Page 93 of A Caribbean Heiress in Paris
“I would never let anything happen to ye, mo cridhe,” he whispered in her ear. “You and I have too much living yet to do.” He nuzzled her hair, inhaling her scent deeply. His hands trembled as he ran them over her back. She sighed into his chest, tremors still coursing through her.
“Sir! Lord Darnick,” one of the constables called for him, but he shook his head.
“Lord Darnick is my brother and I need a minute in private with my wife,” he bellowed, and the men retreated quietly from the room.
“I do enjoy when you employ your earl-in-training-school voice,” Luz muttered, looking up at him.
“My what?” he asked, marveling at the fact that he could be smiling at a moment like this.
“That way that you project your voice to send everyone scrambling.”
He laughed ruefully and kissed the top of her head. “I’m not an earl anymore, wife,” he reminded her. She only lifted a shoulder.
“The only title of yours I care about isdevoted, orbesotted,” she informed him before bringing his head down and pressing her mouth to his. “Doting, adoring husband of Luz Alana Sinclair-Heith.”
“I’ve got my work cut out for me, then,” he murmured against her warm skin, weightless in his joy. It had happened so stealthily, so swiftly he’d almost been unaware of it until it was a resounding, undeniable fact. Swept away by all that sweetness right into the deepest waters.
This woman owned him. Every inch of him was hers.
“If anything ever happened to you, Luz Alana...” he said breathlessly from the tightness in his throat.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she assured him and squeezed her arms around him like a vise.
“I need you safe and by my side, always.” He took the palm of her hand and pressed it right over where his heart was only now slowing down. “This is you.”
“Are you saying I’m your heart, Evan Sinclair?”
“You are more than that, mi mujer.” She smiled a little wetly at that. “You are my heartbeat.”
“You are never getting rid of me now.” She beamed at him. “Now, kiss me before our entire family stampedes into this place.”
He shook his head, heart pounding, dizzy from love, and applied himself to doing just that.
Twenty-Five
“I’m sure some women enjoy being inspected like a champion thoroughbred while they sleep, but I don’t,” Luz muttered, much later when they were ensconced in each other’s arms laying in front of the fire in their bedroom—with everyone they loved accounted for and safe in their beds.
“I wasn’t inspecting, I was admiring.”
She grumbled, making him laugh, and he kissed her again. The day had been...long. Childers eventually confessed to setting the warehouses on fire and intending to extort money from Luz Alana. He’d be spending the night—the next many, in fact—locked safely away in a cell.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you he’d sent me letters,” she said, remorseful, and he hated seeing that shadow behind her eyes.
“There is nothing to be sorry for. If I hadn’t been behaving like an utter ass, you would’ve felt like you could tell me.” She nodded, her bottom lip caught under her teeth. “I hope, next time, you know that there is nothing that I won’t do for you. That I would lay down my life, everything I have, to keep you safe.”
She looked up at him and pressed a kiss to the scruff on his jaw.
“I don’t think I’ve been more certain of anything in my life.”
He clasped his arms around her, making her squeal, and rolled them until she was on top of him. Those beloved eyes blinked open slowly, and despite the smile on her lips he could see the remnants of what she’d experienced today. The urge to be inside her, to affirm this union of theirs, was a yawning need under his skin. He could see she needed it too.
“I love you,” she whispered as she bent down to kiss him.
Those words made his heart feel close to exploding.
“En español,” he begged, making her laugh.
“Te amo, Evan. Mi cielo, mi hombre.” His heart clenched from the strength of that assertion.
