Bronwyn slid her arms up around his neck, needing to feel him close. It felt as if she was imagining the whole interlude. His openness. His sweetness. His tenderness. This vulnerable side of him that only she got to see. “You’ve always been enough, Valentine, whether you were an earl, a spy, or a duke. You just weren’t ready to accept that.”

***

Valentine bent to bury his nose in the crook of her neck, the skin there already cooling from the fine layer of perspiration on her velvety skin. She smelled of spiced apples, and he wanted to devour her whole. Her pulse rose and crashed at the base of her nape, but she remained excruciatingly silent on the subject of her true feelings. Of her love. He supposed he deserved that…just because he had been ready didn’t mean she was. The thick wall of ice surrounding him had done its job well. Too well. Perhaps she did not believe him.

His hopes plummeted, like a falling star. “I didn’t mean to spring this on you. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she rasped, the soft waft of her breath blowing into his hair. “I just need a minute.”

“I understand,” he whispered.

“What about everything you said before? That love wasn’t for you?”

He huffed, gliding his lips along her soft skin and feeling his cock twitch. His desire for her hadn’t abated in the least with his declaration. Instead, it had increased. “I guess I’m the fool then, aren’t I?” He kissed her eyelids. “To be bewitched by a pair of bright-blue eyes and a luscious mouth.” His lips moved to hers, for the sweetest graze from corner to corner before pressing into their plush depths. “A wicked tongue that could reduce the most hardened of men to mush.” His tongue licked hers in a move that made her gasp and writhe against him. “A brain that could bring any foe to mercy.”

“Valentine?”

“Yes, love?” he asked.

“Are you ever going to stop talking and finish what you started?” His little virago tightened her arms around his neck, hitched her fallen skirts, and hooked her legs over his hips. “Inquiring minds need to know.”

“As my lady wishes.”

When he slid into her anew, it felt like home. Where he belonged. And when he began to move, Valentine’s whole world shifted. So this was what it felt like to offer himself up fully, without holding back. He made love to her tenderly, despite their location, though when had that ever mattered to them? She hadn’t said she loved him back, but he would wait.

Bronwyn was worth the wait.

He felt her body tighten deliciously around him before she gasped out, fingers digging into his shoulders. “Faster.”