“It’s a bit of a tale, but the short version is that I couldn’t bear to be without her. Without some part of you.”
She laughed, and he realized he would carry that pig for the rest of his life if it would keep her laughing. “I love your laugh. I want to hear it every day. I want to be through all this darkness and devastation. I want happiness now. I want our due. I want what we’ve deserved from the beginning.” He paused and stared deep into her eyes, willing her to understand how much he loved her. “I want you.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
He smiled. “Yes?”
“Yes! Yes to all of it. To happiness and life and love.” She hesitated, and he saw the dark thought spread through her. Saw it in her eyes when she looked up at him. “I’ve done so much to ruin you. To hurt you.”
“Enough.” He kissed her quiet, lifting his lips from hers only when she was loose in his arms. “Don’t hurt me again.”
The tears welled over. “Never.”
He wiped them away with his thumb. “Don’t leave me ever again.”
“Never.” She sighed. “I wish we could start anew.”
He shook his head. “I don’t. Without the past, there would be no present. No future. I don’t regret a moment of it. It all brought us here. To this place. To this moment. To this love.”
They kissed again, and he wished they were anywhere but here, in front of all of London.
She broke the kiss and smiled at him, bold and beautiful. “I won.”
He matched her smile. “You did. The first time anyone but me has won in this ring.” He waved a hand in the direction of the oddsmaker. “Mark it in the book. The win goes to Miss Mara Lowe.”
The crowd roared their disappointment, proclaiming foul play and bad bets. He didn’t care. Chase would manage them, and the most bitter among them would no doubt be gaming before the hour was out.
“What do I win?” she whispered in his ear.
He grinned. “What would you like?”
“You.” So simple. So perfect.
“I am yours,” he said, kissing her. “As you are mine.”
She laughed. “Always.”
And it was the truth.
Epilogue
On the eve of her wedding, Miss Mara Lowe stood at the window high on the third story of the family wing of Whitefawn Abbey, staring down into the dark gardens below. She pressed her hand to the cold glass, watching as the window fogged beneath her touch, then removing her hand to reveal the blackness beyond, dotted with reflections of the candles lit around the room behind her.
With a small smile, she traced a finger between the little starlike spots, connecting the dancing flames, distracted enough by the task not to hear her future husband’s approach until he came into view, framed by her marks on the glass.
And then his arms were around her, his hands spreading wide across her body, pulling her back against him as he set his lips to the place where shoulder met neck in a long, lingering caress. “You smell like lemons.”
She smiled and sighed, leaning into him, her own arms coming to capture him where he held her, fingers threading through his.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked when he finally raised his head.
She turned in his arms and told the truth, a lovely, freeing thing. “Another time here at Whitefawn. Another time here, in this room.”
He did not pretend not to have noticed where they stood. Instead, he looked to the bed where she’d left him twelve years earlier and said, “Do you think anyone’s slept in it since that morning?”
She laughed at the unexpected reply. “I don’t, honestly.”
He nodded, all seriousness. “It’s a pity.”
“It’s to be expected, don’t you think? After all, I was to have died there.”
He pulled her close again, lifting her arms around his neck. “But you didn’t,” he said softly, and the sheer pleasure in the words sent a thread of excitement through her.
She met his gaze. “I did not.”
“Neither did you marry that morning.”
She shook her head. “I did not.”
He brought her tight against him, their bodies aligned to each other without an inch of space, heat spreading through her as though they were discussing something altogether different than that day, twelve years earlier. “Lucky me,” he said before stealing her lips in a long, lush kiss, his tongue stroking deep, a promise of pleasure to come.
Again and again.
From this day, forward.
She was so enthralled by the caress that she did not notice that he had walked her across the room until the backs of her knees were against the bed. She gasped in surprise as he toppled her to the bedsheets with virtually no effort, following her down. “You see what a shame it is?” He teased, dropping a line of soft, stunning kisses along her jaw. “This is a very comfortable bed.”
Her hands moved of their own volition, coming to settle in his hair. Lifting his mouth from her. “Temple,” she said, softly.
He looked up, dark eyes entirely focused on her.
There were a dozen things to say. A hundred.