Of course he had. She caught his gaze as he drew her to the stairs. “You planned this—bringing me here.”
“Of course.” He looked ahead as they started climbing. “I told you there was something I wanted to tell you, and I can only tell you that here. Upstairs.”
She arched her brows, but he didn’t meet her gaze again, didn’t add anything as he led her to his bedroom.
He didn’t, in fact, say another word. Not for a very long time.
Instead he spoke with actions, more persuasive than any words could ever be. Both in the way his hands drifted over her body, reverently, worshipfully, in the way he reined in his desire enough to let her take the lead, for her to take her time stripping the clothes from his large frame, unwrapping him—discovering anew the heavy muscles, the strength, the hardness, the heat.
The solid reality of him, a male of her kind, in his prime—and he wanted her.
He’d never made any secret of that, yet that night when he reached for her, she sensed there was more. That this was what he’d wanted to tell her, as his lips moved on hers, as his tongue filled her mouth, as skin to naked skin his body claimed hers and his hands grasped, held while she clung.
I love you.
I need you.
Please be mine.
The litany replayed over and over in Christian’s mind. Love was a word that long ago had come very easily to them both. Now…now he knew what the word meant in all its pain and glory, he couldn’t simply say it—couldn’t let it fall from his lips like any other word.
Powerful, dominant, all-consuming. Love now burned, a strong, steady flame within him, and using a single, simple four-letter word to encompass all it was wouldn’t do.
Love had to be seen, felt, experienced.
To be fully expressed, love had to be let free, had to be allowed to burn, to claim and consume, to rack and then, in benediction, suffuse them with its gold and silver glory.
Love required surrender to be fully realized.
So he surrendered.
And let her see.
Love ruled him in the here and now, and into his future, just as it had for the past countless years, ever since he’d first laid eyes on her. Love between them was a reality that wouldn’t be denied, not by years of separation, not by Randall and his machinations.
That night, he told her. Told her he loved her with all his being—his heart, his body, his soul.
And when at last they lay in a tangled heap, racked, unable to move, satiation a heavy blanket weighing them down, he knew she’d heard, knew she understood.
Chapter 18
The next morning, as he’d promised, Christian woke Letitia in plenty of time to walk her back to South Audley Street before their respective households stirred. As they strolled arm in arm through the pearly predawn light, she wondered at the serenity, the tranquility, that held her.
The certainty. The blissful conviction.
Yesterday…rather than dismiss her fears for his safety as irrational, and therefore inconsequential, he’d accepted them. Even though he hadn’t stated it, unlike most men of their class he’d acknowledged her feelings as a consequence of her regard for him, and dealt wit
h her and them on that basis.
Although she hadn’t intended it, that moment had been a test—one he’d passed with flying colors. If they were to have a future together, then him accepting her and her love as it was—fears and all—was crucial.
That moment in Green Park, she felt, had been a sign.
As for what followed…from the moment he’d joined her in his aunt’s drawing room to now, the past night had possessed an almost dreamlike quality. Standing by his side at an event like the dinner, then leaving with him and returning to his house, his bed—all of it had been just as she’d imagined, just as she’d dreamed long ago.
Not one moment, not one word, had marred the match between expectation and reality.
But this was now, no long-ago dream.