by Thea Devine
Her words made his blood run cold. That was never her. He didn't know how he knew that, but he did. She could never do that, not to him, not to any man to whom she had pledged herself. He knew it like he knew his own name. He was counting on it, in fact.
Wick crossed the room like lightning and grabbed her shoulders.
"You are NOT Innocenta ... I know it—I know you ..."
The words, the words—echoing, resonating... even as he spoke to her hooded face ... even as he comprehended what he was saying—and that it was true—and again, it took him utterly by surprise.
... / know you...
He did. He did.
"You know me not," Jenise said, her words dropping like stones.
They stood for a long moment; he made no move to uncover her face. This was the moment.
"I know you," he said, his voice hoarse. "I chose you."
232 / TheaDevine
"Until you weary of me."
"I will not tell you what is not true."
"I'm seeing what is true: you talk to my body, it's as if I am not here."
He lifted his hand and pushed back her hood, looked into her eyes, touched her soft cheek, her lips. Beautiful. Intelligent. Sensual.
His.
"I see you, Jenise. I know who you are. I know you."
"Brave words to get you what you want."
"I want you." And that was so true at this moment, the thought startled him. She was so perfect, in all ways, everything about her the epitome of his dream of the woman he had always envisioned as his wife.
He felt a hot urgency not to lose her, and a deep gnawing fear at even the thought. And it had nothing to do with his status or his money. "You want me. We may have already started a child. This is a beginning, then. And the rest, perhaps, we both have to learn. And this is what I can promise you: I will try to learn."
Jenise caught her breath. He was serious. He meant it, he would do it for her, for however long it held his attention, because nothing yet had come close to the appeal of having a wife and a child, two things that would be irrevocably and wholly his.
She looked into his eyes, and there, for the first time, she saw the vulnerability and just a hint of the child, the indulged, precocious, and perhaps unwanted child, who really, truly craved love and had yet to find it; and she saw, too; the man who had everything, of whom people only wanted the pieces that would give them countenance.
Did he not then, in all his amorous adventures, yearn for someone and something to love beyond the superficial and the ephemeral?
She saw him in that instant as lonely and lost, and she knew she must continually challenge him to keep vows and keep
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faithful, life-affirming things that would change him for the better forever.
There was no more time than that to parse it out, or contemplate how it worked into his character. Suffice it that she felt the first tremor of feeling for him that went far beyond the physical, even as she was swamped with desire for his touch, for his sex.
This was the moment. If she had thought she must live without his caresses and his sex, she would not. If she had mourned the loss of their sensual connection, it was now resurrected. And more than that, he had already done things so outside his usual behavior, he had proved his determination to keep his end of the bargain.
Not the least was, he had come. He had sought her out. He had chosen her and he meant to stand by that choice and all that it meant. He would try to learn to be better.
And he was a lover beyond compare. It seemed to her in that moment, with all she had perceived about him, that it was the best bargain in the whole of England.
"Jenise?" He took her hands firmly, drew her to the sofa and pulled her onto his lap. Onto the iron bar of his erection and the evidence that he still wanted her beyond all reason and was still utterly enthralled by her sex.
It was enough. That, and his pledge, and the promise of tomorrow. Some women didn't even have that much.
She couldn't bear to be apart from him for another minute. Her lord and master. He was all that and more, now. She'd been waiting so long for him. She settled her cunt tight against his penis, offered him her nipples, and the bargain was met.
