Chapter Twenty-Nine

“I can forgive you,” she said, “because today you took on my problems as if they were your own. You deserve peace. God knows it’s something I’ve craved my whole life. I’m so happy you’ve found yours.” She put her arms around the back of his neck, breathing him in. Why was his scent so enticing?

She could feel his erection through his jeans, and tingles of pleasure shot up her spine. He seemed so genuinely sorry for his role in spying for the Slayers.

He pushed the saucepan off the heat, picked her up, and carried her to the bedroom, holding her tenderly as if she were a fragile piece of china. It didn’t take him long to strip off her dress and underwear, quickly following it with his own. “I thought we’d never do this again.”

“Me, too.” The raw ache for him she’d tried to keep tamped down pulsed inside her.

“Alice, I love you,” he said, gently pushing her onto the bed and holding her close. “I didn’t want to. That’s not why I came here.”

She reached up and pinched his nipple.

“Ouch!”

“You were saying you loved me. Don’t add dumb things.” She liked him vulnerable and open.

“Time to show you then.” He kissed her, not the kiss of savage hunger, but a slow, tender kiss, more lips than tongue, as he slid his thigh between hers.

His hand cupped her breast, squeezing it, kneading the nipple into a tight bud, and she groaned. “I want you to love me, too.”

“Trust you to demand it. I need to think.” Let him stew a bit. This contemplative Hugo was new to her, and she didn’t want it to stop.

“You think too much.” He swirled his hot tongue around her nipple.

She moaned. “I have to know I can trust you.”

He kissed each breast before moving down her body, stopping to kiss in sensitive places like her belly button, licking along the line that ran from her navel to her sex. She rocked her hips, desperate for his touch.

“You do. You’re letting me between your legs.” He settled there, licking along her seam, and she could feel herself opening to him like a flower finding sunshine. She cried out in pleasure as her orgasm exploded, rose up her spine, and vibrated like flickering lights behind her eyes.

She lay breathing heavily, thinking he was an addiction. Yes, she’d let him between her legs, but did she dare let him into her heart?

He rolled on a condom, covered her, and supported his weight by his elbows.

She opened her legs to receive him, wanting him with a desperation that she knew would haunt her all her life if she let him go.

He slid into her, and she thought the bliss would send her up to a cloud as she moved to meet his rhythm. He smelled divine. He moved deeper, harder, and soon she was meeting him thrust for thrust, squeezing and milking him, until she came again. He joined her arching and thrusting in deep, groaning as he emptied into her.

When he was finished he took her in his arms, just holding her, staring into her eyes. There was something gentle about his expression. Maybe he had found peace.

“That was wonderful,” she said. More like he was making love than fucking.

He pulled off the condom and tied a knot in it, throwing it on the floor. “I realized I love sex any way I have it with you. Rough sex and war went together somehow, but I can do without it.”

She shifted and looked into his eyes, saw him gazing back at her, his expression wary as if he was venturing into new territory. “Don’t change what you like in bed for me. I love what you do for me. I enjoy our games. You brought happiness and adventure into my life when everything around me was going to hell. I do love you, Hugo, even though sometimes you worry me.”

“You mean that? I thought I’d lost you forever.” A smile lit up his face.

She hugged him close, and he wrapped his great bear-like arms around her so that she was warm and relaxed. “You’ve gone places for me that no one else has ever gone. You don’t judge me. You make me feel loved and cared for. I’d be a fool to let you go.”