Chapter Fifteen #3
“There’s room for you, too,” he said, knowing how much Jordan and Robert cared for her. “We all want you in our lives.”
“Your sons were so charming to me on the day of the Felicity Merriweather incident. I will admit to being jealous of her.”
James chuckled. “Why? What a disaster she turned out to be.”
“But you had seen her three times, and I thought there might have been a fondness growing between the two of you.”
“Never.”
“I realized that when you walked in and found Felicity shrieking at me. I was so relieved you had dismissed her from contention. She could have raged at me for another hour and I would not have cared. She did not deserve you.”
“She was never in serious consideration. None of the prospects you chose for me were ever going to win my heart when it had already been claimed by you. Each time I saw you, I fell more deeply in love.”
“Andrew often proclaimed his love for me. He said it constantly, and I believed him.”
“And you are worried I am about to do the same, insist I love you and then abandon you? Is this why you are afraid to commit to me beyond one night? I am not him,” James said with conviction and a little frustration for the damage the heedless fellow had done to her.
“I know you are nothing like him, although it took me a while to come around to the realization. You are everything he is not. Since the moment I met you, you have always been true to your word, always there for me when I needed you. Do you realize what a burden off my shoulders it was to have you beside me tonight? Or how much I appreciated your support even though you did not believe in what I was doing?”
“I wasn’t going to let you search for Clement on your own.”
“See? This is you being protective and strong. I’m glad I failed to find you a match because I think…well, I hope to be that match. Just give me time to be comfortable with this drastic change in my life.”
“Oh, Gwen. Of course. I’ll be there for you whenever you are ready.”
“Being in your arms feels very right. I would not do this with anyone else. Surely you must know it can only ever be you.”
He hoped this would prove true, that her fear or reluctance to move forward would not destroy the wonderful future they could have together.
The animal part of him was determined not to lose her to Andrew Clement, or any other man.
Gwen was his. He would spend the remaining hours of this night proving it to her.
“So be it, love,” he said, resolved to educate her in ways of pleasure she had never imagined.
He had the advantage of experience and knew just how to make her body thrum. Ignite her passion. Have her purring. Writhing.
Soaring.
And then do it all again, because he could not think of anything more exquisite than watching her melt at his touch and come undone.
There was only one rule to which he would hold firm, and that was to do nothing to her that was irreversible. Her virtue was intact and would remain that way until he heard the words I love you spill from her lips.
In the meanwhile, he would be satisfied with evoking her breathy moans and cries of ecstasy by safe means.
Blessed saints.
Were they really going to do this?
Hell yes.
He wanted her. He wanted to marry her.
He rolled her under him and set about giving her the lessons she was aching to learn.
It was not long before she started struggling to remove her shift. “Dear heaven. Why is it suddenly so hot in here?”
He watched her, smiling at her urgency. “Need help?”
She laughed gently. “Yes, I do. This shift is only getting in the way, isn’t it?”
He kissed her. “I would have figured out a way to get at your body with or without clothing. Your skin is soft as silk.”
“Yours is muscled and hot.”
He wanted to take it slow. She wanted to catch up on all she had missed.
He obliged.
“James,” she cried, responding to the intimate touch of his mouth and the teasing flicks of his tongue on the most sensitive parts of her sweet body that soon had her writhing beneath him.
Her eyes had been closed, but she now opened them to reveal the wild swirls of desire in her magnificent aquamarine orbs as he took control of her body with savage precision, teased and aroused her, watched her come undone.
This was the beautiful thing about Gwendolyn, the honesty of her feelings.
Blessed saints.
She was so responsive to his touch. And she looked at him as though he had delivered magic.
But she was the magical being who had turned this disaster of a night into a thing of splendor.
“James. Ooh, James.” Her voice, lush and throaty, drifted on the light breeze and carried through their open windows.
She gripped the sheets as he had her soaring, her control ripped apart and left to float like starlight on a sea breeze, not once but twice in the span of their few hours until dawn.
He never imagined the night would turn to this.
He could hardly breathe for finding her so beautiful, her body flushed pink and hot, and her sweet lips numb and rosy. Her hair was in wild abandon.
She smiled at him.
“Gwen, love.” He kissed her with all the aching tenderness he felt for her.
But how would she feel about him come morning’s light?