They had retreated to his bed, and Flynn had fallen asleep at some point, because the suggestion of dawn was starting to creep through the rafters when he woke. He should get up. Add some more coal to the hearth. Boil a kettle of water. But he did none of those things because Charlotte was curled around him, her head nestled against his shoulder, the heat and solidity of her body warming something deep within him as surely as it warmed his own skin.

He turned his head and gazed down at her. Her lashes lay across faintly flushed cheeks, her kiss-swollen lips were parted slightly, and her short hair was sticking up in all directions. He had never experienced a sense of rightness—of perfect peace—as the one that had settled over him at this moment. In this makeshift studio, in a town far away from where he had been born, covered in borrowed blankets on a borrowed bed, he had finally found home.

She was home.

He brushed a kiss across her forehead and she stirred.

“Good morning,” he whispered.

“Mmm.” Her hand slipped across his chest.

He stroked his own hand down the length of her arm, careful of the stitches at her shoulder. The blanket fell away from her long limbs, leaving glorious expanses of skin glowing like alabaster in the silver light of dawn. Her hand left his chest and tried to pull the covers back up.

“Don’t,” he said, brushing her fingers away. “I want to look at you.” He shifted, propping himself up on an elbow so that he could gaze down at her. He pushed the blanket farther over her hip, his fingers lingering, his body already straining for a woman he was never going to be able to get enough of.

“Flynn—”

“I’m trying to decide how I will paint you,” he said, flattening his palm against the tautness of her abdomen. He slid it up unhurriedly, circling one nipple first and then the other. She whimpered and arched into his touch, and he bit back a groan as his cock jerked. He was as hard as marble, and every tiny sound she made tested his restraint.

“I don’t want to be painted,” she said a little breathlessly.

He lowered his head and pressed a kiss at the hollow of her throat. “I will paint you the way I will always see you. Bold. Beautiful,” he mused, ignoring her protestations.

“Don’t be absurd,” she said. “I’m not beautiful. I’m not even pretty.”

Flynn lifted his head and stared down at her, a curl of what felt like anger rising through him like black smoke.

She gazed back at him unapologetically. “It’s why Charlie Beaumont was possible,” she said. “And I would have it no other way.”

“Define pretty,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Tell me what pretty looks like.”

Charlotte shrugged. “From your drawings, I’d say Lady Cecelia was very pretty.”