“I love you, too,” she said.
He took her face in his hands and kissed her, once, deeply, on the mouth. “I mean,” he said, “I really love you.”
She quirked a brow. “Is this a contest?”
“It is anything you want,” he promised.
She grinned, that enchanting, perfect smile that was so quintessentially hers. “I feel I must warn you, then,” she said, cocking her head to the side. “When it comes to contests and games, I always win.”
“Always?”
Her eyes grew sly. “Whenever it matters.”
He felt himself smile, felt his soul lighten and his worries slip away. “And what, precisely, does that mean?”
“It means,” she said, reaching up and undoing the buttons of her coat, “that I really really love you.”
He backed up, crossing his arms as he gave her an assessing look. “Tell me more.”
Her coat fell to the ground. “Is that enough?”
“Oh, not nearly.”
She tried to look brazen, but her cheeks were starting to turn pink. “I will need help with the rest,” she said, fluttering her lashes.
He was at her side in an instant. “I live to serve you.”
“Is that so?” She sounded intrigued by the notion, so dangerously so that Gareth felt compelled to add, “In the bedroom.” His fingers found the twin ribbons at her shoulders, and he gave them a tug, causing the bodice of her dress to loosen dangerously.
“More help, milady?” he murmured.
She nodded.
“Perhaps…” He looped his fingers around the neckline, preparing to ease it down, but she placed one hand over his. He looked up. She was shaking her head.
“No,” she said. “You.”
It took him a moment to grasp her meaning, and then a slow smile spread across his face. “But of course, milady,” he said, pulling his jumper back over his head. “Anything you say.”
“Anything?”
“Right now,” he said silkily, “anything.”
She smiled. “The buttons.”
He moved to the fastenings on his shirt. “As you wish.” And in a moment his shirt was on the floor, leaving him naked from the waist up.
He brought his sultry gaze to her face. Her eyes were wide, and her lips parted. He could hear the raspy sound of her breath, in perfect time with the rise and fall of her chest.
She was aroused. Gloriously so, and it was all he could do not to drag her onto the bed then and there.
“Anything else?” he murmured.
Her lips moved, and her eyes flickered toward his breeches. She was too shy, he realized with delight, still too much of an innocent to order him to remove them.
“This?” he asked, hooking his thumb under the waist-band.
She nodded.
He peeled off his breeches, his gaze never leaving her face. And he smiled-at the exact moment when her eyes widened.
She wanted to be a sophisticate, but she wasn’t. Not yet.
“You’re overdressed,” he said softly, moving closer, closer, until his face was mere inches from hers. He placed two fingers under her chin and tipped her up, leaning down for a kiss as his other hand found the neckline of her dress and tugged it down.
She fell free, and he moved his hand to the warm skin of her back, pressing her against him until her breasts flattened against his chest. His fingers lightly traced the delicate indentation of her spine, settling at the small of her back, right where her dress rested loosely around her hips.
“I love you,” he said, allowing his nose to settle against hers.
“I love you, too.”
“I’m so glad,” he said, smiling against her ear. “Because if you didn’t, this would all be so very awkward.”
She laughed, but there was a slightly hesitant quality to it. “Are you saying,” she asked, “that all your other women loved you?”
He drew back, taking her face in his hands. “What I am saying,” he said, making sure that she was looking deeply into his eyes as he found the words, “is that I never loved them. And I don’t know that I could bear it, loving you the way I do, if you didn’t return the feeling.”
Hyacinth watched his face, losing herself in the deep blue of his eyes. She touched his forehead, then his hair, smoothing one golden lock aside before affectionately tucking it behind his ear.
Part of her wanted to stand like this forever, just looking at his face, memorizing every plane and shadow, from the full curve of his lower lip to the exact arch of his brows. She was going to make her life with this man, give him her love and bear him children, and she was filled with the most wonderful sense of anticipation, as if she were standing at the edge of something, about to embark on a spectacular adventure.
And it all started now.
She tilted her head, leaned in, and raised herself to her toes, just so she could place one kiss on his lips.
“I love you,” she said.
“You do, don’t you?” he murmured, and she realized that he was just as amazed by this miracle as she was.
“Sometimes I’m going to drive you mad,” she warned.
His smile was as lopsided as his shrug. “I’ll go to my club.”
“And you’ll do the same to me,” she added.
“You can have tea with your mother.” One of his hands found hers as the other moved around her waist, until they were held together almost as in a waltz. “And we’ll have the most marvelous time later that night, kissing and begging each other’s forgiveness.”
“Gareth,” she said, wondering if this ought to be a more serious conversation.
“No one said we had to spend every waking moment together,” he said, “but at the end of the day”-he leaned down and kissed each of her eyebrows, in turn-“and most of the time during, there is no one I would rather see, no one whose voice I would rather hear, and no one whose mind I would rather explore.”
He kissed her then. Once, slowly and deeply. “I love you, Hyacinth Bridgerton. And I always will.”
“Oh, Gareth.” She would have liked to have said something more eloquent, but his words would have to be enough for the both of them, because in that moment she was overcome, too full of emotion to do anything more than sigh his name.
And when he scooped her into his arms and carried her to his bed, all she could do was say, “Yes.”
Her dress fell away before she reached the mattress, and by the time his body covered hers, they were skin against skin. There was something thrilling about being beneath him, feeling his power, his strength. He could dominate her if he so chose, hurt her even, and yet in his arms she became the most priceless of treasures.
His hands roamed her body, searing a path across her skin. Hyacinth felt every touch to the core of her being. He stroked her arm, and she felt it in her belly; he touched her shoulder, and she tingled in her toes.
He kissed her lips, and her heart sang.
He nudged her legs apart, and his body cradled itself next to hers. She could feel him, hard and insistent, but this time there was no fear, no apprehension. Just an overwhelming need to have him, to take him within her and wrap herself around him.
She wanted him. She wanted every inch of him, every bit of himself that he was able to give.
“Please,” she begged, straining her hips toward his. “Please.”
He didn’t say anything, but she could hear his need in the roughness of his breath. He moved closer, positioning himself near her opening, and she arched herself closer to meet him.
She clutched at his shoulders, her fingers biting into his skin. There was something wild within her, something new and hungry. She needed him. She needed this. Now.
“Gareth,” she gasped, desperately trying to press herself against him.
He moved a little, changing the angle, and he began to slide in.
It was what she wanted, what she’d expected, but still, the first touch of him was a shock. She stretched, she pulled, and there was even a little bit of pain, but still, it felt good, and it felt right, and she wanted more.