Page 34 of The Inconvenient Compromise
We can indulge in the privacy of our chamber… no stiff, formal clothing for either of us. In fact, we could both dine entirely nude. You could sit on my lap, and we could feed one another.”
“If I sit naked on your lap, neither of us will be having dinner,” Fiona said, turning over to face him. Her dress, loosened by him, now twisted about her until she had no choice but to let him draw it down her arms. It pooled at her waist, and then he rose up, tugging it from beneath her and tossing it aside. “It’s silk. Moira will never get the creases out. Though I suppose tossing it to the floor is no worse than falling asleep in it.”
“I’ll buy you a new one. I’ll buy you a dozen new ones,” he growled against her neck.
When Fiona felt his lips on her skin and then the slight sting of his teeth scraping over that same sensitive spot, she shivered. She was hungry for more than just dinner. She was hungry for him. Craving his touch.
“I don’t care about dinner… or dresses,” she said. “Just don’t stop doing what you are doing. It feels divine.”
Within minutes, the rest of her clothing had been discarded. But she wasn’t the only one who had been divested of her garments. Somehow, he’d managed to render them both completely naked. She could feel the firmness of his body—the heat of silken skin and the crisp hair that adorned his chest and limbs.
She couldn’t think. Couldn’t speak. He could only feel as his mouth left her neck, burning a path down her body. No part of her was ignored. The swells of her breasts, the taut peaks, her ribs, and then he moved lower still. When he pressed a kiss to the softness of her belly, she shivered.
“I made a promise to you the night of the Westerhaven ball,” he said. “And I did not get to keep it. Do you remember that promise, Fiona?”
She did. He had said that he would kiss every inch of her. The notion was as shocking in that moment as it had been when he first said it. She tried to answer him, but her mouth was beyond dry, her throat too tight to speak. So she could only nod.
“It’s time I kept that promise,” he said, pressing another kiss to her belly, this time a bit lower.
When he parted her thighs and pressed his mouth against her so intimately, Fiona couldn’t hold back a gasp. His mouth moved her, his tongue invading her. It was gentle and yet so incredibly intense that she could only shudder and cry out as she twisted her hands in the sheets. She needed something to anchor her, something to keep her from simply floating away on the sensual current he’d created.
There was no warning. Her release was so sudden, her body quivering and quaking beneath him as wave after wave crashed through her. Still, he did not stop. He continued those gentle strokes until she was pleading with him to stop. It was too much. Too strong. Too intense.
“No more, Lucian,” she whispered brokenly. “No more. I can’t.”
“Only a reprieve,” he said, kissing the flare of her hip, then moving upward once more.
When he settled between her parted thighs, though she had begged him to stop, she still welcomed him. And when he was moving inside her, filling her completely, those aftershocks of pleasure exploded once more into a flurry of sensation. Every surge of his hard length inside her brought her closer to that precipice once more.
Tumbling over that edge, calling his name, she felt him thrust once more. Then he was swept away by his own release. And in the aftermath, they remained locked together, his arms about her, holding her close as if she were something precious to him.
Perhaps she was, Fiona thought. Perhaps a little bit of hope would not be misplaced.
* * *
It could have been minutes,or it could have been hours. Luian truly wasn’t sure. But when he could finally manage to move, he rolled off her and stared up at the bed’s canopy. The more he made love to Fiona, the more he wanted her. Of course, since he’d accepted the fact that he had fallen hopelessly in love with his wife. Nothing about the two of them had been planned. Not their first meeting when she had climbed naked into his bed, nor everything that had passed since then. Plots, schemes, murders, suicides. Through it all, every moment with her was a treasure.
And so he said it. Without preamble and without exposition, he murmured softly, “I love you.”
He felt her tense beside him. Every muscle in her body seemed to draw taut and rigid. “What did you say?”
He turned his head to look at her then, seeing her wide eyes and stricken face. “I love you. You do not have to love me in return. Not yet. Perhaps one day you will.”
She rose up on her elbow, looking down at him, their gazes locked. Her expression was so serious, so severe. “You love me… or are you in love with me?”
“Is there a difference?”
“Yes. I love my sister. I loved the spaniel I had as a child. It is not at all the same thing as beingin lovewith someone.”
“Let’s see… I think of you constantly. Even when we are not together, I wonder what you are doing, what you are thinking, and if you are happy. If something amuses me, I tuck it away in my memory so that I might share it with you as soon as we are together again. And I want you. Every minute of every day, I want you. I can’t imagine my life without you in it. So, yes, Fiona… I think that qualifies as being in love. I’m not the sort for poetry. I’ve never written a sonnet in my life.”
“I do not need poetry or sonnets,” she whispered, tears in her eyes. “What you just said was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. And I love you. No, I am in love with you. I have been fighting that from the moment we first met, but I could never quite harden my heart against you. I fell against my better judgment, and it is wondrous.”
He slid his fingers into her hair, tugging her down to kiss her once more. It was all the sweeter. There was no fear, no hesitation in them. Only love.
EPILOGUE
One Year Later…
