It Takes Two to Tumble (Seducing the Sedgwicks, #1)

by Cat Sebastian

Ben had spent a decade trying to make the most of his short temper, stretching it out by seconds and fractions of seconds until he was, for all purposes, a patient man.

She had written to him, like any dutiful wife, and he had McCarthy read her letters aloud to him when they were alone in his cabin. He would dictate a reply for McCarthy to copy out. Christ, just thinking of it made him feel like he had somehow betrayed both of them at once.

Ben knew how to have this conversation, this repetitive reassurance that grief can take its own time and shape. But that had been grief for parents, children, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives. Neat categories of valid relationships that everyone understood, phrases of belonging that could be etched concisely onto tombstones: beloved son, devoted wife. There were even rules for how to grieve people in each category, how many months to wear a black armband and whether one could dance. Captain Dacre didn’t have any of that, and Ben felt his heart twist in his chest at what that must cost him.

Now he knew what it was to truly want something, to truly want someone, and he had to figure out how to live with that knowledge.

“If I just wanted to bring myself off and then feel unsatisfied afterward, I could do that on my own. Tell me what it would be like if we had something else.” Something more, he wanted to say. “I want everything.” He rested his own hand on Dacre’s hip, feeling the warm flesh beneath the linen of his shirt and the wool of his breeches. Dacre groaned. “God help me, Sedgwick. When you say things like that . . .” “When we’re together it feels right. I want to go down that path and see what’s there.”