"Soph, you didn't get anything wrong. I wasn't unhappy, or looking for anyone else. Maria just... we'd had a drink, she… she kissed me, and one thing led to another," he finished in a rush.

Sophie nodded. "And you what, just went along with it for fun? Is that what it was? A bit of fun?" A bitter edge was creeping into her voice.

Dan knocked back most of his glass of wine. "For a while. I don't have any explanations. I was an idiot. I made a mistake."

"And you kept on making that mistake for three years." Careful. Keep it together.

Dan's mouth twisted. "I'm not proud of it."

"But you didn't stop it."

"I've stopped it now," he countered, refilling their glasses. "Soph, I'll sit here and take everything you want to throw at me. I deserve it."

She looked at him, full of fierce frustration. "All of my big dreams about life revolved around you. Being your wife. Having your babies."

"We can still do that."  Dan moved from his perch on the sofa to kneel in front of her, his hands over hers in her lap, naked pain in his eyes. "We can still do that, can't we?"

Sophie had looked into those eyes for so many years. When he'd proposed, on his knees in a windswept park on her birthday. At the altar on their wedding day. And now, here, as he knelt before her and begged her forgiveness.

"I love you, Soph." He dropped his head and kissed her knuckles, inhaling deeply, his fingers tight around hers. "I've always loved you."

Sophie's determination not to cry dissolved. Dan. Her husband. The man she'd wanted to love forever. She cried for him, and for their lost love, and for the family they might have been. He moved up on to his knees and held her close, murmuring apologies over and over against her hair, words of love and remorse.

Sophie breathed him in, the scent of his familiar body. His warm arms around her, an embrace she'd found so much comfort in over the years. His cheek was against hers, and then he turned his head and brushed her lips slowly with his own.

Heightened emotion charged his kiss with a million volts, and for a few seconds, Sophie melted into him. Dan groaned and pulled her closer, sliding his hands down her back as he tried to deepen the kiss. His tongue slid against her teeth, and Sophie jolted at the intimacy, pulling her head back.

He'd lost her loyalty and he'd lost her love. Kissing him felt like a betrayal. His mouth stilled, and his eyes opened slowly.

"Too soon," he murmured. "I know, I'm sorry."

Sophie pushed gently against his chest to distance him, sliding further back into her chair. "It's not that." She pressed her fingers against her lips, acknowledging the emerging truth within herself. "It's not that."

Dan dropped back on his haunches, his arms working their way to folded over his chest as he watched her.

"Is it him?" he asked eventually, in a small, carefully neutral voice.

However much Dan had hurt her, Sophie drew no pleasure from hurting him back. She nodded, a tiny movement, and then lifted one shoulder, trying to find the right words to explain. "Yes. But it's other things too." She paused. "I've changed, Dan. My whole life has changed so much, and..." she stopped, aware that her next words were the final death knell for her marriage. "And I don't want it to change back."

Dan's anguished eyes scanned her face. "I really fucked this up, didn't I?"

Sophie dropped her head into her hands as he stood up, and she stayed there for quite some time. She heard him hesitate for long moments at the living room door before turning away, his slow steps carrying him out of the house, the door closing behind him with a desolate snap.

In the small hours of the morning, Sophie turned over in bed into the circle of two welcoming arms, the warmth of his naked body against hers rousing her slowly from sleep. Or was she dreaming? Were the gentle lips caressing her nipple real, or the hands moving slowly over her body imagined? As he eased his thigh between hers and covered her body carefully with the weight of his own, Sophie sighed deeply, saturated in him. She opened her thighs and beckoned him in. Come to me. Come with me. Come in me. He dipped his head and kissed her, a slow tangle of tongues as he rocked his length all the way into her body, the ultimate, delicious intimacy as his hips connected with hers.

He filled her body and her mind, and as he started to move slowly inside her, unexpected, jumbled emotions squeezed her heart hard through the fog of sleep. Raw and achingly sexy, he made love to her head as well as her body. He made her see stars, and he made her beautiful. Sophie wrapped herself around him, a clamshell on a boulder as his slow grind engulfed her, his hands in her hair, his tongue in her mouth, his body on hers, in hers. He overwhelmed her. It was the kind of sex that husbands should have with their wives, and here in her marital bed, Sophie came apart beneath the man she loved.

Lucien dressed silently, his eyes on the sleeping girl who'd just told him that she loved him. He'd come to her because he couldn't face another night without her, and she'd accepted him into her bed and her arms without question. He didn't understand the emotions that pulled him inextricably towards Sophie, or why being near her eased him, or least of all why hearing her breathe those three little words in his ear had been enough to make him lose it so unexpectedly and come hard and deep inside her.

Sophie stretched her arms over her head, still only half awake and blissful without even remembering why.

Disjointed memories jostled to fit themselves back together. Dan had been here, but he wasn't the reason for the sweet ache in her body. She'd gone to bed alone, her mind spinning with anxiety and the best part of a bottle of wine. She had been sure she wouldn't sleep, but she must have, because she'd dreamed of Lucien.

He'd been here... he'd touched her there. Sophie's fingers moved over her breasts, and lower to the warm spot between her thighs, still tender from holding him inside her.

Lucien. He'd come to her. She was as sure of it as she was sure she was alone now. No dream could be so vivid, no sensation so intense unless it were real. Could it?

As she turned her face towards the alarm clock, her eyes settled on the key he'd left beside it. Her own front door key. Kara's key.

Lucien had been here, and he'd loved her better when she really needed it, and then he'd melted away again.

Only he'd gone too soon.

She still needed him.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Lucien looked up as Sophie came into the office on Monday morning and was hit square in the solar plexus by an irresistible urge to start the new week by locking the door behind her and dragging her down onto the sofa. She'd wound her hair neatly away from her face, and as she hung her cherry red coat on the hook, he took the chance to run his hungry eyes over her dark grey dress. How could a simple dress become as sexy as lingerie just because it was wrapped around Sophie's curves? And he couldn't be certain, but was that the telltale bump of a suspender clip through the soft fabric? His eyes skimmed the flare of her hip and the roundness of her breasts as she turned to him, every man's dream secretary.