Page 25 of The Intergalactic Duke's Inconvenient Engagement

She put her fingertips over his mouth. “Shut up, Your Grace.”

His blue eyes glitteredover her hand, and the hot gust of his exhalation feathered across her knuckles.

“I’m not going to be alone,” she said slowly.

He nodded, brushing his lips against her fingers. The touch was velvety smooth and roused something in her that had nothing to do with the practicalities of condoms or the emotional existentialism of being alone in a vast universe. No, it was just…finally accepting thatshe was alive, awake, not alone, her heart pounding like an animal freed from her cage. Freed by this man.

She let her fingertips slip lower to the swell of his bottom lip. “I didn’t ask for any of this to happen.”

“The universe doesn’t really have much use for words, in any language.”

“But I’m not Blackworm’s abducted bride.”

“Not a victim,” he agreed. “I’ve seen you as a fighter, a temptationin a white dress, a leader even though you didn’t want to be. Extraordinary, and I say that as a being who has been around a few galaxies.” His lashes dropped, hiding the spark in his eyes. “And as beautiful as all of Azthronos.”

She wasn’t beautiful, she didn’t delude herself, but with the silent dance of planets behind him, she felt the starlight glow on her face and it seemed to sink intothat empty place inside her.

For the first time, she understood—in a way that she hadn’t quite grasped, even standing under the Big Sky in Sunset Falls, Montana, by herself after the saloon’s last call—that the darkness was endlessly, infinitely vast and empty…and yet the light hurtled onward, undaunted, to find her.

When she let her hand slip away from his mouth, he took a short, sharp breath,his brow furrowing, as if the release had pained him, but she leaned forward. Her shadow blocked the shine of the projections, and she was staring into the abyss of his celestial eyes.

Until her lips touched his.