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She was quiet for a moment, and then she turned her head toward him, her gray-green gaze meeting his and sending a jolt of awareness careening through him like a wayward lightning bolt.

“It makes me ache,” she said softly.

She made him ache. But he didn’t dare tell her where. Her head was currently resting over it.

Mal was right, and Apollo knew it.

He was falling in love with Phee.

Perhaps he already had, completely and utterly.

But he couldn’t say any of that. Wouldn’t say any of that. Because he understood she wasn’t ready to hear it. Tomorrow, he would do his utmost to convince her that there was so much more for them. That this house party didn’t have to be the end. But tonight, all he wanted was to savor having her in his arms.

So instead, he carefully traced his finger over the middle of her back in a distinct shape.

“What did I draw?” he asked her.

“A strawberry?” she guessed after a moment.

“No.”

She scrunched her nose, thinking. “A leaf?”

He shook his head. “Not quite.”

She dragged her teeth over his nipple, making his cock twitch back to life. “Hmm. A boulder?”

“Decidedly not.”

She continued guessing until he rolled her onto her back and kissed her and then set about proving to them both that neither of them was too tired to make love after all.

Phee never did guess the shape he’d drawn correctly, and he didn’t tell her either. It had been a heart.

His heart, because it now belonged to her. Just as well that she wore the invisible mark of it upon her skin.

CHAPTER 17

Ophelia descended the narrow staircase at the gamekeeper’s cottage in search of Apollo. She had risen to a rumpled, empty bed bereft of him, so she had hastily donned a dressing gown before venturing below.

Morning had come all too soon, just as Ophelia had feared it would. One more day, this one filled with duty and obligation, perhaps the chance to steal away to Apollo’s bedroom for a final night together, and then this sweet madness that had overtaken them both would have to be done.

Forever.

She couldn’t suppress the heavy sigh that tumbled out of her mouth at the thought as she reached the bottom of the stairs and found Apollo fully dressed and ridiculously handsome, striding toward her with his dimples on full display.

His brows drew together as he halted before her. “What is amiss, love? Did I wake you?”

“No.” Ophelia forced a smile, though she knew it was a sad one. “It is just that I wish the house party weren’t coming to an end so soon.”

He cupped her cheek, his thumb brushing over her lower lip. “The house party may be concluding, but what we have doesn’t need to end with it.”

It was the first time either of them had truly addressed what would happen after they returned to London. She thought back to his words the day their affair had begun in truth. I’m not asking for anything more than the duration of this house party, he’d said.

But now he was. He was, and her heart was elated at the prospect, but her mind knew she could never indulge in something so scandalous, so perilous.

She had to steel herself against a tremendous rush of yearning at his words. “It does.”

“Why?”