He did not obey. “No. I want to watch.”
She opened her eyes, finding his gaze. “You can watch while you’re inside me, dammit.”
The bastard laughed, rutting against her, rude and perfect, as though she weren’t dying of need to have him where she wished him. Immediately. “Now . . .” She panted. “Mal, don’t you wish to have me around you?”
He closed his eyes and stilled above her. “Christ, yes.”
She spread her thighs wider and said, “I wish it, too. I will it.”
And the glorious, wonderful man did it, pressing into her slowly, perfectly, a thick slide of pleasure that had them both sighing before he stilled. “Sera?”
The concern in the word was her undoing. She turned her lips to meet his, sliding her tongue deep, scraping her nails down his back, lifting her hips to him, forcing him deeper. He moaned at the movement, and took up the rhythm even as he took over the kiss, claiming her in every way possible, rocking deeper and deeper until she was filled with nothing but pleasure and him.
She tore her lips from his. “All the time we were apart—”
He nodded. “I know.”
He didn’t, though. “Everything I ever imagined this could be . . .”
“I know.” He kissed her again, reaching between them, finding the spot just above the place where they were joined.
She came off the bed like a bow, and he caught her to him, pulling them both up to a sitting position, giving himself more access to her body. He leaned down, taking the tip of one breast in his mouth, sucking long and slow as his fingers worked magic, all in concert with the rhythm that was proving to be her slow, perfect destruction.
And then she was thrusting, moving against him, reaching down to clasp his wrist and show him all the ways he could touch her, all the paths to her pleasure. “Faster,” she whispered. “Harder.” Though she did not know if she was speaking to him or to herself, because she, too, was moving faster. She, too, was coming over him harder and more forceful, as though she could imprint this moment in her memories.
Forever.
And then she looked into his eyes, desperate for release, and recognized the edge in him, saw the way they catapulted toward it. “Mal,” she whispered. “I love you.”
The words wrecked them both, tipping them over that magnificent edge, deep and fast and powerful. She reached for him, her fingers sliding into his hair. “Look at me,” she whispered. “Show me.”
He did, and she watched as he found his pleasure before taking her own, throwing herself into it, not caring if she ever returned, because there was nothing in the world she would ever want as much as this magnificent, unbearable, terrifying release.
And for the first time since she’d left him, Sera found peace.
They collapsed against each other, breaths coming in great heaving gasps that made it impossible to know where she ended and he began, and perhaps it did not matter. It did not matter. Sera could not stop herself from basking in it, this single moment, when they were not simply the aches of the past and the imperfect promise of the present, but all the magnificent moments between.
Long minutes passed as their breathing returned to normal and Sera returned to the room and the day and the life they’d built. And the promise she’d made to herself—that after this, she would leave.
Because nothing had changed.
She remained too overwhelmed by him, by the feel of him, by the unspoken promises of him. Even now, as they clung to each other like partners, like lovers, as though the future was theirs for the taking, she struggled to find herself in it.
I love you.
He unwrapped himself from her, pulling her down to the bed with him, kissing her, long and lush before tucking her into the crook of his arm and whispering into her hair, “I want you mine. I want you forever. And, dammit, I have you. I’ve had you all along. I should never have hesitated. I should have given you everything. The title, the marriage, all of it. I wanted to. I want to, still. I want to go back and begin again.”
She’d never imagined she could love and hate something as much as she loved and hated those words. At once, she wanted everything he offered, without hesitation. She wanted the promise of something new and fresh and untarnished by the past. And still, she could not trust it. Nothing beautiful had ever stayed such for her.
There was no beginning anew. They could not erase the past, and they could not change the future. They could not have the promise that had teased them. But she could close the door on it. And give them both a chance at something new.
She could have the Sparrow, and the freedom that came with it. And he could have a family—one that loved him as much as he deserved. Tears pricked behind her eyes, and she had no choice but to tuck her face into his chest and hide from him.
As ever, she hid from him.
Because he had always been able to see her.
He sighed, long in the fast-dimming light of the room, and it occurred to Sera that they had skipped dinner. That the mothers and daughters who had been a part of his elaborate ruse would once again be slighted.
She pressed her ear to his chest, listening as his breathing calmed. Evened. Until he slept.
And still, she lay there, rocked by her love for him. By the way it claimed her, just as it had years earlier. By the memory of what had happened then. By fear of what might happen if she allowed herself to love him.
By the temptation of it.
It was only then that she replied to him, whispering to his warm, welcome skin, to his arm, wrapped tightly about her, even in slumber. To this bed that should have been theirs in this house that should have been their home with a family that would never be. “Don’t love me, Mal. There is no future for us.”
The keen understanding of that truth had driven her across an ocean, and to the floor of Parliament. She had lost everything she had ever loved before—her child, her family, her life. Him.
First, by chasing him, and then by running from him. And perhaps there was cowardice in her waiting until he slept to voice the truth. No perhaps. There was cowardice. Angry and unbearable. But who was she if not the sum total of her flaws?
At least if she ran, they both had a chance at being free.
Chapter 23
Déjà vu? Duchess Disappears (Part Deux)
Mal woke to a sharp rap on the door of his bedchamber.
He sat up, unsettled by the darkness—unaware of the time or the date or of anything but the deep, drugging sleep that had consumed him. It had been ages since he’d slept so soundly. Three years. Longer.
He might never have slept so well, as he had never slept with her.