She incited him to more, scraping her fingernails along his sensitized skin, sinking her teeth into his lower lip, rubbing herself along the length of his body with such evident pleasure, he almost spurted against her hip.

Finally he couldn’t tease her any longer. As she lay back against the pillows, he rose and pushed between her legs. She welcomed him, her expression flushed and sensual, reaching between them to caress his cock and guide him to her entrance.

Thrusting in, he rocked gently, working his way into her with care while she made the most delicious sound, a shaking, needy moan, and arched her torso up to him.

Then he slipped all the way in, pushed as hard against her flesh as he could while he kissed her with the force of all the fierce emotions raging inside. He drank in the sight of her, the velvet, excruciating sensation of her inner muscles gripping him as tight as a fist. He drank all of her up.

When he saw tears glittering in her eyes, he paused, breathing hard. “My Sophie,” he whispered. He loved saying that every chance he could, biting into the possessiveness like eating a ripe, succulent peach. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I am.” She stroked his back, and then a mischievous smile broke over her face. She said with genuine delight, “Thanks for asking, asshole.”

He burst out laughing and kissed her extra hard as punishment. He was almost certain it was punishment. To be sure, he kissed her again and again as he started to move inside her. She caught the rhythm and moved with him.

“I love you,” she whispered against his mouth.

Pleasure spiraled high on brilliant wings. He thrust harder, deeper, watching as her lips parted in a gasp. “I love you too,” he gritted. “You’re mine now, Sophie. Do you understand that?”

She nodded, touching his hair, his face. “You’re mine too. I don’t know what on earth I’m going to do with you—what we’re going to do with each other—but you are mine.”

“We’re going to make love bigger than anything else,” he said.

Words fell away as he lost himself in movement and fire. He took her with him, working her with just the right caress until she gasped and shuddered underneath him. Her inner muscles pulsed with her climax, which hurtled him over the edge.

Then he took her there again, and again, playing her body like a musician while he found his home inside, until the only thing left in the room was something shining, new, and pure.

Afterward, he wrapped her in his arms, and she rested her head on his chest. They dozed for a while, then suddenly Sophie swore and sat up. “Damn it, I forgot. I was going to meet Paul for lunch. I’d better give him a call.”

Nikolas settled back against the pillows, enjoying the shapely lines of her back. “Clearly something came up,” he drawled, letting his fingers walk down her spine.

She gave him a laughing glance over her shoulder. “Oh, snicker.”

He grinned. “You’d better make that call quick while you can. I think something is coming up again.”

* * *

After spending the night in Shrewsbury and meeting Paul for breakfast, they headed back to Westmarch and the manor house.

Their battle over who would drive the Mini was brief and idiotic. Finally he accused, “You don’t even want to drive. You said yourself you don’t like driving on the wrong side of the road.”

“Well… yeah.” She scowled. “You just held out your hand for my keys in that preemptory way, and then I had to argue on principle.”

He sighed. He was truly mystified by how happy she made him. “Get in the car, Sophie.”

She gave him an arch look. “I’m getting in the car because I choose to get into the car. Not because you told me to.”

He barked out a laugh.

Happiness. The emotion felt foreign, breakable. On the way back he reached over and laced his fingers through hers and drove one-handed.

Turning onto the property, he saw the troops had started to clear away the cottage rubble and the downed trees. When he switched off the engine, they looked over the land. An army camp had been erected. The doors to the manor house had been taken down, and there were two visible cracks in the outer structure.

“Ten million pounds is so much money,” she said doubtfully.

“You are the world’s worst negotiator,” he told her. “As serious as our problems are, Lyonesse’s treasury is rich. Now that we have a viable crossover passage, we need to have access to it. Take the deal.”

“Well, I don’t really have a choice.” She waved a hand at the mess in front of them. “I don’t have the means to fix this, and you deserve to have the property. I’m just a little sad about it. I had been planning on living here.”

“The land can be healed,” he said. “It’ll be green again. We’ll plant trees and restore the lake. We want to make this our permanent headquarters so you and I can build a house here. We’ll need to build several structures to house a permanent fighting force to protect this place. That tunnel is our only viable crossover passageway, at least for now. I think even the manor house can be repaired, at least enough to make the structure safe again, although Annwyn wants to tear it down. She says the very fact of it is offensive to her.”

Sophie made a face and sighed. “When I think of why the house was built in the first place, and the Dark Court perspective on what happened here, I can’t blame her. What would happen to the annuity?”

“That’s a question we can ask Paul.”