“Christ, Ella!” he growls as his teeth bare down on my bottom lip. “I have dreamt about ye every night.” He kisses around my mouth and face, down my neck. “I kissed ye just like this and made ye cry out in pleasure. It saved me from going mad. I swear to ye it did. But having ye in my arms again, flesh and blood, yer taste and smell, the sound of yer moans… There is no pleasure or sensation that will ever compare. My God, woman, I have missed ye.”
The sincerity in his eyes, the love I see, warms my heart. I will not wait a moment longer to say the words I’ve wanted to say for so long and feared I’d never have the chance.
“I love you, Alasdair,” I say, looking him in the eye. “I love you with all my heart and soul. I have since the day we wed. You are everything to me, and you have made me happier than I ever imagined possible.” I stop to kiss him again, to show him, not only through words, how much he is loved. “I have shed so many tears of regret for not telling you that before you left. I feared if something happened to you, if you did not come home, you would never know how much I love you. And for that, I would never forgive myself.”
He stares at me, his smirk deepening that dimple I have missed so much.
“That was a lovely little speech, my dear. I am truly pleased to know I have made ye so happy and that I am loved so well, but I already knew that before I left.” He winks and gives me a gentle kiss.
“What? How?”
“Well, ye must have told me a hundred times the last time we made love. It was quite a beautiful thing.” His smile is enough to melt my heart, regardless of the mischief behind it.
“Alasdair, I have no memory of that.”
“I can assure ye ’tis true. Though ye were in quite a state.” He gets serious then, rubbing his finger across my cheek. “That can happen when the pleasure of carnal play is that intense. Yer mind stops thinking and lets ye simply be with the pleasure. It’s like an escape from yer conscious mind.”
“But I was so distraught from the moment I opened my eyes and found you were gone. It has plagued me for months, Alasdair, thinking you didn’t know how much I love you. It was awful!”
“Rest assured, Ella Stewart, I know what is in yer heart. It was yer love that brought me home.”