Page 38 of Obsession: The Unspoken Sin
Please, marry me, Alice.
Alice kept still, afraid to move.
Laurence wants to marry me.
“You want to marry me?” she repeated quietly, reverently, hardly daring to believe…
“That’s all I want. A future with you and Laurel and…” He held her gaze. “Laurelia, Laurina, Laurette, Laurelei…”
Alice caught a shuddery gasp behind her fingers. “You remember that?” she whispered.
Somehow, Laurence’s gaze grew even more tender. “Oh, Alice, I remember every moment with you. They’re engraved right here.” As he spoke that avowal, Laurence touched a hand to his heart.
Hers hitched in reply.
When she’d teased him with that promise for his future, she’d been but a girl. It hadn’t been until she was a young woman that Alice discovered she wanted tobearhis children.
“Alice,” he murmured. “Please, say you’ll spend forever with me. I want the rest of your tomorrows.”
With him kneeling, she lowered her brow and touched it to his. “Yes, Laurence, I want you.” He’d given her the greatest gift, the one she’d never believed to have. He’d given her the right to choose, and she chose him. “I want to spend forever with you. I chooseyou.”
With that pledge, she cupped his face in her hands and proceeded to show him every way in which he was her choice. She kissed him desperately, madly, deeply, with an unceasing urgency. She parted her lips and invited him in.
Laurence gave her what she craved.
He thrust his tongue inside and tangled that hot flesh against hers. He wielded it like a brand, burning her from the inside out, until she sagged like a pile of ash at his feet while the embers kept her afire.
Panting, Alice gripped Laurence’s hands and dragged them to her breasts. She placed each large, open palm, one against each mound.
“Touch me here,” she ordered desperately.
“Anything you want,” he said, his voice as ragged as if he’d run the same route as the great Greek god Apollo.
Anything she wanted. That was the difference between this man and all others. He allowed her agency of self, of surrender, of her future, of their future. And it was the headiest of fine wines that she’d sampled at the Devil’s Den.
A sharp ache settled between her legs, a fierce throbbing, somehow exquisite in its pain.
Moaning wildly and wantonly, she rocked her hips. They moved of their own volition.
“I’ve never felt this way.” She broke their kiss long enough to make that raspy confession.
“I’ve never known it could be like this.”
He continued to palm her breasts through the fabric of her dress; he teased and tweaked her over-sensitized nipples.
Alice’s eyes slid shut and she drew in and exhaled slow, low, unsteady breaths.
“I want to show you all of how it can be,” he said raggedly, “but we should stop. I want to wait until I do right by you.”
The anguish in his voice revealed the very fine grasp he had on self-control and restraint.
Alice lovingly stroked her fingers through his delicious, loose golden strands.
“You’ve always been honorable. The most respectful and respectable gentleman,” she said throatily.
Laurence nodded unevenly. “I try to be.”
She knew. He made as if to ease away from her, but Alice grabbed his hands and anchored them to her breasts. His fingers curled into the flesh, and she bit her lower lip as a fresh wave of hungering bolted through her.
