Page 272

She laughs through her tears, a small, broken sound, and I feel it everywhere. There's a lightness spreading through my chest that I don't have a name for, something I haven't felt since I was young enough to believe the future could simply be good.

She rises onto her toes, and I kiss her.

There's nothing careful about the kiss. It's months of wanting and weeks of fear breaking open at once, and she meets it with the same hunger, her fingers twisting in my shirt as though she's afraid I'll disappear if she lets go. I walk her backward across the study until the backs of her knees meet the sofa in front of the fireplace, and when I lower her onto it, she pulls me down with her.

I take my time with the sweater. I draw it up over her ribs and her breasts, over her head, and let it fall to the rug, and she's wearing nothing beneath it. For a moment, I just look at her in the low lamplight, and she lets me. She doesn't cover herself or look away. She lies back against the cushions and holds my gaze, and I understand that she's giving me this, all of it, because she's decided to.

She undresses me with shaking hands. My shirt, my belt, the rest. When there's nothing left between us, she draws me down over her and wraps her legs around my hips, and the heat of her skin against mine steals the breath out of my lungs.

I kiss her throat, her collarbone, the curve of her breast. I take her nipple into my mouth, and she arches under me with a low, broken sound. My hand slides down between her thighs and finds her already wet for me, and when I stroke her slowly, she whispers my name like a plea.

"Look at me," I tell her.

She does. Her eyes are dark and shining, and she doesn't look away when I guide my cock to her and push inside her, slowly, one deep inch at a time, until I'm buried completely and there's no space left between us. She gasps and clutches my shoulders. I hold myself there inside her, feeling all of her, the heat and the tightness and the way her body holds me, and I watch a single tear slide from the corner of her eye into her hair.

"Blaire," I breathe.

"Don't stop," she whispers.

"Please, Ross. Don't hold anything back."

So I don't.

I move inside her, deep and steady at first, then harder as she lifts her hips to meet every thrust. The sofa creaks beneath us. Her nails dig into my back, and I pin one of her wrists above her head, and she gives it to me willingly, her fingers lacing through mine, her body opening to me without a trace of hesitation. There's no fight in it this time, no anger, no fear. She surrenders because she wants to, and that trust undoes me more completely than anything she's ever said.

We hold on to each other as though our lives depend on it. Her breath breaks against my mouth. I feel her begin to tighten around me, and I don't look away, and neither does she. When she comes, she cries out my name and trembles beneath me, her eyes locked on mine, and the sight of her coming apart while she looks at me is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

I follow her a moment later. I drive into her one last time and come deep inside her with a groan torn from somewhere I didn't know existed, my forehead pressed to hers, her name on my lips, and for a few endless seconds, there's nothing in the world but the two of us.

Afterward, we lie tangled together on the sofa beneath the blanket I pull from its back, her body pressed along the length of mine, her head on my chest, her fingers tracing slow circles over my heart. Neither of us speaks for a long time. We don't need to.

Across the room, in the top drawer of my desk, there's a small velvet box. I bought the ring the week after I sat across from her in the archive conference room, when she was still furious with me and wouldn't look at me for more than a few seconds at a time. I didn't know then whether she would ever let me back into her life. I only knew I wanted her in mine, and that I wasn't going to let her go a second time without fighting for her.

She sighs against my chest and drifts toward sleep, and I press my lips to her hair and start planning how to ask her.

Chapter Forty-Three

Ross

Four days later, I find Blaire in the kitchen with a cup of coffee and her laptop open to Henrietta Lowell's proposal.

"My mother wants everyone at the house for dinner on Friday," I tell her.

"Just family. Seven o'clock. She's asked for something a little dressier than usual, so you might want to wear something nice. The car will come for us at half past six. And she'd like the boys there too, in proper shoes, if we can manage it."

Blaire looks up at me over the rim of her cup.

"Proper shoes," she repeats.

"Her words."

"For a family dinner."

"She's been in a mood," I say.

Blaire studies my face, and I keep my expression neutral and let her. Then she shrugs and turns back to her laptop.

"Friday," she says. "Proper shoes. Got it."