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She fought for control, but her voice shook with fury even as she gave his bunched shoulder a long, soothing stroke. “I am so, so sorry that that was done to you, but darling, I promise it will never happen again. Oberon has made his last mistake. I swear to you, he will pay for it. I won’t let you be hurt or used like that ever—”

“Lorelei.” Gerard abruptly rolled over to face her. She couldn’t make out his expression in the unlit room, with blackness pressing against the glass windows to their side, but his voice was ragged. “How can you bring yourself to touch me? I could have killed you. I would have killed you with my own sword!”

“No,” she said firmly, “you would not.” Leaning forward, she cupped her palms against his cheeks, cradling him with the utmost care. “Oberon would have killed me through you, but he couldn’t, because both of us fought against it—and you, you impossible man, actually told me to kill you to protect myself. Did you truly believe I would ever do that?”

“I prayed that you would,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t have survived your loss regardless. Lorelei…” He took a deep breath. “You are the first—the only—true joy I’ve ever known.”

In the darkness, emotions billowed up through her until they filled her throat, nearly choking her. She couldn’t speak.

But she felt his sudden jolt of realization against her palms. “Wait. You brought me here to save us both, but the tournament hadn’t ended. What about your sworn word? You told me…” He jerked himself abruptly upright into a sitting position, and her hands slipped away from his face. “Lorelei, they’ll never let you back again! How could you have forgotten? I would never expect you to give up—”

“Oh, you foolish, foolish man.” Lorelei had never taken such a frightening step in her life, but she forced the words through her tight throat, risking everything. “Aren’t you the one who told me first? I’ve been in love with you for years. How could I ever make any other choice?”

There was a long moment of stunned silence. Then he lunged for her in the darkness, and she met him with a thankful cry.

As his big hands plunged into her tangled curls, she met his lips with a kiss full of relief, passion, and desperate tenderness—and he met and matched her with a new desperation of his own.

There was a bed only three feet away—but that thought slipped from Lorelei’s mind like a will-o’-the-wisp winking out of view as they tumbled together to the polished wooden floor, scrambling and pulling at each other’s battered clothes. She wasn’t in charge this time, but neither was he. There was no space left between them for control. Everything was pure sensation:

The rough cloth of his jacket against her palms as she grabbed at him.

The incineration of his kiss and the furnace of his skin through his clothes as their bodies pressed against each other with urgent need.

His big fingers cradling her head—then sweeping downwards, shaping every inch of her form as if to reassure himself that she was truly here, no mere illusion, still alive and unharmed and openly loving him at last.

They were really here, together.

“Us,” Lorelei panted as his lips left hers and drew a hot trail down her throat.

“Us,” he growled back and sucked her skin between his teeth until she let out a moan of helpless pleasure. “Only us, Lorelei, from now on. Swear it.”

At any other time, she might have teased him—or challenged him to make it worth her while. Now, she was too shaken to give him anything but honesty.

“Forever,” she murmured, and it was the truth. How could she ever settle for a lesser man once she’d known this joy with him?

She tipped her head back against the floor, arching against him, and the glorious scent of summer filled the room. Soft rose petals showered over them in the darkness, scattering across Gerard’s broad back and kissing against her own cheeks and hair in celebration. Her lover paused in his explorations for a startled instant to capture and inspect a handful of falling blossoms—and then he let out a laugh of pure wonder.

“Of course.” He shook his head ruefully down at her. “What else could I have expected?”

“Oh, my darling…” Lorelei’s lips curved with delighted anticipation. “You’ve seen nothing yet.”

Those blossoms had arisen from sheer emotion, unguided by thought. At a wave of her hand, a whole green bower sprang into place around them, rustling with life and vivid beauty. Tall, cherry-red tulips and purple irises nodded down at them from the exuberant living bouquet that surrounded them. Every stem, leaf, and blossom was lit by the warm golden sunshine that shone down from above, while a thick, berry-studded circular hedge shut away the rest of the world. Humming sounds signaled smaller creatures busily at work among the plants, while the steady, soothing ripple of moving water signaled a stream nearby.

Propping himself on one elbow, Gerard turned to take in every sumptuous detail, his eyebrows rising. “Illusion or real?”

“A bit of both, but mostly illusion this time.” Lorelei shrugged with entirely false modesty, savoring every instant of his focused attention on her work. “What do you think of it?”

“I think,” he said slowly, “that whoever wins the Tournament of Leaves this year should thank you every day for surrendering that chance. You are remarkably gifted, and you know it. But that’s not all.”

“Oh, no?” Stretching like a cat under the stroke of his praise, she purred the question. “What else?”

As he turned back to her, Gerard’s lips curled into a shockingly mischievous smirk. “I think I still haven’t seen you fully unclothed!”

With a lightning-fast move, he yanked down her bodice like a scoundrel.

“Why, General. How very forward of you!” Laughing with giddy delight, Lorelei shimmied in place to help him work her puffed sleeves down, too, and then kicked herself free of all the rest until she lay, bare skinned and glowing with happiness, before him.

She hadn’t laid herself so open to any lover in years—which had nothing to do with nudity and everything to do with the way she lay back now and let her busy mind pause, for once, to luxuriate in his slow, worshipful exploration. Heat and light spread with every brush of his warm, calloused hands against her skin, shaping every inch of her into something new and bright beneath him. No—with endless patience, he was tracing the shape of herself, the Lorelei she’d truly been all along, beneath every illusion and shield, finally exposed in full for him …