Page 142 of The Humiliated Wife

And then his mouth was on hers.

The kiss was heat and urgency and devotion. Like he was kissing her with everything he didn’t say during those weeks apart. Histhumb stroked her cheek, his other hand cradling the back of her head like she was precious.

Fiona let out a breathless sound and melted into it—into him—intothis.

She barely registered the words at first. He was kissing her, but he was also saying things, broken between kisses:

“Marry me—Jesus, Fiona—marry me—I love you—I love you so much—I’m sorry—I’m so sorry?—”

And then?—

He dropped.

Right there in the hallway, on one knee.

He looked up at her, completely undone.

“I was a damn fool,” he said, voice shaking. “I thought I knew how to be a husband. But I didn’t know a thing. I didn’t know how to protect you, how tohonoryou. I thought marriage was about being impressive. But it’s not. It’s about choosing someone. Over and over. It’s about being able to love you onyourterms.”

Fiona’s breath caught.

“I don’t deserve to ask,” Dean whispered. “But I’m on my knees anyway. Tobegyou—please let me try. Let me spend the rest of my life loving you the way Ishould havefrom the start.”

This was a man who had burned his whole world down and come back with the ash in his hands, asking to build something new from the ground up.

And it washim. Her husband. Her idiot. Her broken, reformed, still-trying husband.

She carded her hands through his hair, studying his face as he knelt before her. This close, she could see everything—the exhaustion etched around his eyes, the way his breath caught when she touched him, the desperate hope.

He looked wrecked and beautiful and completely, utterly hers.

Suddenly the distance between them was intolerable. She needed to be in his arms. She dropped to her knees, too—right there in the narrow hallway—and kissed him again. Fierce. Certain.

“Yes,” she whispered against his lips. “Yes.”

His hands trembled as they came to rest on her waist. “Fiona?—”

She kissed him again.

"I love you," he whispered against her lips.

She pulled back just enough to meet his eyes, her own shining with tears and joy and everything they'd been through to get here.

"Good," she said.

CHAPTER 64

Dean

The world had gone quiet,except for the sound of her breath against his chest.

Dean lay on his back, watching her in the soft lamp light. Her cheeks were still flushed, her hair a mess, her lips swollen from kissing him.

His heart felt too big for his chest.

Fiona—his wife, hisfiancée—was curled toward him, one arm draped over his ribs. Her breathing had slowed. Not asleep, but close.

He looked down at her hand where it rested on him. Bare. Familiar. Sacred.