“Silence. You may get me silence.” Lady Vickers looked over at Sebastian again, this time with narrowed eyes. “You do understand my meaning, don’t you?”
He nodded, smiling.
“I’m going to my room,” Lady Vickers announced. “The two of you may do whatever you wish. But don’t wake me up.”
And with that, she left, shutting the connecting door behind her.
Annabel stared at the door, then turned to Sebastian, feeling quite dazed. “I think my grandmother may have just given me permission to ruin myself.”
“I’ll do all the ruining tonight,” he said with a grin. “If you don’t mind.”
Annabel looked back at the door, then back at him, her mouth hanging open. “I think she might be mad,” she finally concluded.
“Au contraire,” he said, coming up behind her. “She has clearly proven herself the sanest among us.” He leaned down and kissed her on the back of her neck. “I do believe we are alone.”
Annabel turned around, twisting in his arms. “I don’t feel alone,” she said, motioning with her head over at the door to her grandmother’s room.
He wrapped his arms around her and moved his lips to the hollow above her collarbone. For a moment Annabel thought he was dismissing her concerns and trying to be intimate, but then she realized he was laughing. Or at the very least, trying not to. “What?” she demanded.
“I keep picturing her listening at the door,” he answered, his words muffled.
“That’s funny?”
“It is.” He sounded like he wasn’t sure why, though.
“She had an affair with your uncle,” Annabel said.
Sebastian went utterly still. “If you’re trying to completely kill my ardor, there is no image more guaranteed to do it.”
“I knew my uncles Thomas and Arthur were not my grandfather’s, but Percy…” Annabel shook her head, still not quite able to believe the events of the evening. “I had no idea.” She started to sigh into him, letting her back mold against his front, but then she straightened like a bolt.
“What is it?”
“My mother. I have no idea…”
“She was a Vickers,” Seb said with quiet firmness. “You have your grandfather’s eyes.”
“I do?”
“Not the color, but the shape.” He turned her around, putting his hands on her shoulders and gently rotating her until they were facing. “Right here,” he said softly, touching his finger against the outer corner of her eye. “The same curve.”
He tilted his head to the side, regarding her face with tender concentration. “The cheekbones, too,” he murmured.
“I do look a great deal like my mother,” she said, unable to take her eyes off him.
“You’re a Vickers,” he concluded with a benign smile.
She tried to suppress a smile of her own. “For what that’s worth.”
“Quite a lot, I think,” he said, leaning down to kiss the corner of her mouth. “Do you think she’s asleep yet?”
She shook her head.
He kissed the other side of her mouth. “What about now?”
She shook her head again.
He pulled back, and she could only laugh as he silently counted from one to ten, mouthing each number while his eyes flicked up toward the ceiling.
She watched him with amusement, laughter bubbling up inside of her but not quite coming out. When he was done, he looked back down at her, his eyes aglow like that of a young boy waiting for Christmas. “What about now?”
Her lips parted, and she meant to scold, to tell him to be patient, but it just wasn’t in her. She was so in love with him, and she was going to marry him, and so many things had happened that day to make her realize that life was to be lived and people were to be cherished, and if she had a chance at happiness, she was going to grab it with both hands and never let go.
“Yes,” she said, reaching up to entwine her arms around his neck. “I think she’s asleep now.”
Chapter Twenty-six
If he were writing the story, Sebastian thought, as he swept Annabel into his arms, this would be the end of the chapter. No, the chapter would have ended at least three pages earlier, with no hint of intimacy or seduction and certainly nothing about the mind-shattering lust that surged through him the moment Annabel put her hands at the back of his neck and tilted her face up toward his.
One wasn’t allowed to put such things to paper, after all.
But he wasn’t writing the story, he was living it, and as he lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed, he decided this was a very good thing, indeed.
“I love you,” he whispered, laying her down. Her hair was loose, a dark wavy mass of delight. He wanted to trace every curl, to let each one wrap itself around his fingers. He wanted to feel them against his skin, tickling his shoulders, sweeping across his chest. He wanted to feel all of her, against all of him, and he wanted that every day for the rest of his life.
He settled down on the bed, a little bit next to her, a little bit on top, forcing himself to take a moment just to savor, and enjoy, and give thanks. She was looking up at him with all the love in the world in her eyes, and it humbled him, left him without words, without anything but this amazing sense of reverence and responsibility.
He belonged with someone now. He belongedto someone. His actions…they were no longer his alone. What he did, what he said…they meant something to someone else now. If he hurt her, if he disappointed her…
“You look so serious,” she whispered, lifting her hand to touch his cheek. Her hand was cold, and he turned into it, kissing the palm.
“I always have cold hands,” she said.
He felt himself smile. “You say it like it’s a deep, dark secret.”
“My feet get cold, too.”
He dropped one soft, serious kiss on her nose. “I vow to spend the rest of my life keeping your hands and feet warm.”
She smiled, that big, gorgeous, magnificent smile of hers, the kind that so often turned into her big, gorgeous, magnificent laugh. “I vow to…”
“To love me even if I lose my hair?” he suggested.
“Done.”
“To play darts with me even though I will always win?”
“I’m not so sure about that…”
“To…” He paused for a moment. “That’s all, actually.”
“Really? Nothing about eternal devotion?”
“Included in the one about my hair.”
“Lifelong friendship?”
“Right there with the darts.”
She laughed. “You are an easy man to love, Sebastian Grey.”
He gave her a modest smile. “I try my best.”
“I have a secret, though.”
“Really?” He licked his lips. “I love secrets.”
“Bend down,” she instructed.
He did.
“Closer.” And then: “Closer.”
He brought his ear very close to her lips. “I obey you in all ways.”
“I’mvery good at darts.”
He started to laugh. Quietly—a big, shaking thing that moved from his belly to his toes and back. Then he brought his mouth even closer to her ear. Close enough to touch, to let the heat of his breath wash over her. And he whispered, “I’m better.”
She reached up and took his head between her hands, shifting it so thather mouth was athis ear.
“Youare bossy,” he said before she could get a word in.
“Winslow Most Likely to Win at Darts,” was all she said.
“Ah, but by next month you’ll be a Grey.”
She sighed, a happy, wonderful sound. He wanted to spend his whole life listening to sounds like those. “Wait!” he said suddenly, edging himself away. He’d almost forgotten. He had come to her room that night with a purpose.