“I was thinking I ought to take you on a real one.” A gentle suction pulled at the skin behind her ear as his words pulled at the tender place inside her. “You don’t remember our wedding. Or our courtship...brief as it was. I want to give you a honeymoon to remember.”
* * *
A memory to keep.
Hot emotion rose fast from the well she’d thought dry, pushing itself past her lips in a gasp and her eyes in a flutter of salty drops she blinked away as quickly as they came. Turning in Connor’s arms, she caught his face between her palms and kissed him. Felt her dress pool to the floor as his hands molded to her bottom, pulling her close and lifting her until they aligned in all the right places.
Her legs wound at his waist as Connor carried her to the bedroom, his mouth making devilish work of the skin across her chest, along her neck and behind her ears. His tongue making promises his body would soon deliver.
How could it be like this with him? How had she ever lived without him? She pushed the questions aside, knowing she wouldn’t ever have to again.
Connor wasn’t going to leave her. He wasn’t going to change his mind.
He’d made a commitment to her different from any of the promises she’d heard in the past. He’d shown her what kind of man he was. Made sure she understood what his word meant. She knew, with him in her life, she finally had someone to count on.
She could let go of all the defenses and anxieties with him.
She could trust him. With everything she had. For as long as they both should live.
An echo of those words whispered through her mind as her back met the soft resistance of their bed. Connor’s flushed face and suspiciously disheveled hair—almost as if someone had spent a good amount of time working their fingers through it—flashed through her mind. The look in his eyes... It was like nothing she’d seen before. It was relief and awe and humor and victory and desire all there for her to see. All there, focused on her. As he said the words For as long as we both shall live...
Not a fantasy. Not her imagination.
Memory.
Reality.
A night she’d thought lost to her forever.
There in his eyes had been the answer to a riddle she’d struggled to solve. An answer she’d found her way to through a different path, but now... God, the way he’d looked at her. The confidence she’d felt looking back at him... It was the kind of confidence that lasted forever.
It was why she’d been able to make a decision in one night, which had taken her nearly two months to come to after.
“I don’t need a honeymoon,” she whispered, her fingers sifting through the silk of his hair as Connor worked down the line of her body.
“Sure you do.” His tongue flicked at the hollow of her navel, briefly blanking her mind of anything beyond the wet, teasing contact. “Turks and Caicos, Tahiti, Venice, Niagara Falls?” He kissed lower, carefully catching the edge of her lacy panties between his teeth before slipping his fingers beneath and gently sweeping them down her hips and off her legs.
The playful glint in Connor’s eyes was gone as he stood at the foot of the bed, staring down at her where she lay, waiting for him. She was bare of everything except the exquisite necklace at her throat and the matching slender heels at her feet.
Propped up on her elbows, she gave in to the wicked impulse to tease, sliding one knee against the other as she watched him work the buttons of his shirt with a determination she’d never witnessed before.
He’d made it to the fourth button when she straightened her leg and, using the peep front of her heel, caught the leather strap of his belt and tugged. His eyes, a dark blaze, flickered to meet hers just as she sank her teeth into the swell of her bottom lip.
For an instant, everything came to a stop. “You’re a fantasy, Megan.”
And then the rest of the buttons came loose in a quick series of pops as he ripped the shirt open.