Abruptly, she pulled away and skewered him with her gaze. “Promise me you told Heinrik the truth, and this will, indeed, be your last mission.”
With his lips heated by her kiss, Toby smiled into her eyes as the uncertainty that had plagued him fell away. “I swear this is, was, and will be my last mission for Winchelsea.” His gaze locked with hers, he paused, then said, “Ask me later why I’ve been struck from his list of active agents, but for now…”
He couldn’t get enough of the fire in her eyes; he would warm his heart with it, hopefully for the rest of his life. “For me, when the Prussians arrived… for the first time in my life, I knew real and true regret. Regret that, if things went awry and I didn’t survive, I would never be your husband. That I would never again have the joy of waking with you in my arms. That you and I would never get to create and share the future we’ve planned.”
He lowered his head and, gently, touched his lips to hers in a kiss laden with the potent emotions he could no longer hide. He drew back enough to whisper across her hungry lips, “I love you.” He kissed her again, and this time, when he drew back, her lids rose, and stars shone in the gray depths of her eyes. He smiled at the sight and admitted, “Until the past weeks spent with you and the children, I didn’t—saw no reason to—acknowledge love, in all its many aspects, as the power it truly is. You—all of you—showed me love’s reality, and that changed me. I see things differently, I want different things, and finally, I understand why I need a family of my own.”
He drew a breath that swelled his chest and exhaled as if letting go of his past. “So yes, this was definitely my last mission, and from now on, I plan to devote my time and energies to building a rich and satisfying life with you.”
To his eyes, her smile lit the night. She drew his head to hers, and their lips met again.
A sudden hail had them breaking from the kiss to look up.
Only to realize from the grins on all the sailors’ faces that they had, until then, been putting on a show.
But now, the master rapped out orders, and the sailors scurried along the yards, and sails unfurled and caught the wind, and the hull lifted on the swell as they left Marseille far behind.
Toby huffed and said, “We’ve given the crew enough to talk about for the rest of the voyage.” His hand at Diana’s back, he urged her toward the companionway. “Let’s adjourn further discussions to somewhere more private.”
Diana laughed and, with her heart soaring, seized his hand and led the way.
To her cabin, where they closed the door on the rest of the world and let love, passion, and desire hold sway.
In the close confines as, in between searing kisses, they helped each other from their clothes, she sensed that it wasn’t merely garments they were shedding. It was their pasts—their earlier selves and their misguided notions of what each might want in life.
And when, driven by passion and desire, they reached for each other, simultaneously, they reached for all they wanted, all they needed, and all they could create and delight in together.
They reached for life.
Through love, guided by its light, they embraced their future and all it would contain.
For long minutes, they remained locked together, bare skins heating where they touched while they communed with lips and tongues and held each other close,close, as they savored—truly savored—that reality.
Their new truth.
But passion wouldn’t be denied, and desire was already pounding, an insistent tattoo thudding through them.
With hungry lips and greedy hands, they seized and plundered until they tumbled onto the bed, rolling and settling in the crisp sheets. Now, it seemed, there was time for joy and playfulness as his hands streaked over her sensitive skin, caressing and possessing, and she arched beneath him.
Murmurs of appreciation mingled with entreaties that grew ever more urgent.
I love you, I love youwas the song that beat in their blood. That surged and rose and compelled them ever on.
They came together in a rush of feelings—not merely tactile, not limited to the sensory, but more a whirlpool of blended emotions, deep and powerful, that transcended all facile descriptions.
The age-old compulsion captured and overwhelmed them, and they strove to satisfy its demands, moving in concert, in ever more desperate yearning.
The end, when it came, swept them high, then higher, until their senses soared.
Until finally, on a smothered shriek and a muffled groan, they shattered in a kaleidoscope of mirroring, complementary sensations.
For long moments, they hung, suspended in that exquisite, not-quite-of-this-world place, captured and caught, entirely in thrall.
Then he drew in a huge, shuddering breath. Propped above her, he hung his head, breathed deeply again, then he cracked open his eyes and, at close quarters, met hers. His voice deep and gravelly, he stated—a vow, a promise, a declaration—“I will love you until the day I die. And even then.”
She stared into his eyes, then with her lids falling on a sigh aching with deep-seated pleasure, she replied in even simpler fashion, “I will love you forever.”
* * *
