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“This would be a good excuse.” I laid my free hand along his neck, feeling his pulse pound in his throat. “The only good excuse.”
“We don’t have to skip it.” With a firm and smooth tug, Sumner pulled me into his lap. My world was only unsteady for a moment before his arms came around me, and our faces were level now, inches apart. “We have enough time.”
A smile inched across my lips. “Do we, now? Enough time for what?”
Sumner’s eyes dropped to my mouth, a light illumination his blue gaze, the color as fluid as the pond behind us. Even after so long together, and so many shared smiles, Sumner never seemed to stop his habit of watching my lips lift—nor his habit of smiling in return. “Enough time for me to work on my technique.”
“Yours? I thought you said mine needed work.”
Sumner pressed a kiss to the middle of my forehead, to my nose, and then to each of my cheeks. “Trust me,” Sumner murmured, mouth brushing against mine as he spoke. The words were a whisper, and he barely could get them out. “It definitely doesn’t.”
I closed the distance between us once more. In moments like this, where there was nothing but the two of us and ample time in the world, it was as if I couldphysically feel the bond holding us together. Love. Something I once didn’t believe in, something I once didn’t want, now something I knew I couldn’t live without. To love, and to be loved by the same person, was better than any Gilfman or Malstoni.
Falling in love, contrary to what everyone had tried to tell me, wasn’t a fairytale. It wasn’t nonsense. It wasn’t a problem.
It truly was just champagne.