Page 56 of Lord Appleby's Gorgeous Imposter
Not there.
His bathing room?
No, not there.
His dressing room?
There!There he stood. His frock coat gone, his waistcoat too, he stood in his shirt, breeches, and boots. Shocked at her sudden appearance, he questioned her with those magnificent blue-green eyes.
“I…I return to you. I return to you,” she said as she took a step toward him, “as you have always returned to me. In all good times and bad. With honor and the finest of intentions. I want to be here with you but fear I am not worthy of a man so wise and caring.”
He’d grown wide-eyed at her words.
“I need you, Tate Cantrell.” She gulped back tears that threatened to destroy the moment she meant to be a new beginning for them.
Not a breath did she take before he had her in his arms. His hands to her cheeks, he took her mouth. His kiss was a brand, his lips hot, fierce, and bold. He kissed her so deeply, he bent her backward in his arms. Fighting for air, she broke away but caught him by the nape and brought him back to her.
“I want to be with you,” she told him between his ravishing claiming of her mouth. “Always. I can say it a thousand times, can’t I?”
*
He sank hisfingers into the coif of her hair and sent her pins flying. Her words were not love, but he could wait for them. “Say it each day, each hour. I will never stop you.”
She had come back to him, and he would never allow her to part from him for the rest of their lives. She was his, and for the first time in his life, he could go on assured of hope she could return his love.
She rose and kissed him back with a fervor that had him gathering her closer.
“I love you, Vivienne. I will until I die. You are the finest person I have ever known.”
“No, no. I am not.” She looked tormented. Why that was, he would learn. With tender care, he would tease it out of her.
“I love you. You with your optimism. Your loyalty to others. Your Louis and chickens and your ducks.”
She gulped back tears. “And Fred.”
“Dear me!” He laughed, even though he felt hot tears of his own form beneath his eyelids. “How could I forget Fred? The poor thing brayed at me like a vampire last spring when I appeared. He wanted to know how in hell I could be there and you were not.Where did she go?he seemed to cry at me.Where did my darling girl go?And I had no answers for him.”
She hugged him closer. “I want to go home, Tate. I want to go with you.”
“Do you, darling?” Now, like a rogue, he would ensure that—and so led her by the hand to his bedroom. Now it was his responsibility to show her how he adored her.
Viv followed him and stopped as she had not when she ran through before to scan the room. It was a grand affair furnished in heavy red and black Chinoiserie furniture. A century-old four-poster stood to one wall, a noble thing high off the ground. He wanted to be in it with her, forgetting the past, making new memories.
She dropped his hand and danced backward. “You’ll make love to me now.”
“Indeed I will.”
“You’ll show me how it’s done properly?”
Wicked ideas inflamed him at the mere idea of having her naked and writhing. “Not so properly at all, I vow.”
She giggled. He wanted to laugh with her, smile, embrace all the love he had for her that he had kept locked inside, far from his reach, far from her touch.
She paused in the midst of the carpet. “I’ve never done this with a man.”
“A fact I will honor.” He arched a brow and advanced toward her.
“I know how it’s done, however,” she said, waggling her finger at his clothes, “and without all these frills.”
