mamas’ hands, and much as we love them, it’ll be so much easier if we keep the reins in our hands-”
He shut her up in the only way he could-he kissed her. Kept kissing her until she was floundering as much as he was. She was racing impulsively ahead again. Raising his hands, he cradled her face, aware to his bones of the simple honesty behind the kiss, of the unalloyed sweetness of what they now shared.
Drawing back, he looked at her, with his thumbs brushed wisps of her hair aside, met her bright eyes. Took a moment to wallow in the light that lit them, in the warmth he could feel even through the shadows.
His mind was still reeling. “I don’t understand. I haven’t yet given you what you want, or at least you don’t know I have-I haven’t yet told you I love you, or sworn undying love forever more.”
A wise man would have hidden his surprise, seized her acceptance, and kept his mouth shut, but…he frowned. “I thought, being you, that you’d at least demand a red rose and me on my knees.” He’d been anticipating doing something rather more flamboyant when the time came; strangely, he now felt cheated of his moment.
She blinked at him. “A red rose…on your knees?” She looked faintly stunned, as if he’d told her something new.
He frowned more definitely. “I haven’t yet shouted it from the steeple-that can be rectified-but you
She frowned back. “You haven’t always loved me-you didn’t years ago.”
He stared at her. Felt his muscles harden, tried to keep them relaxed. “I’ve loved you for forever.”
At his flat tones, her frown grew more direful; she pushed up from his chest. “You
Jaw setting, he came up on his elbows. “I’ve loved you-only you-since I was sixteen! What the devil did you imagine that episode in the barn was about? How did you think it came about? Just because you decided?”
“That was lust!” Face-to-face, eye to eye, she dared him to deny it.
“Of course it was lust!” He heard his roar and fought to lower his voice. “Good God-I was twenty and you were sixteen. Of
He glared at her. How
Penny flung herself at him, covered his lips with hers, and let all the emotion that had suddenly welled and was now sweeping her away pour through her, let it flow unrestrained through her into him. Let him see, taste- know.
His hands closed on her sides; the kiss deepened, ignited their fire, fanned it until passion rose full and deep and swirled around and through them.
He gripped and tried halfheartedly, as if he thought he should, to ease her back. She dragged her lips half an inch from his, dragged in enough breath to say, “Shut up-just love me.”
Twitching the sheet from between them, she straddled him. Set her lips to his, met him when he surged and claimed her mouth, sighed through the kiss when his hands closed around her hips and he eased her back and down, then thrust up, in, and filled her. Her nerves slowly unraveled as she took him into her body, sheathed him to the hilt; her senses exulted.
She couldn’t think, and neither could he. Good; he could wonder why she’d agreed to marry him without the assurance she’d always insisted she had to have later. He didn’t need to hear that she couldn’t now imagine a future apart from him, that the thought of not being with him, there to meet his need, was a fate she couldn’t bear even to contemplate.
To be needed that much, that deeply, that exclusively-what woman wouldn’t give her heart for that? But he would work out her feelings for himself soon enough; he didn’t need to have her spell them out for him.
Closing her eyes, she rose above him, and he filled her, savored her, went with her.
The world closed in, and there was just her and him and the dance that held them, empowered them, enthralled them. And the emotion that rose, higher and more powerful than ever before, and at the last engulfed them, fused them and left them, two halves of a sundered coin at last together and whole.
Dawn broke over a world that had altered, at least for them. Charles lay on his back idly playing with strands of her hair, in some dislocated part of his mind aware that that was something he’d done years ago.
He knew she was awake, like him savoring the changes, the subtle shifts in their landscape.
Eventually, he drew a deep breath, and softly said, “I didn’t know what love was all those years ago-I knew what I felt, that you were special in ways no other was, but at twenty, I knew very little of love.” He hesitated, then went on; he’d always imagined the words would be hard to find, yet they came readily enough to his tongue. “What I feel for you now is immeasurably more than what I was even capable of feeling then. Back then, I wasn’t even sure what it was I felt for you, so when it seemed you’d had enough-that you didn’t want me and whatever it was anymore-I let it go. I told myself that if that’s what you wanted, then it was probably for the best.”
Penny heard the distant note in his voice, knew he was remembering what was essentially a past hurt she, unwittingly, had inflicted on him.
“I didn’t know,” she murmured, then sighed. “I suppose I didn’t understand well enough either, certainly wasn’t sure enough, although I told myself I was.” She listened to his heart beating steadily beneath her cheek. “Perhaps, in truth, it was for the best. If we’d attempted to cling to what we had then…”
Lifting her head, she looked into his face, into the dark gaze that, as always, seemed to embrace her. “If we’d done something about it then, got engaged before you left or some such thing, then you wouldn’t have become a spy, wouldn’t now be who you are.” She paused, then added, “You wouldn’t have become the man I love now.”
“And you wouldn’t have been who you are now, either. You’re stronger, more independent, more certain of what you want.” His lips twisted wryly. “More challenging than you would have been if we’d married years ago.”
She arched her brows haughtily, but replied, “Very likely. Perhaps those years were the price for what we have now.”
“And for what we’ll have in the future.” He held her gaze. “We’ve paid fate’s price.”
“Indeed. And now we have the prize.” Her smile dawned, glorious and sure; she settled back down in his arms. “From now on, we get to enjoy the fruit borne on the tree of our past.”
He chuckled, closed his arms about her, and sank deeper into the pillows. The fruit of the tree of their past. Love evolved and grown and acknowledged between them, the pleasure of having the other in their arms, the anticipation of an unclouded future-it might have taken thirteen years, but few were as lucky as they.
Penny would have been perfectly happy with a small ceremony with a select group of guests. Instead, Charles insisted on a huge wedding with a cast of hundreds and a guest list that in reality had no end.
Everyone in the district was invited, and everyone came. She’d known she commanded a certain level of acquaintance, of loyalty thoughout the surrounding area, and that, of course, Charles did, too; what neither had appreciated until they came out of the church and saw the gathered multitude, was that combined, their acquaintance covered most of those within riding distance and droves from farther afield, too.
It was bedlam, but wonderful. Once she’d realized and dragged enough from him to confirm just why he’d wanted such a public affair, she’d acquiesced with good grace, indeed, had thrown herself into making his vision come true. What lady wouldn’t have, given he’d wanted their wedding to be a very public declaration of not just their union, but of what he felt for her-his version of shouting his love from the steeple?
She could only love him all the more, until her heart felt literally like it was overflowing, for making such a grand, dramatic, so-very-Charles-like gesture, yet it wasn’t the organization, the numbers, the sheer scope of the performance that carried the banner of his feelings, but the light that shone in his midnight blue eyes, the way his awareness so rarely strayed from her, the quality implied in the way he touched her, held her hand, kept her close. By his decree, they were now closer than they’d ever been.
Happier than she sometimes felt they’d any right to be.
She’d learned simply to accept it, that this, between them, was meant to be.
From the early-morning rush, through the ceremony at the church, through the wedding breakfast and on through the extended celebrations, the day was perfect.
“Can you imagine anything daring to be otherwise with my mother and Elaine, your sisters and mine, my sisters-in-law and Amberly and Nicholas all supervising?” Charles arched a brow at her. “Even I’m cowed.”
As he chose that moment to whirl her into a waltz-a very
