Page 191 of Theirs to Tempt: The Marriage Claim

His face is a little leaner.

Not dramatically. Maybe no one else would notice.

I do.

And his eyes⁠—

Oh God.

Lucian’s eyes are haunted.

The cool, controlled man who once overwhelmed me simply by walking into a room is still there. Still breathtaking. Still so composed that anyone who didn’t know him might believe nothing could touch him.

I know better now.

I know how those shoulders feel beneath my hands. How his mouth changes when control finally slips. How his voice sounds against my skin when he says my name like it belongs only to him.

I know Caleb’s laugh in the dark and the rough sound he makes when I pull him closer. I know the heat of his palm at the back of my neck, the hard plane of his chest beneath my cheek, the way he can make me feel cherished and devoured in the same breath.

My body remembers all of it at once.

Instinctively my nipples tighten beneath my blouse. Heat unfurls low in my belly, shocking in its immediacy, and my breath catches so sharply that I have to remind myself how to take another.

They are too big for my office.

That was one of the first things I ever noticed about them, how much space they seemed to occupy, as though rooms had to rearrange themselves around Lucian Hawthorne and Caleb Pierce.

Now it isn’t their size that overwhelms me.

It’s everything I know about what exists beneath it.

Everything they have done to me.

Everything I have done with them.

Everything I still want.

Everything I need.

Neither man moves farther into the room.

For once, they don’t assume they’re welcome.

And somehow that nearly undoes me more than seeing them does.

“You came,” I manage.

Lucian’s gaze never leaves mine.

“You invited us.”

The words move through me, simple and devastating.

I swallow against the sudden thickness in my throat. “Come in.”

Only then do they cross the threshold.

Caleb closes the door behind them, but he doesn’t lock it. The tiny detail shouldn’t matter. A few weeks ago, I might not even have noticed.