“Bed,” Sara reminded him.

Beck scooped her up, tossed her onto the bed, then climbed in behind her. “God above, how I’ve missed you.”

Sara did not want to talk with him, or rather, she wanted to talk too badly, to lay her burdens across his muscular shoulders. Beckman would accept those burdens—he was a man in the habit of accepting burdens—but he’d want answers first.

Sara lay back and lifted her knees, feet spread on the bed.

“Don’t make me wait, Beckman.”

A man who’d traveled to many a foreign port developed both an ability to observe his environs and an instinct for when something, some small detail was out of place. Beck had learned to listen to that instinct.

A nervous horse could signal that ambush lay around the bend of a sleepy provincial road. A serving girl a little too friendly might be a hint that the fancy English gentleman’s wine had been drugged.

Sara’s responses, hesitant, then eager, and now nearly desperate, were setting off an indistinct alarm in Beck’s mind. She hadn’t explained two weeks of apparent indifference, hadn’t apologized for it, hadn’t assured him there would be no more of the same. She hadn’t made any reference whatsoever to his failed proposal either—though he knew damn well she hadn’t taken it as a jest.

Those silences on her part should matter, though Beck’s body wanted them to matter later. Sara brushed her fingers up his erection, sending a cannonade of pleasure over the deck of Beck’s thinking brain. She took him in her hand, then, a broadside to his reason, and tried to tug him closer to her body.

He resisted. “Tell me you missed me.”

“I’ve missed you, Beckman Sylvanus Haddonfield,” Sara whispered near his ear. “I missed the feel of you.” She tugged on him again. “In my hands, in my body. I missed the scent of you, the taste of you. I missed the feel of your hands on me, missed the sound of your voice in the dark.”

He needed desperately to ask her why, if she’d missed him, she’d held herself at such a distance and not even considered his proposal.

He needed more desperately to join with her again. She undulated against him, a bodily plea for consummation that echoed his own dearest desire. Her hands ran over his back, hips, and buttocks while her teeth scraped up his neck.

“Please.” Sara arched up and hugged him to her.

“Easy,” Beck cautioned. “No rush.”

“Want you.”

Love now, talk later. “I’m right here, love.” He gave her the first increment of penetration, then stilled and waited for her body to accommodate him. When her breathing slowed and he felt her sigh softly against his neck, he let himself glide another half inch deeper into the glory of her heat.

“You.” Sara kissed the side of his neck, and her body relaxed further, her trust in him manifest in her willingness to give him unilateral control of this most precious intimacy. He gave a slow hitch of his hips and gained another half inch, then another.

He advanced and waited, advanced and waited, his arousal a steady burning in his whole body. Even so, he could spend an eternity just joining his body to Sara’s and know no frustration; it felt that right to be making love with her.

When he was hilted inside her, he went completely still and gathered her against him. To have this closeness with Sara was sweet, dear, and more overwhelmingly precious than anything Beck could recall. He tried to find a name for what he felt, for the sense of being in the one place, with the one person, he was supposed to be.

Homecoming.

The term settled in his mind, and he began to move in her. Slow, steady thrusts that had Sara groaning softly beneath him and undulating in counterpoint to him. He plied her with monumental patience and self-restraint, bringing her to orgasm easily then letting her recover while he barely moved. When she’d found her balance, he eased her up again, then let her recover once more.

“I’m being greedy.” Sara brushed his hair back from his forehead and stretched beneath him. “We both need our rest.”

Beck nuzzled her shoulder. “Are you complaining? Are you suggesting I’ve kept you awake, Sara Hunt?” Though he had, and she needed her rest.

“I’ve kept you awake, but I feel boneless now, Beck. Light and warm and…”

“And…?”

“Happy,” Sara conceded. “It makes no sense, but I feel happy.”

He kissed her cheek and wondered why happiness in the arms of a lover should make no sense. “I will endeavor to make you happier still.”

The tenor of his lovemaking shifted, became more… serious.

“Beck…” In her breathless whisper, Beck felt Sara’s body gathering for yet another bout of pleasuring. “I’m content, beyond content. More would be too much… Beckman?”

“Hush.” He levered up on his arms and gazed down, frankly staring at the place where their bodies joined. “I say when it’s too much, Sara. Trust me.”

He picked up the tempo by increments, watching her face in the glow of the candles, then watching the thick, glistening length of his cock sinking into her heat.

“Beck…” She arched up and wrapped her arms around his neck. He capitulated this time, folding down over her, thrusting into her with banked force.

“Too much…”

Never too much, not with her. Beck drove himself into her, even when her body seized around him, even when she dug her nails into his back and moaned against his shoulder. Her contractions became deeper and stronger; then she fisted around him in one interminable spasm that sent him over the edge.

Beck felt his orgasm start in that drawing-up sensation at the base of his spine; then pleasure swamped him, running right up his center and off into the infinite reaches of his body. He heard someone groan—him?—and bucked and throbbed as his seed left him, heard another groan as he tried to draw in air to sustain him while the pleasure built and built.

It didn’t end, it just… diffused, becoming more and more softly focused until every particle of him was light and warm and… happy.

God, yes, he was happy.

“Don’t move.” Sara patted his buttocks, and that made him happy too, a little stroking caress Beck felt all over.

“Can’t move,” he murmured against her shoulder. “Not yet.”

“Good.”

The infernal woman found other ways to touch him. Ran her tongue along his neck, drew her toe up his calf, and nuzzled his ear, but they were little touches, the gestures a woman thoroughly wrung out by passion could offer.

“I’m crushing you.”

“I love the weight of you. It’s comforting, when my body feels so overcome it might float away.”

He didn’t believe that, not when there was fifteen stone of him comforting her like so much filleted mackerel. Sending up a sincere prayer for strength first, Beck levered up on his forearms. “You all right?”

Sara brushed his hair back. “You ask me that when you’ve pleasured me witless. I am fine. Witless, but fine.”

“Good.” He kissed her nose and carefully extricated himself from her body. “I’m fine too. Don’t move.”

“As if I could.” Sara lay on her back, knees bent, gaze on him as he crossed to the hearth.

He scrubbed himself off briskly, taking in the sight of her sprawled without a lick of modesty—or worry—then did a much more careful job with her.

Sara watched him as he hung the cloth over the edge of the basin. “Next time, I will tend to this washing-up business.”

So there was to be a next time?

Beck blew out all but one candle and crawled over the mattress to cover her again with his body. “Next time, I will pleasure you so witless you won’t be able to speak, much less move when we’re through.”

He braced over her, tucking her face against his collarbone and laying his cheek on her crown. “You’re truly fine? I become enthusiastic at times.”

“You become…” Sara kissed his throat. “Breathtaking, spectacular, unbelievable. You truly ought to be the subject of a royal proclamation.”