It all came flooding back to him when he awoke in a sea of silk sheets that he knew of a certainty were not his.

He'd just wanted to talk. To finally clear the air. Nothing more.

Yet her with face and hair all undone, barefoot in her blue silk slip, was his own undoing. All of the longing and pain and flat-out lust he'd walled up - hell, that they'd both walled up - crashed into both of them.

He now knew the precise spot behind her left knee that would make her shiver all over. To be fair, she knew the precise spot on his right hipbone that was guaranteed to make his brain short-circuit and other parts get hard. He'd learned the precise weight of her breasts in his hands and she'd learned how to undo button flys with her teeth (although he had a niggling suspicion she may already have had some schooling in that regard) He now knew how she tasted when she came, and she knew where on the underside of his...

At some point during the night, probably after the third or fourth time she'd gotten him hard all over again with lips and tongue that other men had to pay for, teased him with nipples just out of reach as she rode him like a wild pony at branding time, and then brought him crashing over the edge so hard he almost blacked out, the words had come tumbling out of him.

He'd whispered them, savoring the words on his tongue as he'd savored her earlier, hoping she was asleep and hadn't actually heard them come out. He was having enough difficulty just thinking them inside his own head.

Her eyelids fluttered open. "Mal?"

"Yeah, sweetheart?"

"I love you too."