Page 73 of Burning Secrets of a Lady's Pen
She didn’t know what that meant. They had no real significance.
“It is where we seem to do all of our private celebrating,” Corin explained with another chuckle.
Imelda’s eyes widened, the memory of them toasting to her literary success so long forgotten that she hadn’t even considered it. It felt insignificant now, what with everything that they had been through. And also as if it had happened years before instead of only weeks.
“Wait,” she said suddenly, realization dawning on her as he opened the door and ushered her inside. “We’re celebrating?”
“That remains to be seen,” Corin answered with a shrug. “You have my mother’s ring, yes?”
“On me?”
Imelda ought to have said no. She shouldn’t have had it on her. She wasn’t even dressed. Carrying around that ring was too telling, in her opinion, too apparent as to her emotions surrounding it if he were to know she had it on her, but she couldn’t lie.
Sheepishly, she turned it around from how she had tucked the diamond into her palm, pulling it off of her finger and holding it out to him.
It almost felt like offering a part of herself, which was ridiculous, seeing that it washisring. Her throat felt raw as he took the ring, a frisson of fear building within her.
What if he had changed his mind?
What if something else had happened, another unavoidable circumstance in which he was forced to choose his family over their love?
Before she could work herself up far enough to ask him any of those questions, Corin slid down to one knee in front of her, taking her hand in one of his as he stared up at her.
“Imelda Merrit, I have loved you since the first moment I met you. Every day since that day two years ago on your doorstep, life has felt like door after door closing in my face, but not the ones with you in it. You make me…want. And I know that’s a silly way to phrase it. But you make me want more. You make me want to be more. You inspire and push and make me madder than any living creature ought to be able to, but that is because you can get through to me where no one else can.”
Imelda inhaled shakily, her heart hammering in her chest as he spoke.
“I have regretted every day not knocking on that door again. I have regretted every day since finding you again the time lost between us and the inability to touch you as I wish. I love you. I love you beyond the point of distraction and more than I thought it possible to love another human being. I want to grow old with you, improving our craft and reading literary novels, both trashy and exquisite. I want to see your name on the inside of a book cover and watch your form change with the carrying of my child. I want all of that and more. But first, only, if you would do me the great honor of becoming my wife.”
The tears that had been building slipped past Imelda’s eyelashes, her face frozen as he drew the words from her heart to his lips.
“I thought that I wanted to be independent.”
Oh, drat. That hadn’t been what she had wanted to say, but the words were pulled from her, whispered into the air between them.
“I thought that I wanted to make my own way and that being published meant everything in the world to me,” she continued, gripping his hand tightly in her own. “I thought…until I realized that losing you, that not having you in my life, felt the way that it did. Oh, Corin, I could give up all my literary aspirations as long as I knew I had you,” she admitted with a sob. “Yes! Yes! A thousand times, yes! I will be your wife!”
A grin broke across Corin’s lips as he slipped the ring back onto her finger, but right side out as he rose fluidly from his knee to his feet.
“You will not have to choose between such happiness,” he promised her confidently as he lowered his face to hers.
Imelda laughed into the kiss, still so much more jarring than she had ever realized such a thing could be.
How could she have traded anything in the world for this?
He swept her off of her feet, his hands hot and demanding against her back as his tongue drew the outline of the seam of her lips until she gasped against him.
There were such fewer layers between them, her dressing gown ripped aside and off of her shoulders before she even knew what was happening.
Common sense whispered that they should stop, but she didn’t know that mistress any longer.
All she knew was Corin’s body against hers, his lips claiming her until all else ceased to exist.
Standing there, in the middle of the empty stables in nothing but her night clothes she had never felt more alive. His hands mapped the shape of her curves through her threadbare shift, his fingers indenting the skin beneath as she shakily lifted her own hands to try and even the playing field between them.
She didn’t know how many buttons were on a man’s suit, but she knew that there were too many.
Flashes of that line of hair from their day out boating emboldened her, her belly full of that same strange warmth that only he could inspire.
