Gabriel stiffened. "No! That's-"

"Perfect!" Alathea enthused. "Bring it here."

"Thea…" Horrified, Gabriel watched Chance dart to the dresser and bring back the decanter filled with superbly aged French brandy. "I really don't need-

"Do be quiet." Alathea stared into his eyes, peering into one, then the other. "I keep worrying you'll start raving any minute. Please-just let Chance and me fix this. Then you can rest. All right?"

He looked into her eyes-she was perfectly serious. Gabriel bit his tongue, glanced at Chance, then nodded.

For the next fifteen minutes, he suffered their combined ministrations. He'd forgotten that Chance had reason to want to repay him with kindness. Sitting silent on his bed, he was smothered by kindness, by concern, by love. It was pleasant, even if he felt a fraud.

With Chance's help, Alathea stripped off his shirt, then gently tended his wound, apparently unaffected by the sight of his bare chest. Gabriel itched to change that, but… Chance was still in the room. Alathea lovingly cleansed the long cut, then bathed it.

He kept his gaze glued to her hair. Despite all she'd gone through, the three blooms were still firmly in place, his declaration acknowledged. He wasn't about to remove them, not intentionally. Not until he'd had their promise converted into words. Multiple times. While she fussed over his arm, he fell to rehearsing all that was to come, and how best to wring from her the words he wanted to hear without disturbing those blooms.

Leaving his arm to dry, she straightened and stepped closer, the warmth of her breasts bare inches from his face. He tried not to breathe while she investigated the bump on his head.

"It's the size of a duck egg," she pronounced, suitably horrified.

Gabriel shut his eyes as she probed, and tried not to groan. The cool cloth she laid upon the bump helped, easing the dull ache in his head. There was only one remedy for the ache in his groin. When she finally turned her attention to binding up his arm, Gabriel caught Chance's eye. It took a moment for Chance to understand his message. When he did, he looked shocked, but when Gabriel scowled, he hurriedly collected the cloths, towels, and bowl and eased himself out of the door.

The click of the latch coincided with Alathea's benedictory pat to the knot she'd tied in the bandage around his arm. 'There." She lifted her gaze to his face. "Now you can rest."

"Not yet." Gabriel clamped his hands about her waist and took her with him as he fell back on the bed. Her surprised yelp was smothered as he rolled, shifting them further onto the cushioned expanse, simultaneously trapping her beneath him.

"Be careful of your arm!"

"My arm is perfectly fine."

She stilled beneath him. "What do you mean, it's 'fine'?"

"Just that. I did try to tell you. It's only a surface cut-I'm not likely to die from it."

She scowled at him. "I thought it was serious."

"I know." Bending his head, he nibbled at her lips. "That did become apparent."

He surged over her; the sensation of her long, supple form tensing beneath him sent a wave of primitive possessiveness through him. A possessiveness colored by desire, by need, and by another emotion almost too vital to contain.

Still frowning, she braced her hands against his bare chest. "It must hurt. Your head must be throbbing."

"It aches, but it's not my skull that's throbbing." He shifted suggestively, thrusting his hips to hers.

Her eyes widened slightly as she shifted beneath him to cradle his erection at the apex of her thighs. Confirming his state. The look she sent him was the epitome of feminine-wifely-resignation. "Men!" With renewed vigor, she pushed him back and struggled to sit up. "Are you all the same?"

"All Cynsters, certainly." Gabriel rolled to the side, watching bemusedly as she reached for her laces. She was doing it again-taking a tack he hadn't foreseen. It took him a moment to fathom the why and wherefore, then he decided to follow her lead. He reached for her laces. "Here, let me."

He'd fantasized about peeling the white-and-gilt gown from her; in it, he could easily see her as some priestess, some pagan female designed to be worshipped. As he eased the gown from her shoulders, he worshipped, his lips anointing each silken inch of skin revealed. She shivered. Surging up beside her, he filled one hand with her breast, the soft flesh firming at his touch, heating as he kneaded. His other hand rose to cradle her head, long fingers searching for the pins that anchored the tight knot of her hair, careful not to dislodge the three white flowers adorning her crown-the evidence of his adoration. Her hair fell loose; his fingers tightened about her nipple. On a moan, she let her head fall back, offering her lips. He took them, took her mouth greedily, hungrily, aware there was no longer any need to hold back. She was with him. The same need drove them both, a fervent desire to hold, to possess, to reassure their souls they had survived the threat whole, still hale. To take a first tantalizing taste of the future, of the freedom to love that they'd won.

His plans degenerated into a sweet, reckless flurry of searching hands, of incoherent, breathless moans, of sweet caresses and heated kisses, of urgent fingers and quivering flesh. They stripped each other of every last stitch, content only when they lay skin to skin, long limbs entwined, cocooned within the chaos of his covers. He gathered her to him, moving over her, surrounding her. With one stroke, he sheathed himself in her heat.

She gasped and welcomed him in, her body arching, tensing, easing, then melting about him. Her surrender was implicit. Gabriel held tight to their reins. Tonight, he wanted explicit. So he rode her slowly, joining with her in long, slow, rolling thrusts, melding their bodies as they would meld their lives-deeply, completely. When he would have risen over her, she clung to him, holding him to her. He acquiesced and stayed, their bodies in contact from chest to knees. She undulated beneath him, all shifting silk and velvet lushness, a glory of womanly need.

He filled her again and again, until she gasped and clung.

He stilled, savoring her glorious climax, luxuriating in her satiated sigh. He waited until she'd softened fully beneath him. Then he moved again.

Still slow, still unhurried. He had all night and knew it. Not even this-the glory of her giving-was going to distract him tonight.

It was a minute or two before she stirred, before her body instinctively searched for, then found his steady rhythm. Her lids lifted, just enough for her to stare at him. Her tongue touched her lips; he delved deeper and she arched.

A glint of surprise glowed in her eyes.

An instant later, he felt her hands trailing, gently questing down the planes of his flexing back, down to caress his pulsing flanks.

She caught his gaze. "What?"

His grin was partly grimace, over gritted teeth. She was warm and soft and so inviting beneath him. "I want to hear you say it."

The words were low, gravelly, but sufficiently distinct. She didn't ask what it was he wanted to hear.

Beneath him, beneath the steady, relentless onslaught, she stirred. "I have to go home."

He shook his head. "Not until you say the words. I'm going to keep you here, naked and hot and needy, until you admit you love me."

"Needy? It's not me-"

He cut the words off with his lips. When he'd wiped them from her tongue and her brain, he drew back, rising up on his braced arms to drive deeper into her slick heat.

She gasped, panted, bit back a moan. Writhed just a little. "You… you know I do."

"Yes. I know. Even if I hadn't known before, I'd certainly know now, after your performance tonight. Now even Charlie and Chillingworth know."

Her state made her slow to respond. She stared at him, blinked, then weakly asked, "What? Why should they think…?"

He couldn't grin, although he wanted to. It was hard enough to find the strength to answer. "You half killed a man to save me tonight, and for the last two hours, you've been fretting and fuming over what anyone could see was little more than a scratch. You nearly made poor Chillingworth bilious."

Alathea wished she could summon a glare, but her body was prey to the sweetest heat, her senses far too interested in the glory building between them. Her mind was clinging to sanity by a thread. "I didn't know it was just a scratch. I was being led by the nose-"

"You were being led by love." He lowered his head and found her lips in a kiss laden with sensual promise. "Why don't you just admit it?"

Because she'd only tonight come to a full understanding of what this joint love of theirs entailed. The shared joy countered by the fear of loss-the sudden desperation when he, her life, had nearly been slain before her. There was a lot more to loving than she'd imagined. Loving this deeply was a frightening thing.

Lifting her head, she brushed her lips along his jaw. "If it's so obvious…"

He lifted his head out of her reach. "Obvious it might be. I still want to hear you say it."

He was filling her with long, slow, languid thrusts, enough to keep her fully aroused but not enough to satisfy. Her temper, unfortunately, was thoroughly subsumed by desire. "Why?" She arched, desperate to lure him deeper yet.

"Because until you do, I can't be sure you know it."

She opened her eyes fully and looked into his. Beneath his heavy lids, she could detect not the slightest glimmer of humor. He was serious. Despite all, despite the way her heart ached simply when she looked at him. "Of course I love you."

The set of his face-features etched with passion but with his expression somehow driven-didn't change. "Good. So you'll marry me."

There was no question in the words. Alathea sighed, struggling not to smile. He wouldn't appreciate it. The reins were in his hands and he was driving hell for leather for the church.

He didn't even appreciate her sigh. He stilled within her, looking down at her almost grimly. "You're not leaving this room until you agree. I don't care if I have to keep you here for weeks."

Despite her best efforts, her smile dawned, even though she knew the threat was not an empty one. He would do it if she pushed him.

He was a Cynster in love.

Letting her smile deepen, she reached up and brushed aside the lock of hair hanging over his forehead. "All right. I love you, and I'll marry you. There-is there anything more I need say to get you to go faster?"

She only just glimpsed his victorious smile as he bent to kiss her, but see it she did. She made him pay for his smugness by demanding more and even more of his expertise.

She nearly drove them both insane with wanting.

But it was worth it.

Later, when they lay wrapped in his sheets, not asleep but too deeply sated to move, Alathea lay with her head on his shoulder and hazily considered a lifetime filled with such peace.

For it was peace that filled her, an unutterable sense of having found her true home, her true place-her true love. That his love surrounded her, and hers him, she had not the smallest doubt. Only that, a deeply shared love, could fill her heart to this extent, so that she could not imagine any joy more fulfilling than lying naked in his naked arms, his breath a soft huff in her ear, his arm heavy about her waist, his hand splayed possessively over her bottom.

They were so alike. They would need to go slowly into their future, eyes open, careful not to step on each other's toes. There would be adjustments to be made by both of them-that was implicit in their natures. Yet while that future beckoned, rising like a new sun on their horizon, she was too comfortable, too sensually sated, to attend to it just yet.

She was comfortable, yes, and that was a discovery. That even now, fully aware of the latent strength in the body beneath hers, in the muscled arms that yet held her so gently, in the steel-sinewed limbs that pressed all along her length, even now, she was soothed, relaxed. Aware of the crisp hair beneath her cheek, exquisitely aware of his hair-dusted limbs tangled with hers. Aware to her soul of the warmth within her, of the firm member angled against her thigh. The entire reality left her deeply content.

Profoundly happy.

In bliss.

She closed her eyes and indulged.

He eventually stirred, his arms tightening about her, tension returning to his limbs. He held her close, then pressed his lips to her temple. "I'm never going to let you forget what you said."