Page 83 of The Spy Who Loved Her
“I think ordinarywill be understating it a bit,” he said. “But I have long had my fill of danger. If the only hazard I risk for the rest of my life is an inconvenient tumble down the stairs, I shall count myself fortunate indeed.”
Yes, she thought. They were both of them fortunate. She had never thought she would find herself eagerto become a wife once again. But she longed for them already, those days that were still ahead of them, filled with a happiness that had at last fallen straight into the cup of her hands.
“I love you,” he whispered against the curve of her throat, and she could hear the long-silenced truth of it as the words vibrated against her skin. And again, in just a murmur pressed to the curve of her breast. A raw, vulnerable sort of honesty that had been there all along, scrawled into the spaces between words, etched within longing glances, hidden within each kiss, every touch.
He hissed at the slide of her hand over the sleek muscles of his abdomen, a yearning sound dredged up from deep within him. A powerful man rendered helpless with only the lightest strokes of her fingertips. There in the cradle of her thighs he stood already at attention, the front placket of his trousers straining to contain him.
“Emma.” Her name was dragged from his lips on a rough exhale. “For God’s sake. Don’t torture me, I beg you.”
A laugh trickled up her throat; light, airy, unburdened. “You’ll just have to suffer it,” she said. “In your condition—”
His dark eyes flared with heat at the challenge. The world tilted abruptly in a dizzying spin, and there was the puff of sheets around her as her back hit the mattress. “Rafe! Your hand!” she cried, clutching at his shoulders.
“I’d have to be dead or dying to let that stop me,” he said, as he wedged his hips between her knees. “My fingers are set and bandaged. There’s not much else that can be done for them.”
“But they must hurt something awful.” She gasped as the fingers of his good hand slipped between them, sliding through the curls at the apex of her thighs to the hot, damp flesh hidden beneath in a slow, lingering stroke that sent a streak of fire through her veins.
He muffled a groan against the curve of her shoulder, and a fine tremor slid down his spine. “Right now—right now I can promise you that nothing aches even half so much as my cock,” he said with such depth of feeling thatshe threw back her head and laughed.
At least until she heard the pop of buttons and the rustle of fabric. Until she felt the blunt pressure of him between her thighs, and the slow, heavy glide that followed provoked a sigh of satisfaction.
“God, I love you.” It was a deep rumble of sound, half-stifled against her lips, and his hips moved in small, helpless nudges, as if he couldn’t quite get close enough. The fabric of his trousers rasped the sensitive skin of her thighs, each tiny motion setting nerves alight with sensation.
Her hands threaded through his dark hair, and her lips clung to his between panting breaths. Her back arched, her hips catching the lunge of his, pleasure spiraling out from the lambent heat deep in her belly until it touched even the very tips of her fingers, her toes.
It had always been like this between them. But now they did not hold them back, those love words which had so long remained unspoken. They were traded now in whispers, in sighs, in long, luxuriating moans.
This was how it was meant to be, she thought, in those last few moments before thought deserted her completely. Tender moments shared with a man who loved her completely, who wanted her so desperately that he hadn’t managed to spare the time even to remove his trousers. A man who would not maintain separate bedchambers and separate lives, but one who would hold her through the night, and in whose arms she would wake each morning.
A man who would likely debauch her on every surface, in every room of the house, if given half a chance.
Her very own happily ever after. No—theirvery own happily ever after. Because he would treasure it every bit as much as she would.
Chapter Twenty Nine
You’re thinking of Josiah,” Rafe said.
Emma lifted her head from where it had been pillowed upon his chest. “How did you know?” she asked.
“You must’ve sighed ten times in as many minutes,” he said, chuckling at the surprised expression that flitted across her face. “Emma, he’s only been gone a week. And he’s written you twice already.” She’d read and re-read those treasured letters at least a dozen times, and scrawled out more than a few of her own.
“I know,” she said, and settled down once again. “I know. I just—I always miss them, when they go.” There was a slice of tragedy in the words; a loss no less profound for the fact that they had not been children she had brought into the world. Still they were the children of her heart whom she had had to send off into it. Each child took a piece of her heart with them when they parted.
She had held herself together just long enough to see Josiah off with a fond embrace and a proud smile. But she had maintained that strong façade only until the carriage had cleared the street, and then she had sobbed in Rafe’s arms for the rest of the evening. And Peter was not so very far behind Josiah. Then would come Helen, and then Elias, and then Joyce. By Rafe’s count, Emma would likely lose four more of her children before the year was through. But there would be others. They wouldn’t replace the children that had gone in Emma’s heart, but they would fill a little of that void they had left behind them.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, wrapping his arm around her to pull her closer. “I hate to see you so bereft.”
“Just hold me when I need you to,” she said on a sigh. “It won’t pass, but it’ll grow a bit easier to bear.”
She had been bearing it all alone these last years. Grief shared was grief halved, but there had been no one to shoulder the burden of it with her. Noone who would understand it quite like she did, nor feel it so deeply.
“Oh,” she said, breaking that comfortable silence that had settled between them. “Miss Finch is quite cross with me, since all of her copies of Shakespeare’s sonnets have been thoroughly destroyed. I thought I might take some of the older children to a book shop with me to replace them. Would you—” She broke off abruptly as she glanced up at his face, and winced. “Never mind. Next time, I suppose.”
“What!” Rafe protested, lifting one hand to his face as if he might feel the fading bruises upon it. They had ceased to ache as abominably as they once had, but he feared it would still be some time before they were fully healed. “It can’t be that bad, can it?”
“Somehow, it’s worse than it was only a week ago. The purple was quite pretty, honestly. But now the bruises have gone all sickly yellow and greenish. I’m afraid you look rather like a lemon that is somehow at once overandunder-ripened.” She offered him a consoling pat upon the chest. “Naturally, I still find you handsome.”
A laugh caught somewhere in his chest. “But the children?”
