Passionately Yours (Hellions of High Street 3)

Because we are made for each other.

The fringe of her dark lashes hid her eyes, but a spark of light peeked through as they fluttered. “We all need second chances. It’s so awfully hard to get it right the first time around.”

Caro touched her fingertips to his cheek. “So that is why we must keep trying, no matter if we feel bruised from the bumbles and stumbles.”

He traced a whispery laugh around the shell-shaped curve of her ear, thinking of how her exuberant spirit made him want to shout to the heavens with joy.

“It’s you who have taught me that elemental truth. And so I will try a second time. And a third, and a fourth, and ad infinitum—until you relent and agree to marry me.” He inhaled, filling his lungs with her beguiling scent. “God knows, I have a legion of faults, which—”

“Which makes us perfectly matched.”

Hope flared in his breast.

“Well, almost perfectly matched,” she added with a shy smile. “I have two legions of faults, but I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.”

“All I see is the lady with whom I wish to spend the rest of my life.”

“A lifetime with you?” Caro kissed the tip of his chin. “That sounds like it might be almost long enough.”

“Only if we don’t waste a moment more.” He shifted, feeling her spark penetrate to the very depth of his being. Never again would he dwell in cold and darkness. “Say yes, Caro.”

“Yes.” She said it so sweetly, so simply.

Yes.

He hardly dared to believe his ears. “Thank goodness. Otherwise I might have had to resort to extreme measures.”

She shifted beneath him. “I like your extremities.”

Their laughter was muffled by a long and lush kiss.

“Don’t tempt me,” Alec murmured, lifting his lips from hers just enough to speak.

“I can’t help it.” Caro arched her body and rubbed against him. “I seem to stir up trouble wherever I go.”

“Trouble, trouble, trouble,” he rasped, sliding his hands down her hips to her thighs and easing them apart.

She gave a little gasp of pleasure as his rigid phallus delved between her legs, just at the crest of their joining.

Her honeyed warmth was like fire against his flesh. Exquisitely unbearable. Surely in the next instant he would burst into flames.

“At some point,” he said tightly, “we really ought to be making love on a soft featherbed with silk-smooth sheets and down pillows.”

“That would be nice,” she whispered. A twinkle of the firelight reflected in her eye. “But not nearly so adventurous.”

“Loving you will always be adventurous.”

Because you challenge me. You excite me. You dare me to be more than I think I can be.

Caro held him close, letting her hands explore up and down the contours of his back. “In a good way, I hope.”

“The very best way.”

He rolled, turning so she was atop him. The red-gold light bathing her naked limbs in a rosy glow. Swaying in and out of the smoky shadows, she moved in time to some primitive tempo, her dark hair tumbling in silky waves over her shoulders.

An earthy, erotic vision of beauty.

“I love you.” The words had once seemed impossible to say—now Alec couldn’t seem to repeat them enough.