Page 103 of Cold November Rake

"Yes, it was," she agreed. "But I find I was right when I told him I would not love anyone the same way I loved him."

She felt him go still.

"I love you more."

Slowly, he smiled, the dear, foolish dimple appearing as she touched it with her fingertip.

"He was the love of my childhood," she said. "You are the love of my life."

He rose from the water all at once, a great rush and slosh sending half the bath over the side and onto the floor. He stepped out onto the hearth rug, naked and streaming, pulled her up from her knees and into his arms, and kissed her.

Slowly. Surely. As if he had all the time in the world and knew it.

Temperance opened her mouth to him, and his tongue swept in, possessive, making her gasp.

She didn't notice the water dripping from her nightrail until he pulled back.

"Edward! You have soaked me through. My nightrail is ruined."

He looked down at it, plastered to every curve and nearly transparent in the firelight. His eyes darkened.

"So it is," he said. "We had better take it off."

He gathered the wet hem in both hands and drew it up slowly, over her hips, her waist, her breasts, and over her head, dropping it beside his own ruined clothes. The fire was hot on her bare skin, and the air was cool where the water had been.

She shivered.

"Let me warm you," he said, and began to kiss her.

He kissed her shoulder, then the inside of her elbow, her wrist. The back of her neck, where her hair had come loose. He knelt and kissed the backs of her knees, and she giggled, trying to squirm away. He caught her by the hips, held her still, and kissed the curve of her waist.

"Edward. That tickles."

"Does it?" He kissed the small of her back, and then lower. "I had no notion."

He went on, chasing every drop of water on her skin with his mouth, until there wasn't a single damp inch of her he hadn't claimed. Somewhere along the way, her giggles turned to something else.

Her breath caught.

When his mouth found the soft skin on the inside of her thigh, she made a sound she didn't know she could make, and her hands went into his wet hair and held on.

He rose slowly, kissing his way back up her body, until he reached her mouth and kissed it. And again. And again, as if seven years of kisses he had refused her were owed all at once, and he meant to pay every one of them tonight.

Her knees gave way. So did his. They went down together onto the hearth rug in a tangle of limbs, and she landed half on top of him.

She looked down at him: his flame-bright hair dark with water, his blue eyes soft, his chest rising and falling under her hands.

Her hand moved lower, along the hard planes of his abdomen.

His skin was hot here, almost feverish, and the thin trail of hair below his navel led her hand downward. She cupped the head of his shaft.

He was half-hard already, the flesh warm and heavy in her palm, and his cock thickened between her fingers.

She squeezed gently, and his breath hitched.

When her thumb brushed across the tip, she felt the slickness there—a bead of moisture, clear and warm.

"Temperance," he breathed, his eyes glowing in the firelight.