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Not the intimacy—he could well believe she wanted that, but everything else. Tonight at supper, every gesture of solicitude, every attempt to include him, had felt forced. It set his teeth on edge like nothing he had ever known. And trapped beside Lionel, unable to voice the concerns gnawing at him, Michael found himself helpless in a way he’d never learned to tolerate.

“Would you please turn around?” Michael reached for her, his fingers closing around her wrist before instinct gave way to concern. He released her at once when he felt the goosebumps raised along her skin.

“Wyn?” His own skin broke out in gooseflesh. “What’s wrong?”

When she said nothing, he drew closer. Hesitated for a moment before dropping his forehead to her shoulder. “Tell me and I’ll fix it.”

They were woefully ineloquent words, pressed into the crook of her shoulder like a bewildered child, but he meant them, damn it. He was fully prepared to do whatever was needed—anything to make things right for her, anything to dispel this paltry shadow of a creature and bring back his vibrant, extraordinary wife.

“I… don’t want you to leave,” Gwen said, barely above a whisper.

For a single remarkable instant, every thought in his mind, every muscle in his body, even the blood in his veins seemed to halt. He stood there stunned, like a man who’d stepped outside to find the stars had rearranged themselves across the sky.

A small, rough sound tore from Michael’s throat as he gathered her tightly against his chest. “Lovely, perfect little fool, the devil himself couldn’t tear me away.”

In other circumstances, understanding how she’d come to such an erroneous conclusion would have been his first concern. Knowledge, after all, was the foundation for every solution. Only this was Gwen, and for once dispelling the belief mattered more than tracing its origins. Even in his thoroughly overwhelmed state, he could recognise the small miracle of that change in himself.

He kissed her temple, her cheek, any bit of skin his lips could find. “How could you even think it?” He did not wait for an answer. The anguish of knowing she carried that fear, followed closely by the staggering relief that she wanted him to stay, spilled over into increasingly clumsy kisses along her jaw.

“I need you. Need you…” he groaned. “So damned much, and I don’t need anything—only for you to let me stay. To want me by your side. Tell me you want me, Gwen. Say it.”

She squirmed. “I already did, exasperating man.” But a giggle wove its way into her words, and the sound of it made his heart skip lightly in his chest.

“No. You said you didn’t want me to go,” he corrected. “That’s not the same.”

He closed his teeth lightly on her earlobe, and her breath hitched, the plea on her lips dissolving into an unsteady sigh. “Stay.”

That sound…lord, what it did to his body, winding around his heart and hardening his cock in equal measure. His lips parted against her throat, more breath than kiss, and he felt her body tremble against his.

“I want you to stay,” she said, slower and more emphatically.

This time every word landed unerringly at the centre of his heart, and he felt it bleed. Michael squeezed his eyes shut and tightened his grip, holding her as though she might still slip through his fingers. He would never deserve her—and God, he had no words for how grateful he was that she wanted him anyway.

Still, how could he go on living with this feeling? Cleaved in two between the absolute certainty that he could never be enough and the horrifying truth that he needed her? How could five little words undo him so completely… make him feel both a king among men because she’d chosen him, and utterly vulnerable because she alone had the power to take it all away?

“Gwen.”

Some measure of what he felt—his helplessness and panic, that quiet, transfixed wonder—must have seeped through the cracks of his voice, because she pried his fingers from her waist and brought his palm to her lips in a kiss.

It was so sweet and encouraging, so gentle and understanding and goddamned tender that he felt his eyes burn hot behind his lids, and with his next breath, he surrendered the last of his resistance. Because, however deserving or undeserving he might be, she wanted him. And the truth was, becoming ordinary Michael Anson had been the easiest thing in the world. An Englishman turned Welshman who built ships and adored his wife. The closer he looked over the previous weeks, the more he realised this version of himself had never been a role he was playing. He’d laid aside the convictions he’d once mistaken for his identity, as naturally as he’d traded his cravat and waistcoat for rolled sleeves and salt-stained linen. The man beneath had been there all along, waiting to breathe.

Michael spun her in his arms, pressed her hand flat against his pounding heart, and kissed her until his lungs burned for breath. Until his thoughts grew faint and hazy, and the too-complicated thoughts lost their urgency. Until there was only the warmth of her body and the overwhelming need to be close to her.

Michael swept her into his arms, his mouth never leaving hers as he carried her to the bed and pressed her into the mattress. When a shiver rolled through her, he shifted his weight, gentling his kiss.

“I’m sorry, I—” he began, but she arched into him, twining her arms about his neck and drawing his lips back down to hers. He groaned into her mouth.

“Gwen. My Gwen.” He savored the words, marveling at how effortlessly they slipped from his tongue, as though they’d always belonged there. When she sifted her fingers through his hair, he answered with a long, low hum of contentment.

Despite the rush of feeling unfolding inside him, their kisses didn’t escalate beyond lazy Sunday-afternoon intimacy—tender, unhurried. She steadied him, anchored him, and he was grateful for it. He didn’t want to rush. He wanted to cling to every second like it was the last sunny day of September.

God, he loved this. Loved touching her. Kissing her. It would have been easy to let the moment carry him exactly where he very much wanted it to go. To accept that she wanted him and leave the rest until they were spent and sated. But while he’d allowed himself to be briefly and wonderfully sidetracked, there were still questions that needed answering. Any more of this and he’d forget the fear he’d heard in her voice when she’d asked him to stay, forget that she’d somehow believed handing over control of Llanelli was the price of keeping him. And that would not do.

CHAPTER 16

Michael

“Gwen,” Michael murmured as she pressed featherlight kisses along the curve of his neck. He tilted his head to grant her better access, silently acknowledging he was doing very little to discourage her.