She shuddered beneath the delicate touch. “How can you say that when this is what happens whenever we make love?” The words hung within the softness of the night, powerful and bright against the darkness. “It is what I want. What you want. What we both want from each other. To try again. To feel again. Admit it.”
His fingers danced low, sliding into the source of her heat and making her moan in longing. “You’re not Lisa…I get that. You’re not like any other woman I’ve known. But I lost the capacity to feel long ago.”
How could he say that? He tried to be that dispassionate man, no question. But he was so much more. She’d seen it. Sensed it. “Are we going to live like strangers for the next half-dozen years? Opening ourselves physically, but nothing more? Is that what you want for yourself? For Mikey?” She trailed her hands across the dips and ridges of his abs, following the crisp curls that guided her downward. He was hard and slick, the epitome of masculine strength and virility. She circled his length, guiding him to her heat. “Or do you want everything, everything I have to give?”
Lucius shook his head. “I can’t give what I don’t have,” he claimed.
And yet… And yet she felt the slip. The reluctant easing. The subtle collapse of barriers shifting and trembling. It wasn’t a surrender. But it was a start. They had time. Endless time to transition from a place of hurt and suspicion to trust and certainty.
She lifted her hips, took him in, crying out at the sheer perfection of fit and rhythm. “Lucius!” His name became both prayer and demand.
He took her mouth in an endless kiss, then pulled back ever so slightly. “Look at me. I want you with me on this ride.”
Their gazes met, clung. And what she saw there gave her hope. A spark. Just a spark of it, but it was enough. She let go, gave herself up to the heat and fire that burst into life whenever they came together. The flame became an inferno, unstoppable in its power. Branding them. Joining them. Binding them, one to the other—the fit, utter perfection.
Possibilities. He’d stopped believing in possibilities so very long ago.
Lucius gathered Angie up in his arms and carried her to their bedroom. Theirs. He shook his head, amused by the speed with which he’d transitioned from “his” to “theirs.” And he could pinpoint precisely when it had all changed. It had stopped being his bedroom the first night she’d shared his bed, just as he’d stopped being alone that very same night.
He’d resisted involvement. Would probably continue to resist…for now. But he could see that this time, because of this woman, his life would never be the same again.
She’d shown him a road he’d never noticed before, was utterly surprised to find it beneath his feet and himself some distance along its path. He hadn’t anticipated that occurring. Would have vehemently denied the possibility of it ever happening. And yet, here he stood with a woman in his arms and a longing in his heart he hadn’t felt in…
Forever.
Possibilities. For some reason his life had become filled with endless possibilities and they were all because of one woman. The woman who wore his ring on her finger. And if he had anything to say about it, it was a ring she’d continue to wear for the rest of her life.
Nine
“I realize this is bad timing, but I have a business trip to New York that I can’t postpone,” Lucius announced one morning over Sunday breakfast.
To his relief, Angie nodded, not revealing any hint of concern that she’d be left in charge of Mikey and the home front. She poured herself a cup of tea and took a seat beside him. “The Tobias project, I assume?”
“It’s reached a crucial point and I need to meet with the investors before moving forward with it.”
She took a sip of tea and sighed in unconscious pleasure. He noticed she always did that with her first sip, made that soft, semimoan that caused him to clench his muscles in helpless want. No doubt it had something to do with the ecstatic expression that slid across her face when she drank. He recognized it as a pale reflection of how she looked when he made love to her, the resemblance just close enough to tempt him to sweep her into his arms and closet them in his bedroom for the next several hours. Maybe he’d get used to his reaction to her, to the relentless desire that filled him whenever he looked at her. Maybe he wouldn’t respond to that sigh each and every morning for the rest of his life. Maybe. Though somehow he doubted it.
It had been two weeks since they’d become engaged. Two incredible weeks during which, with a fast assist from the Pretorius Program, he’d put a new PA in place, freeing Angie to slip seamlessly into her new responsibilities. Granted, the new PA wasn’t Angie, but the motherly woman would do.