“So I see.”
She ignored the note of humor in his tone and pulled him to the only ground in this house where she felt she could do this moment justice.
Her own parlor. Where endless Spinster columns had been written, plots had been hatched, and hundreds of conversations with this very man had taken place. This was her fortress, and he was her captive.
If she could get the words out.
She released his arm as they entered the room, turning to close the door firmly.
“I take it you wanted to see me,” Michael said with a laugh.
She could hear him moving about the room, but she kept her face to the door just a moment longer, breathing slowly and praying she could get through this.
With a final exhale, she turned to face him, surprised to see him leaning against the back of the sofa and staring at her with a crooked smile. Waiting.
“What?” she asked, disarmed by it.
“Nothing,” he replied, shrugging a shoulder. “Go on.”
She hesitated, unsettled and more than a little wary. “Michael…”
He said nothing, that maddening smile remaining on his lips. His chin lowered just a touch, and a certain light in his eyes caught fire. Daring her to go on.
Oh, he was a clever wretch, and now she was just as trapped.
Perfect.
Without a single word of her practiced speech in her mind, Charlotte opened her mouth. “I have been blind, Michael. Nearly every day of my life, I have been blind and foolish and utterly stupid. I always thought that I needed a sweeping romantic story for the ages, one that broke all constraints and sent us to our knees with longing for each other, whoever he would be, and that nothing else would do. I was waiting for that storm to find me, expecting to be knocked aside and forever changed. What I did not, and could not, expect was that something quite different lay in store for me.”
Michael’s smile remained, but his eyes had darkened, and his attention seemed more pronounced. More dangerous.
More intense.
“Something deeper,” Charlotte went on, her entire frame pulsing in time with her heart, “and something softer. Something gradual, and ever-increasing. Something that had always been there, and always will be. Something so intertwined with everything I am and everything I hope to be that I didn’t even recognize that it was there until it was…” She swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and lowered herself to her knees.
Michael’s smile faded and his eyes widened, the heat still swirling there.
“But it still brings me to my knees all the same,” Charlotte whispered. “And the longing I have felt these past few weeks surpasses anything I ever thought I would feel. Because I’ve found the love I’ve always sought, Michael. And it’s…”
A knock at the door sounded, bringing Michael’s eyes to it, and curling Charlotte’s rising tide of passion into a wave of unfettered temper.
“So help me,” she barked towards the door, “if there is one more interruption of this particular conversation, I will kill the interrupter with my bare hands!”
Silence met her threat, and shuffling steps retreated quickly.
Charlotte wet her lips, and returned her attention to Michael, who was now trying not to laugh and giving her an almost adoring look that made her hope.
“Get up, Charlotte.”
Perhaps not.
“But…” she protested, then stopped herself and looked at the ground, gathering herself, “I need to have this moment.”
“I’ll give you the moment, but please, get up.”
She shook her head firmly. “I need to be submissive. I need to prove my point.”
“For the love of God, woman, you can prove your point standing on your own two feet, submissiveness be damned.”
Charlotte looked up at him, amusement rising, his expression of exasperation utterly perfect for this moment. “You don’t think it suits?”
His smile spread with glorious slowness. “I don’t think it should have any part of you, and I think I know you well enough now to say so.”
She shrugged, pushing to her feet, and sobering as she did so.
There was only one thing left to say, really, and perhaps she should have started with it.
Steeling herself, she met his eyes, willing her trembling fingers to still before her. “I’m in love with you, Michael,” she admitted with a raw honesty that stole her own breath from her. “Only you. Forever you. And I don’t know how to apologize for making you wait all this time.”
Michael’s chest moved on a slow exhale, and he pushed off of his perch on the sofa, coming towards her without any haste. Without a word, he slid his hands on either side of her face and touched his lips to hers, his thumbs gently stroking against her cheeks, his fingers tilting her face just enough to perfect the angle between them. Again and again, his lips took hers, molded with hers, each kiss a slow and thorough waltz between them, one that wrung every ounce of her sanity, sense, and thought from her.
She whimpered against this dismantling, delicious, fervent barrage of his lips, clinging to his waistcoat as though he were the only thing that kept her from drowning in this. She arched against him, reaching for him in the only way the moment allowed.
His kisses gentled, became feather-light and grazing. “I don’t need an apology,” he murmured as his lips brushed against her tender skin. “I don’t want an apology.” He exhaled shortly and kissed her again, this time lingering in a way that made her knees shake. “I want you.”
Charlotte sighed, curling against him and pressing her face into his chest as she trembled. “You have me. I swear on my life, you have me.”
Michael chuckled and pressed his lips against her hair, wrapping his arms around her, running his fingers up and down her back in a soothing, tempting pattern. “Don’t swear, my love. On your life or anyone else’s. It’s not necessary.”
“I feel as though I’ve cheated you,” Charlotte told him, raising her head and sliding her hands up to link
