Page 94 of The Moon & His Tides

I’d love you even if you retired tomorrow.

You are my priority.

I blinked hard to dispel the desire.

Even in a day as brilliant as this one, that was one fantasy too far.

The fact that she was evenherewas miracle enough.

She wasn’t one for contriteness or apologies.

Obviously, Sebastian had worked his special brand of magic and brought her back.

“Adam,” she said softly, so softly I couldn’t even hear her over the cacophony of the restaurant, but I’d long ago memorised the shape of my name in her mouth.

She stood from the table as Sebastian and I paused beside it. We were tucked into a far corner behind carefully arranged olive trees and a wood-panelled screen, so we had a modicum of privacy.

“Another birthday present,” Sebastian announced with a little encouraging smile in my direction. “One that couldn’t be missed today.”

“No,” Savannah agreed quietly, but she stepped forward so that only a sliver of space existed between us, charged with all the words we never said. “Your wife should be with you on your birthday. That is… if you want me?”

The hesitation was new and, irritatingly, endearing. Why was it so easy to forgive her for her cruelty? Because I knew that she’d been brought up without love and didn’t speak its language fluently? That I could relate to that and make exceptions for it because it was still better than I’d ever been loved before?

That was, until Sebastian.

Who’d shown up in our lives with an entirely new lexicon of love that he’d been teaching us slowly but surely the last five months.

And now, well, I wasn’t sure what Savannah and I had between us was enough. If we could apply what Seb was teaching us to our tattered relationship or if we would both continue to focus on our newer, healthier one with him.

“I want you,” I told her, surprised by the rawness of my words.

But it was the truth.

Healthy or not, I’d always want Savannah.

She was the one who took a brooding, restless soldier returned from war with too much baggage to ever unpack and focused his attentions on the one thing he’d ever felt passionate about.

Acting.

It was Savannah who found my first auditions, who sweet-talked the director ofHamletinto letting the unknown actor, but well-known aristocrat, star in his modern adaptation of the Shakespeare classic.

It was Savannah who recognized a need for male companionship and indulged me in threesomes that quenched both our thirsts.

Savannah had made a man with dreams into a man people dreamedabout.

She had made me relevant on my own terms.

Not my father’s or my family history’s or my best mate, the Crown Prince of England, Arthur’s.

My own.

So, of course, I loved her.

The way an artist loved his muse.

Or more, the way Pinocchio must have loved Geppetto, maybe.

I reached for her, sliding my hand into the hair at the back of her neck to bring her up onto her tiptoes for a kiss. My lips slidover the gloss there, vanilla scented, and my tongue found the familiar taste of her mouth.