased her skirts up the rest of the way, letting the cool air fan her briefly. She felt the chill for mere moments, only long enough to watch him undo his trousers and draw out his hardened sex.
Rose swallowed, feeling feverish again, throbbing with anticipation, and knowing exactly what she wanted. If Finn hesitated or asked permission, she might scream.
