“Then you can hear it a hundred times more.” His lips are soft against my shoulder, the rasp of hair on his chin not so much. Yet it’s just as delicious. “A thousand times more.” His finger reaches up, pressing to my chin as he turns my head, bringing my lips to meet his. “A lifetime of more, God willing.”
Our mouths meet in a soft, teasing kiss.
“I can’t believe you knew,” I whisper, wondering on some level if I should be pissed while finding I don’t have it in me to be.
Call it post-coital bliss. Call it being loved. Being in love.
He manipulated me no more than I did him. And last night, out in the garden, there was no question of me refusing to come to him. I’d told myself the joke was on him. I wasn’t about to sleep with him for fear of him telling Griffin. I was going to sleep with him because I could. Because I wanted to. Because I needed him.
And my lofty plan was going so well until I refused to kiss him.
I’m not yours, your grace, and I never will be.
A frisson of discomfort washes over me. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to it. Accepting Alexander’s love, it turns out, is easy. Accepting that a duke loves me is a little harder to get my mind around. I know it makes no sense, but there it is. The duke and Alexander are one and the same, and I’ll just have to deal with my own sense of inadequacies. Get over myself.
“Where are you going?” I turn as our bodies separate, the air in the room cooling my back.
“I’m just checking the time.”
“Good plan. I don’t want to do the walk of shame while people are milling around.”
“Shame?” he drawls.
“As in the expression, not as in the sense of disgrace.”
“I should think you feel a sense of accomplishment, not disgrace,” he murmurs. His hand lightly slaps the nightstand a couple of times before I hear him pick up his phone “You’ve drained me. I feel like a shell of a man.”
“Lucky for you, I have a thing for old people.”
“What a coincidence. I have a thing for you, too.”
“Is that what we’re calling the thing poking me? What time is it?”
“We’ve got hours yet,” he murmurs suggestively.
“That can’t be right.” The room is getting lighter.
Alexander shuffles closer, pulling the pillow out from under my shoulder and throwing it God knows where. “Holland?”
“Hmm?” I smile as he presses his bristled cheek to mine, immediately going temporarily blind. “Was that your phone?” I think I might squeal, blinking away the dots of white swimming in front of my eyes.
“It was insurance.”
“I saw your phone. I didn’t know you were a devotee of the selfie. In fact,” I say, turning to face him as I wrap myself burrito-style in the sheet, “I noticed a distinct lack of images of you on the internet.”
His face lifts from his phone, his expression mildly mocking. “I’m not quite sure how to respond to that. You went looking?”
“Not exactly for you,” I reply, feeling my cheeks turn pink. “It pays to research a new company before an interview.”
“Hmm. Sounds like I have a stalker.” He presses his lips to my head. “I think I might like it.”
“Why aren’t there any images of you out there?” I find myself asking as I think back. “You know, falling out of nightclubs as a kid or tending to your duke-ly business, all staid and serious?”
“Because I go out of my way to avoid being in the public eye.”
I make a note to come back to that point later. There was barely anything to find on the Internet about him. Yes, I’d looked.
“Alexander?” The tone of my voice and the way I slide my foot down his calf gets me his attention. “What did you mean when you said you didn’t know love was supposed to feel like this?”
He slides a lock of hair behind my ear in an incredibly tender gesture.
“We don’t know a lot of things about each other.” His voice low, his words softly spoken. “And there are things we both have in our past that I’m sure we’d prefer not to share at all.” I nod, because agreed. “But if we’re going to be together, and we are,” he adds in a surer tone, “there are some things we ought to know.”
“Like?” I begin to wonder if I should’ve plucked this thread right now.
“Like how I know I love you because I’ve never felt like this before, which might sound wrong to you, considering I was once married.”
I don’t answer. Instead, I fix my gaze on the tattoo on the inside of his bicep. I bring my finger to it, tracing the roman numerals as I ask the question I’ve been wondering.
“Is this the date of your wedding?”
“No. The date I was handed the responsibility of the dukedom. The day my life changed forever.”
“It must be hard to lose someone.” In the way he did. I can only imagine how painful it must’ve been.
“How I felt about Leonie wasn’t at all like this.” He reaches out, drawing the backs of his fingers down my cheek. “Nothing quite so agonising. Nothing quite so perfect.” His hand retracts, and his gaze dips. “Ours was an open marriage, by design. There was passion, yes, but not just for each other. Hand on my heart,” he says, doing just that, trapping my own under his. “I have never felt like this.”
“You didn’t love her?”
“We didn’t love each other. I suppose we married because that’s what was expected of us. Because we seemed suited in our pursuit of others.”
“Okay.” But it’s far from okay, and something that’s a bit of a mind phuck, if I’m honest. But maybe it doesn’t have to be.
“Don’t, darling.” His thumb peels my lip from between my teeth. “It seems like a lifetime ago. Another world. A world I haven’t lived in for some time.”
I snuggle closer. “I don’t think I could ever share you.” Because I love you too much, I don’t say. Not yet. We have time.
“Holland.” My name is a low rumble through his chest before he presses a kiss to the top of my head. “I think I made it clear in the beginning, I have no intentions of sharing you with anyone else, ever.”
I hide my smile as I recall him saying so.
“Before I do something monumental, is there anything you’d like to tell me?”
“Monumental how?”
“That would be telling,” he answers with a sly smile.
“Well, you’re getting involved with a woman who has an absent mom whose boyfriend may or may not try to hit you up for money, if he thinks you have any to spare.”
“People have been trying to fleece me for years,” he answers, still wearing that same expression.
“I have a sister, Kennedy. She’s cool. A single parent. Her son’s name is Wilder, or rug rat, depending on how I’m feeling. And the people in our hometown love our family because we’re a good source of gossip.”
“Your mother?”
“To begin with. Also, Kennedy has never said who Wilder’s father is. But she owns her own business and pays her own bills, so it’s nobody’s business but hers.”