The Taming of Ryder Cavanaugh (The Cynster Sisters Duo 2)

To truly reach the pinnacle of togetherness. Of closeness.

Of shattering physical intimacy driven and overwhelmed by emotion.

This was what it meant to love.

To lay aside all reservation, to give without limitation.

To lose one’s heart.

No—to willingly give it into another’s keeping, to become dependent and possessive, to accept that as the price for them doing the same in return.

This was their moment, and similar as they were, they’d reached it together.

Unlocked each other’s doors, led each other to the brink.

This was the ultimate linking.

And in that fraction of an instant of lucidity as they raced, gasping and clinging, up the final peak, he recognized it as that, as an irrevocable step that once taken could never be undone—and still he wanted it.

It would link him to her, but also her to him.

And that was worth any price.

With the last gasp of his desperation, he reached for it, that ultimate gift of him to her and her to him, closed a mental fist about it and held on as, in a firestorm of passion, sensation and emotion collided and they burned.

In the furnace of their joint passion, in the conflagration of their shared love.

Acknowledged, embraced, it consumed them, transmuted them, welded and reforged them.

Made them new, made them whole. Made them more.

As the last shudders of completion racked him, as the last of her contractions faded, he slumped upon her, too wrung out to move, too exhausted and overwhelmed to think.

Even much later, when he lifted from her, slumped alongside her and gathered her into his arms, all he could manage by way of thought was that he was never going to let her go.

He couldn’t. She was his everything.

After the passion of the night and their underlying new reality, Ryder had anticipated some degree of awkwardness between them, certainly a degree of wariness from him if not from her, but instead, when they’d woken they’d looked at each other. Looked into each other’s eyes—and seen—and they’d both smiled.

He’d rolled over and they’d made love, and their day had sailed on, idyllic and untroubled, from there.

The clock on the library mantelpiece chimed five times. As he tidied away the last of his calculations on the coming season’s crops, his mind continued to explore his new state. An unlooked-for, unexpected, unanticipated state—one of such contentment and promise that it constituted a very real vulnerability.

He was surprised at himself that he’d accepted it, that vulnerability, so readily, so easily, yet even now, while in full possession of his wits, had he the decision to make again, he would make it in the same way.

There were, indeed, some things worth the price. That were worth any price.

Putting off that acceptance, delaying this contented joy because of the threat hovering over them . . . neither he nor Mary was the type to play safe, much less to allow some villainous knave to rule them via fear.

No. Whatever came, they would handle it. And, if anything, courtesy of the night, they were even stronger now.

His mind shifting to the pleasures of the evening to come, he shut his desk drawer, then heard a crisp tap at the door. “Come.”

Forsythe entered, a faintly puzzled frown on his face. In one hand he held a salver on which rested several letters, the afternoon mail; offering the salver, Forsythe said, “My lord, Aggie, her ladyship’s maid, is looking for her ladyship but can’t seem to find her. Do you have any idea where her ladyship might be?”

Accepting the letters, Ryder frowned. “She said she was going to do some embroidery, but”—he glanced at the window, at the sunshine outside—“she might have gone for a stroll.” Pushing back his chair, he stood. “She won’t have gone far. Has Aggie checked the rose garden?”

Aggie had. She’d also checked the terraces and the immediate surrounds of the house, as well as their rooms upstairs.