Sebastian felt his world shake. Quake. Fundamental instincts and the impulses they drove clashed inside him.
As always, his first impulse was to bury what his inner self regarded as a weakness, but she’d said the one word that bound him and irresistibly compelled him to the opposing tack.
Whatever she needed, truly needed…he would move heaven and earth to give her.
He looked into her gray eyes—felt himself balk on the cusp of the precipice and forced himself over. Knowingly, intentionally, he lowered the barrier he invariably kept between his feelings and his tongue and spoke as he very rarely did—without restraint. “You…are the world to me. I always knew there was something different about you. I told myself it was because you were a cousin-but-not—a slightly different species. But inside, I always knew there was something else there, something waiting to win free.”
He dragged in a breath and surged with her, filling her—neither he nor she had let that rhythm lapse. Where they were—the point on the sensual road they’d reached—it was now too critical, a physical compulsion neither could or would deny.
He knew he hadn’t yet said the words she needed to hear. He knew what those words were, knew they were an elemental truth. Yet getting them past his lips was still an effort. Briefly, he closed his eyes—drew breath, drew strength—then he raised his lids and locked his gaze with hers. “I love you. And I can’t change that—I don’t want to change that, even though I definitely do not appreciate some of the consequences.” He drew in a deeper breath, felt his chest expand as if against some inner vise. “So there’s your answer. I want you. I need you. But most important of all, I love you—so please be my wife, my marchioness, and stand by my side through all the years to come.”
He ended one teeny tiny step away from glaring at her.
She held his gaze for an instant, then she smiled.
Just smiled. And it was as if every last screen in her gray eyes had whisked away, and he was looking unimpeded into her soul—into the glorious joy that reigned there.
In that instant, he decided to make the effort he just had more often; it would be worth every ounce of the struggle just to bask in that joy.
Then he remembered—and thrust deeper into her body, renewed lust buoyed on a surge of hope. “Yes,” he prompted, his eyes almost crossing as she tightened in glorious welcome about him. “You’re supposed to say yes.”
“Yes.” She tipped her head back as he surged inside her, and her fingers dug like claws into his shoulders. “Oh, God—yes!”
He huffed. It wasn’t at all clear to what she was agreeing; had he left it too late?
But as if realizing her shortcomings, she hauled in a huge breath, straightened her head, and from beneath passion-weighted lids, her silver-gray eyes blazed into his. “Yes,” she said, and there was no doubt of her certainty, of her commitment. “I’ll marry you, Sebastian Cynster. And I fully intend to cleave to you for the rest of our lives.”
For a split second, he exulted, then he pounced and seized.
She seized him back, and they plunged headlong into the raging inferno of ravenous, needy, rapacious passion they’d stoked, stoked, and yet held back.
The last rein snapped, and their joint passions roared over them.
Seized them, drove them to new and ever more desperate and devastating heights, then shattered and reforged them.
Finally, the tumult faded and left them wrung out and gasping in the battlefield of his bed—both victors, both triumphant.
Both utterly surrendered.
To the force that now bound them more irrevocably than any words.
To the love they’d always shared—the love they’d faced, acknowledged, and finally embraced.
* * *
Later, when dawn was streaking the sky outside the window, they woke in each other’s arms, and after the storm of the night, reassured themselves that they could, indeed, be relatively civilized in their lovemaking.
Relatively being the operative word.
A new assurance had crept in on both their parts and now colored their caresses and the deeper intimacy of their joining.
A development neither regretted.
Later still, Antonia lay on her back, her head on Sebastian’s chest as he lay beside her with his arms locked around her. They were comfortable, warm.
At peace.
After a moment, she raised a finger and prodded the heavy muscle in the arm that lay across her waist. “One thing we should discuss.”
“The wedding?”
“No. Our biggest hurdle.”
A wary silence held sway for a heartbeat, then he asked, “And what’s that?”
She realized she needed to choose her words with care. “We’ve established that you love me and that I love you. I didn’t say it, but I didn’t have to—you already knew.” He shifted fractionally, but didn’t disagree. Good. “The point we need to discuss is what, for both of us, springs naturally from that love. From loving as we do.”