“Let me see your love, Beth. Let me feel it.”
“For the rest of our lives, Iain?” His hands moved over her breasts, cupping and squeezing and coaxing. Then his right hand released her, slid up her chest and rested over her heart.
“Aye, Beth. For the whole of our lives, and whatever other ones God grants us. Share my life with me. The troubles and sorrows, the joys, the moments of silence and darkness. The pleasures of my bed, of our bodies entwined. Love me as my wife.”
Silently weeping, Elizabeth placed her fingertips on her lover’s brow and allowed them to sweep over his fanned lashes, his cheeks, the aristocratic nose. He was so beautiful to her, his features etched onto her fingertips, burned forever in her mind’s eye. He was going to give her beautiful babies, strong sons and gorgeous girls.
And he was going to love her every night until they were old, and then they would lie side by side and just hold each other.
“Beth,” he rasped, taking her hand and kissing her palm. “Marry me.”
“Yes,” she murmured, drawing him close. “Yes, I will.
I’ve always been yours. And you, my mad marquis, have always been mine.”
He smiled, and she felt the wicked curving of his mouth against her fingers. “Then this, Beth, is our wedding night. Let me give my vows to you.” They were the most beautiful vows in the world, whispered in her ear and confirmed by his passion. Before she drifted off to sleep in his arms, she felt his fingers roaming gently over her once more. In large letters, starting at the base of her neck and on down her spine, he wrote something that made her grip the pillow and bite her lip.
Not even the kiss he placed on the curve of her bottom gave her the joy, the euphoria of that one word, traced on her skin with his fingertip.
Mine.
“I have loved you, Beth, and only you, for so long. I will love you for eternity, and into the next lifetime, and the next after that. I will always find you, my Veiled Lady, in whatever incarnation you might be, because my soul will know its mate. It will always come home, to reside with you.”
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Temptation & Twilight Page 35
