“See?” he said on a slow and easy thrust that had her gasping. “There’s always time for this.”

“Always,” she echoed, squeezing her eyes shut, letting the sensations carry her away from the possibility of this ending. Of this being one of their last times together. She had so much to say, so much to tell him about all that she felt for him, but she could barely speak. She could only feel.

She catalogued the sensations. His bare skin so hot against hers. The sheen of sweat between their bodies. The closeness, the unbelievable closeness, as she wrapped her legs around his hips, inviting him deeper into her. She grappled at his shoulders, digging her nails in. He rocked his hips against her, moving inside her, the delicious friction and the sounds he made sending her close to the brink.

He made love to her passionately, possessively, in a way that blotted out everything but him, her and them.

“Michelle. My Michelle,” he whispered reverently against her collarbone, brushing sweet and sinful kisses along the column of her neck.

The sound of his voice saying her name did her in. It set off the chain reaction of tears rolling down her cheeks, and ecstasy racing through her body. Tears and anguish all at once, in her body, in her mind. It was bittersweet, but she didn’t want the bitter. She’d had enough bitter.

As she came down from the high of her orgasm, he held her face in his hands and lightly brushed her lips with his own.

“Have I told you today how much I love you?”

Since that day in the gardens he hadn’t been able to stop saying it. Even through the mud and the muck and the dirt, he’d kept saying those words. Showing her how he felt. Being the man she wanted, and the man she needed.

After ten years of longing, after all that emptiness inside her, she couldn’t give this up. She could reinvent herself in Paris, or she could reinvent herself here.

“And that’s why I’m saying no to Denis,” she said as they pulled apart.

He gripped her shoulders. “What?”

“He made me an offer today. I told you he’d expressed some interest. He made it official, since I was cleared. He wants me to work in his practice in Paris.”

“You said no?”

She nodded. “I’m going to say no. It’s past midnight in Paris so I haven’t been able to respond to him today.”

“Why?” he asked, furrowing his brow. “Why are you saying no?”

She shot him a look like he was crazy. She’d never been more sure of anything other than this—she wanted to be with this man. “Why?”

“Yes, why?”

“Because I’m in love with you, and you’re here. Your business is here. You work in New York. I might have lost most of my clients, but I’m good at my job. I’ll start over. If he’d made the offer six months ago, I’d have gone in a heartbeat. But everything has changed since I met you. I spent so much of my last decade chasing love with the wrong person. Now I have it with the right person. There are some things worth giving up for love,” she said.