“When I saw you in that alley, when I saw Drakeston’s hands on you…” His voice cracked. “I thought I had lost you. I thought my cowardice, my fear, had cost me the one person who matters most.”
Sophia reached for his hand. He gripped it like a lifeline.
“I told myself that needing you made me weak.” He stared at their joined hands. “That wanting you would lead to destruction,the way my father’s passions destroyed my mother, destroyed Leonard, destroyed everything good in our family.” He shook his head. “I convinced myself that pushing you away was protecting us both. That if I did not let myself love you, then I could not lose you.”
“Edward…”
“But I was wrong.” He looked up at her, his eyes bright with unshed tears. “I have loved you for longer than I knew. Since the night you walked into my house and held my nephew as if he were precious. Since you challenged me and defied me and refused to let me hide behind my walls.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I love you, Sophia. I have been too afraid to say it, too afraid to feel it, but I cannot deny it anymore.”
The words threaded through her, bright and aching. She had dreamed of hearing them. Had wished for them in the long nights of silence and distance. And now here they were, offered with trembling hands and a breaking heart.
“Please.” Edward brought her hand to his lips. “Forgive me. Give me the chance to make this right. I will spend the rest of our lives proving that you can trust me, that I will never push you away again, that I am worthy of?—”
“You hurt me.” Sophia’s voice was quiet but steady.
Edward flinched. “I know.”
“When you called our marriage a mistake. When you looked at me with those cold eyes and told me that caring for me was dangerous.” She felt the tears spill over, tracing warm lines down her cheeks. “I had given you everything. My trust. My heart. And you threw it back at me like it was nothing.”
“I know.” His voice was raw with anguish. “And I will regret it for the rest of my life. There is no excuse. No justification. I was afraid, and I let that fear turn me into my father. The one thing I swore I would never become.”
Sophia studied his face. The lines of exhaustion. The evidence of sleepless nights and punishing guilt. The openness that he had never allowed her to see before. The walls were finally, truly down.
“You hurt me.” She cupped his face in her hands. “But you also gave me something I never expected to find.”
He went still beneath her touch.
“You gave me Oliver.” Her voice softened. “A child who needed love and found it, because you let me into his life. You gave me a family, Edward. A genuine family, not the polite distance I grew up with, but something warm and chaotic and wonderful.”
She brushed her thumbs across his cheekbones, wiping away the tears he did not seem to realize he had shed.
“You gave me yourself.” Her voice broke. “The real you. The man who reads poetry in secret and lets Oliver add clouds to his paintings. The man who learned to hug his nephew, learned to open his heart, learned to love even when it terrified him.”
Edward’s breath caught.
“I love you.” The words emerged certain, unshakable. “I have loved you since you stood in that ballroom and defended Lady Fairhart to a man who did not deserve your breath. Since you carried Oliver to bed and looked at him like he was the most important thing in the world. Since you kissed me on that balcony and made me believe that happiness was possible, even for someone like me.”
Edward pulled her into his arms. He held her so tight she could barely breathe, his face buried in her hair, his body shaking with relief and joy and something that felt like healing.
“I do not deserve you.” He murmured against her temple.
“Perhaps not.” She pulled back and smiled through her tears. “But you are stuck with me, nonetheless.”
He laughed, the sound wet and broken and beautiful. Then he kissed her.
The kiss was different from the ones that had come before. Those had been passion and hunger, desperation and desire. This was a promise. A vow. A declaration spoken without words.
Sophia pulled him closer, her fingers tangling in his hair. He lowered her back against the pillows, his weight settling over her, his mouth never leaving hers. The world outside the chamber ceased to exist. There was only this. Only them.
“I love you.” He whispered the words against her throat, her collarbone, the curve of her shoulder. “I love you. I love you.”
She answered with her hands, her lips, her body arching into his.
Edward responded, his hands running down the sides of her body and stopping on her hips. He leaned down and covered her nipple with his lips.
Sophia’s head lolled back as his tongue traced each nipple, slowly, teasing. She pushed her pelvis against his body. When his mouth lifted, she let out a mew of protest, tangling her hands in his hair. But his lips found their next mark, the pear between her legs. As his tongue flicked lightly across it, she cried out his name. The pleasure burned so intense; she couldn’t imagine flying higher.
She sank her fingernails into his shoulders and raised her hips. Edward lifted his mouth, and she whimpered in protest.
