to him with a humorless laugh. “Every last detail of the way you looked that day is burned in my memory forever, what you were wearing, the medallion, the shock and the grief in your eyes…everything.” He lowered his voice at the end of his sentence before moving forward again.
Blake grabbed his hand, tugging him back. When Niall met his eyes with surprise, Blake blurted, “I’m sorry.” Every bitter emotion he’d felt that day rushed back in on him, but for a change, those emotions felt distant and completed instead of fresh. “I did what I thought I had to do at the time. I didn’t see any choice back then. But I’d never loved anyone the way I loved you then,” he hesitated slightly before finishing with, “and the way I love you now. I never stopped loving you for an instant.”
A softness filled Niall’s eyes that made it look as though the years dropped away from him. In spite of the fact that they were standing at the top of a wide staircase in the center of Blake’s house, in full view of whoever might choose that moment to walk past, Niall stepped into him, taking Blake’s face in his hands and kissing him passionately. It was a kiss that seemed to reach into Blake’s soul, righting all the wrongs of the past.
“First we’re going to find that medallion,” Niall said, his voice hoarse with desire. “Then we’re going to go to bed and make love loud enough to have your father rolling over in his grave.”
A jolt of heat and excitement struck Blake like lightning.
“And after that,” Niall went on, “we’re going to march back to Blackpool and rescue your children, no matter what nastiness Ian attempts to throw at us. And when that’s done, like Greta and Siegfried, we are going to build our castle just the way we want it, and we are going to live happily ever after.”
Niall kissed him again, then broke away and charged down the stairs, leaving Blake reeling with joy and wanting to giggle like one of his girls.
“There wasn’t any castle in the play,” he said, following Niall down the stairs.
“I rewrote it,” Niall called over his shoulder as he reached the ground floor. Blake pointed toward the library, which was as good as any a place to start their search. When Blake caught up to him, Niall caught his hand and said, “I’ll rewrite it again and again, if that’s what it takes to get the story right.”
Blake had never been so happy to spend an evening poring through every parlor, office, and closet in his house. He had no idea how massive the house was until he had to check every crevice and nook in search of the medallion. Neither the speed nor the efficiency of the search was helped at all by the way he and Niall kept finding themselves in deliciously close proximity as they pulled trinkets out of cabinets and checked dusty corners behind large pieces of furniture.
“It’s not in this vase,” Niall said, leaning across Blake and pressing his whole body against Blake’s in the process as he peered into an ugly old vase behind a settee in the library. The gesture bent Blake backwards over the settee, and Niall took advantage of the position to stroke his hands along Blake’s side and nibble at his earlobe. “It’s not behind the cushions of this thing either,” he added breathlessly, grinding his hips against Blake’s. They were both desperately aroused and growing more so by the second.
“It might be in the Egyptian parlor,” Blake panted, wanting nothing more than to twist in Niall’s embrace so that he bent forward over the back of the settee and to have Niall remove his trousers and bugger him into next Tuesday.
Niall pulled back, a comically puzzled look in his blue eyes to match his pink and swollen lips. “You have an Egyptian parlor?”
“It was Annamarie’s idea.” Blake struggled to stand straight, sliding his hands under Niall’s jacket to grip his sides and leaning closer to his mouth. “She likes Egyptian things.”
“Then why didn’t we check there first?” Niall pulled away from him just as Blake was about to seal their mouths together in a kiss.
Blake groaned and laughed as Niall sped away from him, sending a flirtatious look over his shoulder. They couldn’t find the medallion fast enough, as far as he was concerned. If they didn’t locate the blasted thing soon so that they could go