Owen stood in Mari’s bedroom, holding her hands in his. “You’re so beautiful.”
She smiled, and it was as though sunlight came streaming through the windows, despite the clouds outside. “I really do feel beautiful when I’m with you. It’s the way you look at me.” She looked down at her hands in his. “The way you touch me.”
He lifted her hands to his lips and gently kissed the tip of each finger, one at a time. She trembled with need each time his mouth brushed over her skin, and he loved it. Loved knowing that she was held just as much in thrall to him as he was to her.
It was something he’d never felt before. Something that had always been utterly elusive with other women. Something he’d only ever feel for Mari.
Love.
He loved her.
Maybe there were people who would say it was too soon. People who would claim that love had to grow over time. People who would say that the desire he felt for her was confusing his heart.
But Owen knew better. Knew, with perfect certainty, that Mari was the one for him.
She was the one he had been waiting for. She was the one he would fight for. She was the one he would unabashedly and unreservedly declare himself to this very moment. Before he took her to bed. So that she would never think the words had fallen from his lips in the heat of passion.
Just as she’d said, life was a series of risks. And this was a risk he would happily take a million times over. The risk of giving her his heart, even without the certainty that she’d give hers back.
“I love you.” He brushed the pad of his thumb over her lower lip, and when she trembled again, his smile widened. “I’m not expecting you to say it back to me tonight. I simply need you to know how I feel.”
Though she didn’t reply with words, when she wound her arms around his neck and went up on her toes to kiss him, he could feel how deeply she cared in the press of her lips against his.
She felt positively gorgeous, and he couldn’t resist sliding his hands from hers to run them over her lithe curves. Finally. Alone in his bed this week, he’d been unable to sleep while thinking of her just down the lane. So close yet so far.
The reality of being with Mari, however, was a million times better than his fantasies. The heat of her skin, her enticing scent, her sounds of pleasure as their kisses deepened. She tasted so sweet, and he grew more addicted to her with every nip of her full lips.
“Owen.” She shuddered as she whispered his name, her hands grasping at his shoulders as though she needed to hold tightly to him to stay upright.
He lifted her into his arms, walked to the bed, then lay her down across it. For a moment, he simply drank her in with his gaze. The way her soft, auburn hair floated across the pillow. The brightness of her eyes as she looked up at him. The sensuality of her mouth, pink and plump from their passionate kisses.
And when she reached up to pull him down with her, he knew what true happiness was. Not only sharing a bed with Mari—but, if she returned his love, sharing his life with her.
* * *
Mari felt like she was floating on air. How many times had she longed to be close to Owen like this? It felt as though she had known him for years, rather than days.
Though she wasn’t a virgin, she hadn’t been with many men. And as Owen kissed the pulse point on her neck, she realized none of those men had counted. They hadn’t even been practice for the real thing.
Nothing could have prepared her for Owen. For meeting him. For falling for him.
For hearing him say I love you.
As though he could read her mind, he said, “I’ve told you I love you. Now it’s time for me to show you.”
But though she hadn’t said the three little words to him yet, she wanted to show him too. Show him the emotions overflowing her heart.
A beat later, she rolled them over in the bed. A flash of surprise lit his features at her strength and agility. “I took four years of karate lessons,” she said with a grin.
Before she could feel shy, she reached for his T-shirt and pulled it up. His incredible washboard stomach muscles were revealed as he lifted his arms to help her draw the fabric up over his head.
Oh my. She had to touch him, had to run her palms, her fingertips, over his gloriously tanned skin, his muscles rippling beneath her touch. “I thought it was impossible to get a tan in England.”
“Any hint of sun and I’m guilty of whipping off my shirt in Gran’s garden, even in the middle of a workday.”
She could feel his heart beating fast and strong beneath her hand. “I’ll have to remember to stop by whenever the sun peeks through.”
And then she was giving in to yet another impossible-to-ignore urge, this time to kiss his bare skin, first his chest and then his flat stomach.
Beneath his jeans, his arousal pressed hard against the zipper. Yet again, she wanted to touch, to kiss. She didn’t so much as pause before first laying her hand over his fabric-covered erection, then shifting to kiss the straining denim. She felt him throb once, twice, then a third time as a groan escaped his lips.
She felt bold and desperately excited as she popped the button at the top of his jeans and pulled down the zipper. He helped her slide the denim off, kicking off his shoes and socks at the same time so that he was left wearing only boxers.
Every inch of Owen was physical perfection, from his broad shoulders, to his washboard abs, to his muscular arms and legs. Mari had never been with a man so good-looking. Though she remained straddling him on the bed, she rocked back on her heels, moving slightly away from him instead of closer.
“Mari?” Instantly attuned to her changing mood, he sat up with his back against the headboard so that he could hold her on his lap. “What’s wrong?”
Shyness nearly came rushing at her. But then she realized there was no reason to get caught up in nerves and insecurity when only one thing mattered. Not whether he was a ten and she was a six, but that they felt exactly the same way about each other on the inside.
She needed him to know what she hadn’t been able to put voice to before. “I love you.”
His smile took her breath away…and then his kiss did the very same thing.
There were no more nerves, no more insecurities—nothing but joy and pleasure as Owen’s mouth, his hands, were seemingly everywhere.
In a matter of seconds, he pulled off her shirt and jeans, leaving her wearing only a matching red and yellow bra and panty set, printed with the emblem of the royal family. If she’d known they were going to make love today, she wouldn’t have worn this. Although on second thought, maybe she would have, if only to feel his laughter rumbling between his chest and hers.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell Prince William about your intimate apparel,” he said through his laughter.
“You know Prince William?”
He kissed her, another hot brush of his lips against hers. “You didn’t hear it from me, but Gran just might be one of his favorite authors.”
“Of course she is,” she said, as proud of Mathilda as though she were her Gran too. “Who wouldn’t love her books, whether they’re royalty or a normal man and woman like me and you?”
Although there was nothing normal about the heat smoldering between them, even as they talked about royal princes and bestselling mystery writers. Mari had never been with anyone where loving and laughter—even about her silly Anglophile undies—felt so natural. Or where she felt so hungry, so needy, so aroused.
She’d never known it was possible to feel this way. For her limbs to be this loose and buttery while her belly fluttered and heat pooled at the tips of her breasts and between her thighs.
“You’re anything but normal, Mari.” He whispered the words between the kisses he was running over her shoulders, sliding first one bra strap and then the other to the side so that they fell away from her skin. “You’re extraordinary.”
She was certain that no one had ever thought so before. But after a week in London—a week where she not only didn’t turn tail and run at the bumps in the road, but had also found love—Mari was starting to believe that she actually was extraordinary.
It struck her that every woman should believe in herself the way she now did. Silently, she vowed to help her customers do that, whether with a book recommendation, by bringing in guest speakers in her store, or by connecting them a group of fellow readers.
“I love you,” she said again against his lips.
With every kiss, the heat between them leaped higher, making them both nearly feverish with need by the time they finally drew apart. She wasn’t sure who ripped the remaining fabric from her skin—it could have been either of them at that point—only that the feel of Owen’s lips and tongue and the light brush of his teeth over her breasts were the most amazing sensations she had ever felt in her life. So good that she couldn’t hold back her moans of pleasure.
But there was even more pleasure, more breathless sensation to come, as he slowly kissed his way over her breasts and stomach, his large hands cupping her hips as he lowered his mouth to her sex.
Mari arched up off the bed, giving him everything they were both so desperate for.
Again and again, he tasted her so that the bliss of his hands and tongue and lips on her skin was the only thing she knew. Soon, she couldn’t hold her tremors back. Tremors that spun into a soul-shaking earthquake as she catapulted into climax.
She didn’t know when he climbed back up her body, only that he was holding her, and stroking her hair, and telling her that he’d never seen anything so beautiful as she was in all his life.
She wanted to give him the same pleasure he’d just given her, but her limbs, her lips, wouldn’t obey any command but to wrap herself even more tightly around him.
As he levered up over her, she realized he’d already put on protection. Beyond thankful that she didn’t need to wait one more second to make him hers, she gained control of herself enough to roll them again so that his back was on the bed—then she took him inside with one thrust of her hips against his.
“Owen.” She stilled over him as pure joy washed through her. She wanted to remember this moment forever, wanted to imprint it on her brain and heart. But there was no stopping the instinctive roll of her hips against his at the same moment that he thrust even harder into her.
They reached for each other’s hands, their fingers threading together as they drove each other higher and higher. Needing to kiss him, she leaned forward, their hands entwined above their heads as their bodies sped toward bliss.
And as he groaned her name against her lips, his deep pleasure spinning hers out a second time, Mari could feel the love flowing from his heart to hers and back again.
At last, though much in her life remained uncertain, she finally knew peace and unconditional love in Owen Sullivan’s arms.