He was true to his word.
He gripped her bottom, angling her hips so he could drive deeper, filling her completely with each stroke. She wrapped her thighs around him and held on, her fingers pressing into the hard muscle of his back.
His mouth found her ear. “You’re mine. Say it.”
“I’m yours.” She pressed her lips to his jaw, his throat, whatever she could reach. “Only yours.”
He groaned against her neck and drove deeper still, as though he meant to make good on every word.
She locked her thighs tighter around him. Whatever awaited them—the past, the danger, the ghosts neither had buried—nothing would part them again.
“God, Daphne.” His breath fractured, his rhythm losing its careful edge. “You undo me completely.”
She felt him shudder, felt the moment his control broke. He withdrew, his release spilling hot against her thigh as heburied his face in her hair, her name on his lips like the last word of a prayer.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
“Tell me you want another lesson,” he panted.
She held him, tracing lines on his back, loving the weight of him. “You’re wrong. I’m a novice, and may need a dozen a week.”
“Only a dozen?”
He rolled onto his back and settled beside her, drawing her against him, her back to his chest, his arm heavy and warm across her waist. Outside, London was nothing but the distant clatter of hooves and a drunken lout singing.
His fingers found hers and stilled.
He’d noticed the ring.
He brought her hand closer, turning it gently in the lamplight. She had slipped it on when she went to speak to Charlotte.
“My mother would have loved you.” His thumb moved over the peridot. “But I won’t ask you to wear her ring. It’s a symbol of my devotion. The one thing I cherished … before you.”
She couldn’t speak for a moment.
Of all the things he had given her, that was the greatest.
“I want to wear it. What’s dear to you is dear to me now.”
He pressed his lips to her hair. “I love you.”
She smiled, nestling closer. “I love you too.”
She had his ring on her finger and his heart in her hands.
Happiness was surely within their grasp.
Yet a sudden chill crept across her skin.
Outside in the dark, a killer was still breathing.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Daphne woke to the solid warmth of Dominic beside her, to the tender ache in her chest, to the knowledge this wasn’t a dream.
He loved her.
Dominic Hawke.
