It was seven in the morning on Saturday when I finally rang her doorbell, and I couldn’t remember being this nervous about anything in my life. Or more certain.
I’d driven myself over well before dawn and had been sitting in the car, waiting for it to be a reasonable hour to wake her. Daphne had left the day before, which I only knew because it had been on my plane. I needed Lydia alone. I needed her now. Seven was reasonable, wasn’t it? It would have to be.
When she opened the door, she looked so perfect. All I could think was Mine.
Christ, I’d missed her. She was wearing those black leggings that made her legs look a thousand miles long and a dress shirt. My dress shirt. Her dark hair was askew, hanging around her shoulders. Her new fringe framed her face perfectly, making those innocent brown eyes pop.
“Dylan,” she said, and she gulped in that way she always did when she was bracing herself, when she felt like something big was coming. She was right. It was.
“Damsel. Can I come in?” I gripped the doorframe on both sides, wanting to lean in all the way.
“I…” she started, and then her expression changed, remembering. “Oh god, Dylan, your dad. I…” She had a look of both sympathy and fear on her face, and the fear part slayed me.
“Lydia. It’s like the bleeding Arctic out here. I don’t want you to get sick again. Can I please come in?”
“How’d you know I was sick?” she asked, wrapping her arms around her chest to shield it from the cold, but then she quickly rolled her eyes. She knew me well enough not to be surprised that I’d had my eyes on her. She swung open the door and let me in.
She looked smaller. I looked closely and saw what the week had done to her, what the last several weeks had done. She looked thinner and like she wished her long bangs were still there to protect her. She wanted to hide from me. Well, no fucking way. I needed her to see me.
“Baby,” I said, putting my hands on her arms. Fuck, how was I supposed to even do this? I inhaled deeply and went for it. “I’ve been an idiot.” She looked up at me, questioning. “You were right.” There was no way to do this except to dive in. “You said I deserved more from my life, and you were right. I want more. I want you.”
Her eyes were softer now, a little of that fear slipping away.
“Please forgive me for pushing you away, Lydia. I was absolutely mad, and I behaved dreadfully. I felt like I was losing my hold on everything, and then I saw you getting hurt and I felt fucking insane that I couldn’t stop it. That it had happened at all. I’ve never felt more powerless. I felt like I’d failed you, and I thought the only way I could stop that wretched feeling was to let you go.” I was just getting going, but I needed her with me. I brushed her cheek with my fingers. “But that’s bollocks, isn’t it?”
She gave the tiniest hint of a nod, and I took the chance to run my hand down her arm and take her tiny hand in my own. “The only way to stop it is to let you in. You tried to tell me, and I didn’t hear you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I know I made it hard for you to be with me. I pushed you. I asked you to trust so much without giving nearly enough in return. I know that.”
She was crying now, and I pulled her to me. I felt my shirt dampen with her tears, and I would have given everything to know why she was crying.
“Please, damsel, please. It will be okay. I fucking love you so much.”
She wriggled her head free from my arms and looked up at me with so much affection, and I was flooded with relief.
“I know I need to open up to you, be honest, let you take care of me—I want that. I need that. But, baby, you must trust me, let me do the same. I need to feel like you’re safe—you have to let me do that for you, but we can figure it out together. You’re so strong, strong enough to handle all the crap that my life entails. I know that—but we have to do this together.” She was nodding through her tears, and I was brushing them away with my thumbs as well as I could, kissing her cheeks, tasting the tears on my lips.
“I’ve missed you, Dylan, but I’m terrified that if I let you in you’ll leave me behind again. You don’t understand. I felt safe with you, and then I felt abandoned. You wouldn’t open up to me, and it was like you couldn’t even see me with everything going on. I’m scared. You’re the first person I’ve ever loved, and I’ve already lost my own father, and now…”
She started to tremble slightly. She was trying to hold herself together.
“Shh,” I cooed, “I know. But, Lydia, I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to let you out of my fucking sight. Don’t you understand? It’s because of everything that’s happening, that’s about to happen. I need you, and whether you want to admit it or not, you need me too. That’s how it’s supposed to be. I’m stronger with you by my side. You’re it for me, baby. You’re all I’ve been able to think about since the party. I won’t ever make that mistake again.”
She nodded hesitantly, wiping her tears away. Shit. I looked down and saw her pert nipples peeking through the thin fabric of the white shirt. This was so the wrong time to be getting a hard-on, but Christ. Those tits. Fucking made for me. I stifled a groan and pulled her closer to me.
“You’re mine, baby. You always have been. I don’t want one of those zombies from Caroline’s circle. No Botox. I want you. I want your hankering for croissants in the morning. I want your insistence on taking the Underground. I want you sitting on the kitchen counter as though there aren’t six perfectly good chairs in the room. I want you collecting hair bands on your wrist as though we don’t live around the corner from the chemist.” I snapped one on her wrist, and her laughter unleashed another wave of relief. Thank fucking Christ she was with me. “You. I just want you. I need you. Don’t change a thing,” I said and brushed her fringe with my fingers. “This can stay, though—you look bloody gorgeous.” She smiled broadly and buried her face back in my shirt.
We stood there for what might have been ten minutes, just holding each other. I could actually feel the fear, the reserve, the self-protection leaving her body. She melted into me, just as I needed her to. After an eternity, she stood on her tiptoes and nuzzled into my collar.
“What took you so long to figure all this out?” she asked.
“I’m a bit daft, aren’t I?”
“A bit.” Her chin rested against my chest as she looked up at me.
God, I needed more of her. All of her. I slipped my palms around her torso, my signal for her to jump into my arms, and she did, wrapping those perfect lithe little legs around my waist. But she buried her face back in my neck, like she wasn’t quite ready to see me after everything I’d said. It was too fresh, too real. I walked over to the couch in her lounge and sank into it, holding her against me so she was straddling me, her thighs tightly gripping my own. I ran my hands up her back and into her silky hair. Goddammit, this woman was going to be the end of me. I wanted to sink into her and stay there for a week. But I couldn’t go there yet. I wasn’t done.
“Baby. Lydia,” I whispered in her ear. “I need you to look at me.” She raised her head and fluttered her eyes at me, still red from crying but full of the innocence and strength that I couldn’t resist.
“Do you trust me?” I asked her, and she nodded.
“My father died, Lydia.”
“I know, Dylan. I’m so sorry.” She held my hand against her face and turned her lips into my palm, kissing it.
“Baby, do you understand what that means?” She looked at me, unsure. “I’m the seventeenth Duke of Abingdon. I’ve dreaded this day my whole life. Seen it as the day the grim reaper would come for everything I held dear—my business, my freedom. The day I’d be locked in my own tower of sorts. I know it sounds dramatic, but I grew up looking at my father and seeing no hope there. He was cruel and lazy, and the idea of filling his heinous shoes has never exactly appealed to me.”
“Oh, Dylan, I know, but—” I put my finger against her soft lips.
“Let me finish. I don’t see it that way anymore. Running Humboldt Park is a business. Hale Shipping is the company that supports it, supports my family. Both of those are my responsibility now. Being the duke the way my father was is not who I am, but I can figure this out. I believe in it. And I can keep Hale Design and keep you. I haven’t the foggiest idea how, mind you, but I know I can do it. We can do it.”
She smiled at me in a way that somehow conveyed more confidence in me than my father had over his whole lifetime.
“I need you there with me,” I said steadily, wanting to make sure she was with me.
I held her face in my hands and looked into those dark eyes. “Lydia, will you marry me?”
Her jaw dropped, opening her mouth to me in a way that was sickeningly sexy. Fuck. Please let her say yes.
I stroked her cheek.
Nothing.
“Baby?”
“Marry you.” It wasn’t a question. It was like she was trying on the idea.
I smiled back at her. “Yes, baby. Marry me. I know it’s asking a lot. Undoubtedly. There will be god-awful garden parties with Her Majesty. You’ll occasionally have to stand for hours in heels during ceremonies that involve horses wearing ludicrous hats. There will be my mother to contend with, of course, and you’d be taking on the horrible paparazzi for eternity. So obviously there’s no earthly reason you should accept me, but please do, baby. Do this with me.”
She was smiling but still hadn’t given me an answer.
“Shall I get down on one knee and ask properly?” I asked, and she nodded eagerly. For the first time in the last hour I felt she was truly, fully back with me.
I couldn’t believe I was doing this, but she absolutely deserved a proper proposal. I didn’t have a ring, because I was an absolute prat, but she did deserve me on my knees. I slid her off of me, and she landed kneeling on the couch, her ass perched on her heels, her palms on her thighs, her body excited for this. And I knelt before her on the floor, nervous as fucking hell.
“Damsel?” I asked, and she nodded. “I haven’t got a ring at the moment, and you’ve got loads of reasons to turn me down, but please take pity on this poor bugger before you and agree to be my bride? I’ll be grateful for all eternity.” She laughed for a moment and another tear escaped—a happy one, I hoped. “How was that?” I asked.
She flattened her hand and seesawed it back and forth, indicating I’d done a mediocre job.
I took a deep breath. “Okay, how about this? Baby, I know exactly where to bite, spank, and lick you to make you come in approximately forty-five seconds. May I have the privilege of doing so for the rest of your life?”
“Dylan!” She laughed loudly and slapped my hand away from her leg, where it had been inching towards her center.
“No?” I smiled at her. “Okay then.”
I sighed audibly, grabbed both of her hands in mine, and kissed them. The thoughts that had been running through my head for the previous eighteen hours came pouring out. “Lydia, I was raised in a home full of obligation and self-sacrifice, tradition and cold grandeur, where love was scarce and fickle. I thought the best I could hope for in this life would be flickers of feigned intimacy. That I’d have to settle for the hollow pride of fulfilling those obligations alone. Then you came along. And you started filling in the cracks. You made joy the norm—it was rather un-British of you, actually…You dared me to imagine that instead of barren gestures and pomp and circumstance, my lot in life could actually be worth something. You made me want more. And now, I’m sorry to tell you, I can’t live without it. And, my sweet girl, you’ve made me believe I can give it in return, made me want to give it in return. I want to thrill at your successes, embolden you when you’re tentative, tend to you, make this life beautiful for you. I want us to build something together that neither of us would ever be able to achieve on our own. I want to be the man your father wished he’d been able to meet. Lydia, I love you. Please, please be my wife.”
She slid off the couch and onto my lap, where I caught her, and she threw her arms around my neck and buried her face in my shoulder. I kissed her head, and suddenly I could feel her lips everywhere.
“Yes,” she said and kissed my neck. Then she pulled back to look at me. “You know you still have a lot of making up to do, right?”
“Yes,” I said and quickly dove for her neck with my lips.
“And you understand I love my job, right? That I’m never going to be one of those wives who sits around needlepointing by the fire while her husband goes off to work?”
“Yes,” I said again and pulled her shirt to the side so I could kiss her shoulder.
She put her hands to my face, forcing me to look at her. A move I’d pulled on her a hundred times, but it was her turn.
“Dylan?” Her eyebrow was raised.
“Yes and yes.”
“Then yes,” she said, and her lips landed firmly on my own. I wrapped my arms clear around her and felt her words against my own breath. “I love you.”
“I love you too, damsel.”
It wasn’t ten seconds after she’d said yes that I had her shirt—my shirt—off over her head and my hands on those perfect tits. Her nipples were already hard, and I knew if I put my hand down those lethal little leggings I’d find her wet and ready for me.
We downright devoured each other. Her lips were on mine. Her hands were in my hair. And for a moment, that was delightful. Our mutual indulgence in what we’d just decided. But it had been too long, too many days, and more than anything, I needed to know my damsel was mine.
I took her hands out of my hair and swiftly planted them at her back. “There we go, my sweet girl. Let’s get you to bed, shall we?”
She looked at me hungrily and sank into my hold, not resisting in the slightest. She nodded, and I stood, lifting her into my arms as I went. I walked her straight to her bed in that tiny room, and even in the moment, I relished that this wouldn’t be her room for long.
“I guess this means I’m moving in with you,” she panted, reading my mind.
“You are,” I said. “But this will do for now.” I rolled her onto to her front and yanked the leggings down her legs. The sight of her bare ass pleased me immensely—she’d followed my rules even in my absence. The little minx had known I’d be back. Or hoped. I slapped her pale ass, and she jumped. “Good girl.”
I ran my fingers gently up her inner leg, and she started to shiver in anticipation—I’d never get over how responsive she was to my touch. And I couldn’t contain my sigh of satisfaction when I sank my fingers into her and found her slick and wanting. I looked at her face, that hair landing softly on her shoulders, those eyes at half-mast, wanton, waiting. Stunning.
This woman was going to be my wife.
A hundred different things floated through my mind in a flash. Things I could do to her in that moment. To reclaim her. I could sink back into that tight ass. I could bind her hands to the headboard and see her helpless before me. I could spank her silly until she came undone in my hand. And I would. I would do all of those things. But right now, for the first time in my life, I just wanted to make love to her.
I shed my clothes and began laying kisses up the backs of her legs. “Wife,” I chanted between kisses. “You’re going to be my wife.”
I turned her over, so I could look into those brown eyes, and I took her. I took her slowly, purposefully. I held her wrists in my hands by her head. I owned her, but of course she owned me too. “Husband,” she said amidst her perfect groans of pleasure, the groans I’d missed like I’d missed a limb.
She came, and her fierce spasms around me made me come too. I had a feeling that no matter how much sex she and I had over the course of our lives—and I intended to have a lot—I’d remember this time.
We spread over each other in postcoital disarray, limbs over limbs under her duvet, and I finally took in the room. Empty takeaway cartons on the floor. Bags from Tesco and Boots strewn about. An enormous box of tiny Cadbury candies surrounded by wrappers.
“Tough week?” I asked her, stroking her arm.
“Probably not as tough as yours,” she said.
“I’m sorry for pushing you away, damsel.”
“I’m sorry for letting you,” she said.
“I didn’t give you much of a choice.”
She stroked my chest, running her fingers through the hair there. “Dylan?”
“Mmm?” I said, my eyes closed, fighting off the urge to fall asleep.
“Would it be okay with you if…” I gave her a moment, but she didn’t seem to want to finish the thought.
“What is it, Lydia?”
“Can we keep our engagement to ourselves for a bit?”
“You want our relationship to be a secret?”
“I do. Just for now. I want to keep this. I know that as soon as we go public, it will feel like it’s not ours anymore, and right now? Right now I want this all to ourselves. And I think we need to take this part slowly, or slower. Everything has moved so fast.”
I thought about it. I wanted her at my side. I wanted the strength I got from being with her. I wanted us to be impenetrable, and I knew that coming out with it would be part of that. But I also saw what she was saying. She blamed going public with our relationship for everything that had happened. And she wasn’t wrong. She couldn’t see that getting engaged, getting publicly engaged, would actually protect us from that attention, allow us to build a wall between our life and the public eye. But I didn’t need to push her on this. She needed this secret. And I could give it to her. For now.
“That’s what you really want?” I asked.
“It is.”
“You mean I won’t get to put a ring on this finger?” I took her ring finger and slid it into my mouth, sucking it, kissing it.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Do you have a ring?” she asked, giving me one of her evil eyes. Cheeky girl. I slapped her pert little rear for that one, and she jolted and giggled against me. I loved that giggle.
“Touché.” I sighed. “You’ll get your ring, I promise.” I couldn’t wait to get the ring for her from the family vault. I knew just the one I wanted to see on that finger. “Yes, baby. We can keep this to ourselves for now. But you should know that if no one knows you’re my fiancée I won’t be able to protect you from the press the way I’d like, and I won’t be able to bring you with me to certain things, as was the case Saturday night.”
“I understand,” she said, rolling on top of me and tucking her hands under my torso. “I just want some time.”
“Then you shall have it,” I said, running my fingers up her back and down again to her ass. She fell asleep on me, like a blanket, and I began to imagine what was in store for her in a way that was impossible for her to do for herself. This delightful girl lying on top of me was going to be a duchess, and she had no idea what that meant.