With one last nip, he released her breast and brought his face back up to hers. His breathing was ragged, his muscles tense.
“Touch me,” he said hoarsely.
Her lips parted, and her eyes found his.
“Anywhere,” he begged.
It was only then that Lucy realized that her hands were at her sides, gripping the sheets as if they could keep her sane. “I’m sorry,” she said, and then, amazingly, she began to laugh.
One side of his mouth curved up. “We’re going to have to break you of that habit,” he murmured.
She brought her hands to his back, lightly exploring his skin. “You don’t want me to apologize?” she asked. When he joked, when he teased—it made her comfortable. It made her bold.
“Not for this,” he groaned.
She rubbed her feet against his calves. “Ever?”
And then his hands started doing unspeakable things. “Do you want me to apologize?”
“No,” she gasped. He was touching her intimately, in ways she didn’t know she could be touched. It should have been the most awful thing in the world, but it wasn’t. It made her stretch, arch, squirm. She had no idea what it was she was feeling—she couldn’t have described it with Shakespeare himself at her disposal.
But she wanted more. It was her only thought, the only thing she knew.
Gregory was leading her somewhere. She felt pulled, taken, transported.
And she wanted it all.
“Please,” she begged, the word slipping unbidden from her lips. “Please . . .”
But Gregory, too, was beyond words. He said her name. Over and over he said it, as if his lips had lost the memory of anything else.
“Lucy,” he whispered, his mouth moving to the hollow between her breasts.
“Lucy,” he moaned, slipping one finger inside of her.
And then he gasped it. “Lucy!”
She had touched him. Softly, tentatively.
But it was she. It was her hand, her caress, and it felt as if he’d been set on fire.
“I’m sorry,” she said, yanking her hand away.
“Don’t apologize,” he ground out, not because he was angry but because he could barely speak. He found her hand and dragged it back. “This is how much I want you,” he said, wrapping her around him. “With everything I have, everything I am.”
His nose was barely an inch from hers. Their breath mingled, and their eyes . . .
It was like they were one.
“I love you,” he murmured, moving into position. Her hand slid away, then moved to his back.
“I love you, too,” she whispered, and then her eyes widened, as if she were stunned that she’d said it.
But he didn’t care. It didn’t matter if she’d meant to tell him or not. She’d said it, and she could never take it back. She was his.
And he was hers. As he held himself still, pressing ever so softly at her entrance, he realized that he was at the edge of a precipice. His life was now one of two parts: before and after.
He would never love another woman again.