She . . . loved him?

West tightened his arms around this woman who was his wife, his confidante, his partner. If this damp, dark vault was their confessional, she had just confessed a miracle, one he’d not ever imagined earning. Somehow, beyond all reason, she’d looked inside him, seen his faults and his demons, and still found something to love.

He felt gutted by the wonder of it.

He pulled her up the length of his body until their noses bumped in the dark. A tricky business, navigating such blindness, but his other senses filled in the holes. He could hear her softly indrawn breath of anticipation, taste the whisky on her lower lip from where she had spilled a few drops. He could feel, against his hands, the quickening of her heart beneath all those maddening but necessary layers of clothing.

There would be no undressing tonight, not in the damp chill of this place.

Not that he needed such a luxury to show her how much she meant to him.

Somehow, his lips found hers, the sort of kiss that bespoke everything he was feeling inside, a kiss that stirred the blood and made other parts sit up and take notice.

“I love you, too, Mouse,” he murmured against her softly parted lips. His hands lifted, cradling her face, feeling the warm wet tears on her cheeks. He’d never confessed a more potent truth. He couldn’t point to precisely where or when it had happened, but it had. From the moment she’d first kissed him back in that library, he’d not been able to get her out of his head or his heart.

“I don’t know why,” she gasped, but it was a happy sound, one that told him she was as moved as he was. “I’ve been very difficult about all of this.”

He rubbed a thumb along the wetness of her cheek. “Ah, but I love that about you, too.”

She pulled away. “How could you possibly love the fact I am difficult?”

He let her go, not because he thought it was good idea, but because he had an idea to put his hands to a better use. “Mouse,” he told her. “I love everything about you.” He ran his fingers up her arm until they found the front of her bodice. Found the hidden brass eyes and opened them with a practiced flick. “Number One, I love the way you argue with me, and the way you make your endless lists. Number Two, I love the way you look in the morning, with your hair sticking out in twenty directions.”

She made a strangled sound. “That is actually three items. You don’t have any idea how to make a proper list.”

His hand slipped inside her bodice to flirt with the edge of her corset and the thin, worn cotton of her chemise. Even in the darkness he knew they were plain, white, unadorned—and he no longer imagined ever wanting them any other way. “Well then, Number Four, I love the fact there are always ink stains on your right hand, from writing God knows what. Probably from making lists about why marrying me was a very bad idea. Or perhaps you are writing your own salacious novel,” he teased. “The Lustful Librarian.”

“I write nearly every day in my journal, if you must know.” But it was clear from the slight hitch of her voice she was trying not to laugh now.

“Well then, I love that about you, too. There isn’t a thing you could do or say that I wouldn’t find perfect. I love the way you know the oddest things, from all the obscure books you’ve ever read.” He paused, his hand stilling, then added, “I even love the way you are scrunching your nose right now.”

Mary lifted a hand to her face. “How did you know I was scrunching my nose?” she asked in wonder. To know that he knew such a thing about her was one thing, but to hear him make a list . . . to actually catalog those things about herself she so often doubted, to tell her they were the very reasons he loved her . . . it boggled the mind.

“Because you always scrunch your nose when I say things that made you squirm.” She felt his hand slip deeper, beneath her chemise. Moaned as his fingers found the berry of her nipple and rolled it gently between his fingers. “But when I do things that make you squirm,” he added wickedly, “oh, that is a different look you give me all together.”

“And . . . ah . . . what look is that?” She felt breathless.

“Well, it has been a while, but if memory serves, your eyes go a little unfocused.” She felt the swoop of his finger over her mouth, testing, lingering. “Your lips part slightly, all but inviting me to take advantage. And then . . . then you usually do something unexpected.”

Her hand reached out through the darkness to cup his straining length. “Like this?”

“Oh, God, Mary, just so,” he said hoarsely.

His words sounded raw. Driven from an inner need that matched the aching echoes of her own body. She wanted to stoke that fire, push him over the edge, the way he always seemed to push her. And so her fingers found the buttons of his trousers, working at them until he sprang free into her hands. Her mouth found him in the darkness, the feel of his skin against her lips impossibly warm, impossibly right. She ran her tongue up the length of him, tasting salt and musk. As her tongue swirled warm circles on him, his visceral groan told her more than any list how she pleased him.

But then he reached down to loop his hands beneath her arms, hauling her to his mouth, turning the tables. He kissed her until she was moaning, writhing against him. Until she was climbing onto his lap, straddling his body’s erection, her hands tangling in his hair and pulling him into her mouth, and then, finally, to the entrance of her ready body.

“Good Christ,” he gasped, as if he was only just realizing what she was about. “Mary, wait . . . we don’t have the French letters—”

“I know,” she whispered, her mouth flush against his own, turning herself over to the truth of it. “We don’t need them anymore.”

West groaned his acquiescence, sinking into the blinding comfort she offered him, the act as primal as any he had ever known. He gripped her hips, guiding, steadying.

Gritted his teeth against the urge to spill instantly into her heat.

He discovered, then, that it was an entirely different act, loving a woman with no barriers between them. It was a joining of far more than bodies: it was a joining of trust. No one had ever put so much faith in him.

He turned his fractured thoughts to a different task, straining toward her, his teeth nipping against the soft skin of her neck as she leaned over him. The motion ripped a whimper from her, echoing off the stone ceiling, bouncing off the walls. She began to twist over top of him, her hands gripping his hair, gasping out loud.

I love you. The words had already been offered, but still they echoed like a drum beat through his head. So he said them, blowing softly across her skin, nibbling between syllables.

“I. Love. You.”

“I love you, too.” She choked out a cry, and then he felt her hands pulling his mouth up and into hers, her tongue reaching, searching against his own. He kissed her back, putting everything he had into her pleasure. But while his voice might now be curtailed, each thrust, each moan, repeated the improbable, unavoidable refrain. He loved this woman.

She was voracious. Perfect. His.

And she loved him back. He could hear it in her panting sighs, feel it in the way she moved on top of him, every secret stripped away. More importantly, he could accept it now without pushing the idea of it away. She knew the worst pieces of him, and chose to love him anyway.

And he would spend his life showing her how grateful he was for that trust.

He reached a hand down to where they were joined, searching through the slick darkness, seeking the place that would make her fall apart. But she was in total control of this moment and she twisted away from him, leaning forward and bracing her hands on his shoulders, finding her own rhythm. He lay back and let her go, willing to go wherever she wanted.

And while he couldn’t see her release, he could feel it building, the rippling tightness of her quim, the lovely, stuttered breaths. He turned himself over to ensuring her pleasure, holding himself back as well as a man might, given the extraordinary circumstances, waiting until he knew she was there, hanging on that precious edge. He pulled her down tight onto him, gripping her hips, and then she gasped his name, the perfection of her release upon her.

And then, only then, did he pour himself inside her.