She came in a hurried burst of trembling, clenching flesh, a wet gush of arousal and a moan that certainly would leave no question to the neighbors as to what they were doing. He continued to lick and stroke her through the crisis, dragging her pleasure further and further until the earthquakes became tremors became tiny spasms, and she panted as she flopped an arm over her face.
His cock felt like steel as he freed it from his trousers and kicked them aside. He crawled his way over her body, licking a trail back up that followed the one he’d taken down earlier. She didn’t open her eyes, but caught his cheeks, bringing him in for a deep kiss as she shifted to make room for him between her legs.
There was no resistance when he entered her, that same clenching sex that had welcomed his fingers squeezing around his exquisitely sensitive cock. Already he felt his balls tightening, his seed moving as he took the first long thrust through her heat. He dropped his head into her neck, sucking her throat as he took and took and took in slow, rolling waves. She met him on each one, shaking as he ground his pelvis to hers.
When she came a second time, digging her nails into his bare back, groaning his name against his mouth and his shoulder, it was too much for him to bear. He thrust harder, faster, driving toward the powerful, life-changing pleasure that was just there out of his reach. The pleasure he didn’t deserve but would take regardless because he needed it, he needed her. He needed tonight as much as she did.
He caught it in a long burst, pulling from her body just as he came. He was panting as he collapsed over her, kissing her, soothing her, loving her with his body the way he’d never be able to do with the rest of his life.
And hoping it would be enough to give her a little extra strength in the difficult days he knew were coming.
Chapter 15
When Anne woke the next day she stayed in the bed, staring up at the ceiling and hoping she would discover that everything from yesterday was a terrible nightmare. Thomasina was safe, Rook was hers…nothing had changed.
Only everything had. What had happened wasn’t a nightmare, it was a consequence. Thomasina was the Countess of Harcourt, trapped at Jasper Kincaid’s side forever. And Rook was gone from their bed, the only evidence of his existence the dent in the pillow beside hers and the scent of him in the air. She tugged the sheets up to farther cover her naked body and let out a long sigh.
Somewhere out there, Thomasina was waking up too. Beside Harcourt. She’d probably been doing the same things Anne had been doing. Anne’s eyes flooded with tears at the thought of her sweet, innocent sister experiencing such a thing. How could it be endured when it didn’t come with love?
She jerked to a sitting position at that thought. Love? That wasn’t what she felt, was it? She had great gratitude toward Rook for helping her when he hadn’t been under any obligation to do so. She felt a physical connection to him, thanks to the amazing pleasures they’d shared over the days they traveled.
And she liked him. She liked his quick quips and his quicker laughter at her own. She liked his quiet strength and his calm voice when she panicked. She liked his self-sufficiency and the faith he had in what he knew about himself and the world.
She admired him, but that wasn’t love. It couldn’t be love.
The door to the chamber opened and Rook stepped inside, carrying a tray laden heavily with food and drink. He smiled as he saw her sitting up and pushed the door shut with his hip.
“The princess awakens at last. I was beginning to fear your slumber was enchanted and I would have to wake you with a kiss.”
She forced a smile at that. “You may wake me with a kiss anytime, fair prince.”
He tensed as he set the items in his arms down on the table one by one. “I’ll remember that,” he said softly.
She worried the edge of the sheet. “Thank you for bringing me food. How late is it?”
“Very late. After luncheon, actually,” he said.
Her eyes went wide. “Is it? I’m sorry to have kept to my bed so late. No wonder you called me a princess. I am as spoiled as one.”
He arched a brow. “In the past few weeks you have endured a great deal, Anne. I think if anyone has earned a morning to catch up on their sleep, it is you.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and reached out to drag his fingers along her jawline. “And I called you princess because you are beautiful. Even with your hair sticking up in five different directions.”
She lifted a hand to her locks and found he was correct—it was wild. She smiled. “Get me my brush, then. That, at least, I can fix.”
He did so, and as she combed her hair and tried to get it back into some semblance of normalcy, he loaded a plate with delicacies for her. “We could take a few hours on the road, despite the late hour. Make it into England at the very least.”
Her eyes went wide as she stared at him. “On the road?”
He nodded as he handed over the plate. She set it aside on the coverlet. She couldn’t think of eating, no matter how lovely all the food was. “I know you are anxious to get back to your family.”
She ran the brush through her hair again and refused to meet his stare. “I thought you were looking into alternatives for my travel. You must want to go home to your island more than ever.”
His jaw tightened. “Trying to get rid of me, are you?”
She bent her head. “No,” she said after a moment. “I just know I am creating chaos for you. I can—I can find my own way, you know. I must learn to do it at any rate.”
His face jerked toward hers and he took a step closer. “Anne…what does that mean?”
She cleared her throat. Well, the time had come to tell him what had been on her mind. “I am…I’m not going back to Harcourt or my family, Rook. I can’t, not anymore.”
“Why would you think you couldn’t return home to them?” he asked. She could tell he was trying to sound calm even though he was upset. She saw it in the faint twitch of his jaw, the tightening of his fist at his side.
She shook her head and put her brush on the table next to the bed as she tried to gather her thoughts. “My sisters must hate me for creating the consequences of what I did. How could they not? I cannot imagine facing them again and seeing their anger and heartbreak.”
“Anne,” he said softly.
She held up a hand. “I know you are going to try to convince me of a dozen reasons why I’m wrong. You’re going to tell me they don’t hate me.”
He shrugged. “I won’t tell you that because I don’t know them, and I don’t know what their reaction is. But neither do you, in truth. You have no idea the chain of events that led one of them to marry Harcourt. Nor what has happened to either of them in the time you’ve been gone.”
He was right, of course, but it gave her no solace. “But I know the result, don’t I? My actions have led to Thomasina’s suffering. You cannot know what that means.”
His jaw tensed again. “I know exactly what that means,” he said. “And how the guilt can rot a person from the inside.”
She stared at him when he said those words with such passion. Even now she saw guilt in his eyes and wondered what exactly he had done or thought he’d done to put it there. She longed for a world where they could just…comfort each other.
But that had been a fantasy, hadn’t it? Now she had to put herself back into reality, a world where she would likely have to make it on her own here in Scotland. She would find work, that was all there was to it. She didn’t know how to do anything, but surely she could learn.
Her heart sank at the thought, but she ignored it.
“I can’t face them,” she said, more firmly than the first time. “I will stay here. I’ll change my name. And I will take the punishment I deserve for my bad acts.”
His lips parted at her certainty, and the frustration he felt was evident in the lines of his face. But then he bent his head, she thought in surrender. “Fine,” he ground out. “We will stay here.”
“Rook,” she said, inching forward on the be
d. “You don’t have to stay to—”
He cut her off with a snort. “I won’t abandon you without knowing you’re safe. We will stay and I’ll let you come to grips with this shocking knowledge about your family. And you will change your mind.”
She shook her head. “I won’t.”
His expression softened, almost with pity. Then he sat down on the bed beside her. He gathered her closer in his arms and pressed a kiss to her forehead as she wrapped her arms around his waist and took the comfort he offered even if she didn’t deserve it.
“Whatever you need,” he whispered.
And she nodded against his chest, because she knew he would give her just that. And more. Even if she didn’t deserve it or him.
* * *
Rook had thought he’d known exactly how the past two days would play out. When Anne refused to return home, when she insisted on staying in Scotland and taking on some life she couldn’t begin to understand, he’d thought she’d turn from that concept by supper.
She hadn’t. For two long days, she had stuck to her course. She’d asked around about work available in Gretna Green and other small towns close by. He’d observed her watching the barmaids and peek into the kitchen as she tried to learn the things she’d been sheltered from her entire life.
He would have admired her tenacity even more if her spark had not been extinguished, as well. Oh, she still talked to him, she still went for the occasional walk when the weather permitted, and she even made love to him. But she rarely smiled and never teased or joked with him anymore.
He hated it. He hated all of it and he wanted to fix it, but he couldn’t. He knew better than most that sometimes when a person stopped running, all the pain caught up with them. And he could see that happening to the woman he loved.
Now he glanced up the staircase where she had gone a short time before to lie down after lunch in the inn’s dining hall. He needed to talk to her again about going home.
And it was time to explain to her just why it was so important, even if it destroyed the tenuous bonds they’d built between them.
He swallowed hard and climbed the stairs. He entered the chamber at the end of the hall with a long sigh, one that ceased when he saw her. She was sitting by the fire, her slippers on the floor in front of her, reading a book she’d nicked from the sitting room downstairs earlier that day. She was bent over the book, fully engrossed as her eyes darted back and forth.
“It must be quite an adventure,” he said as he shut the door behind himself.
She let out a gasp and nearly tossed the book in the air. “You frightened the life out of me,” she gasped with a playful glare in his direction. “Has no one ever taught you to alert a person to your presence in a room?”
“Talking to you was how I alerted you to my presence,” he said with a shrug.
She smiled, one of the few smiles she had gifted him with in the past forty-eight hours, and for a moment the world stopped. He could see a future with her in those green eyes. They could go back to his island and hide there together. He could make love to her day and night. He could laugh with her and make a life with her where no one could intrude or interrupt. No one could make them think about the past or the wrongs they had each committed.
Then the smile faded and so did his fantasies. She deserved more than that life in the end. He knew too well what hiding away did to a person’s soul. He wouldn’t do that to her, or allow her to do it to herself.
“Anne,” he said, taking her hand as he sat in the chair beside hers. “I want to take you home.”
Her eyes went wide. “To—to your island?” she whispered.
He barely held back a pained groan. She had said it, voiced the fantasy as if she craved it just as deeply. And now it came to life in color in his mind and he had to fight to push it away a second time.
“No,” he said with great difficulty. “To your family.”
“No,” she said, pushing to her feet and shaking his hand away. “We already discussed this days ago, Rook. I’m not going home.”
“Instead you plan to stay here, abandoning your identity and living a life atoning for your sins?” he pressed.
She turned her face. “It’s what you did.”
He flinched. “Yes, I did. I lived alone on an island for a year, and it was cold and dark and desolate. Your presence brought back some of the joy that I’d told myself I didn’t need or deserve.”
Her lips parted at that admission and his stomach twisted. What would her expression be like if he admitted he loved her? What would it be like when he told her why he’d run away from the world?
“But what if I really don’t deserve that happiness?” she asked softly.
“You made a mistake,” he said softly, and caught her hands in his. “I won’t pretend that you didn’t. There have clearly been consequences for that mistake, both for you and for your family. But one mistake, committed in desperation, doesn’t deserve the life sentence you’re pondering.”
She bent her head, and he could see her contemplating his words, rolling them around in that wonderful, complicated mind of hers.
He squeezed her hands a little tighter and let out his breath in an unsteady burst. “If there were danger for your sisters and your return could protect them, would you do it?”
“Of course,” she said without hesitation. “I would face anything to protect them.” She shook her head. “What danger do you mean?”
He sucked in his breath. Now was the time to confess all and see her faith in him shatter.
He leaned forward, closer and closer, trying to find the words. Trying to find the confession he’d never wanted to make. “Ellis,” he managed to croak out. “Don’t you think it’s too coincidental that a man like him, one who has made a living from trickery and lies, would have chosen you to pursue when he knew you were engaged to someone important like the Earl of Harcourt?”
She tilted her head as this new information penetrated and she thought it through. “You mean his ulterior motive might have had to do with my fiancé, not myself.” She gritted her teeth. “But then why not come back for me? If I were leverage, wouldn’t he have collected me to cash in?”
“He might have meant to,” Rook said, stomach turning at the thought. “Except Harcourt married your sister instead.”
She pushed to her feet as the color left her cheeks and understanding dawned in her eyes. “And I had no value anymore. Harcourt wouldn’t need me. He had his price another way.”
“But my cousin might still be pursuing whatever it was he thought he could take,” Rook said. “And that could be dangerous. I know it all too well.”
He meant to say more than that. To talk about Harcourt’s late brother, to explain the details of the danger at hand and his own role in it, but before he could, she wrapped her arms around his waist and stared up at him with those emerald eyes he never wanted to lose or look away from. The eyes that held his heart and his soul and, in that moment, his tongue.
“Do you really fear Ellis would harm my family?”
“I hope he wouldn’t,” Rook whispered as he ignored the vice tightening around his heart. “The man I knew, the one who saved me, the one who taught me to survive, the man who treated me like a brother…” He trailed off as his voice caught. “I hope he wouldn’t harm anyone.”
She took his hand, and their fingers threaded together. For a moment they simply breathed together, in unison, their eyes locked.
Then she nodded. “If you think going home will protect my sisters, I’ll do it. Even if I’m not welcomed. Even if I can’t stay. I’d face their wrath.”
“Of course you would,” he said. “You are too brave not to do so.”
She moved to the table and picked up a few sheets of paper that had been resting there and a quill he hadn’t noticed earlier. She must have been writing before she started to read.
“I’ll compose a letter to my sisters to tell them we’re coming,” she said. “It will surely arrive there before w
e do. And did you say we could leave today?”
He hesitated, for a sound had begun outside. One that thrilled him even if it shouldn’t. “It’s raining,” he said. “Probably best wait until the morning.”
She peeked around the corner of the curtain and shook her head. “Our only luck is bad,” she murmured.
He caught her hand and lifted it to his lips. “Write your letter and I’ll take it down to be off with the mail coach when it passes through shortly. And then I would like to find something to occupy our time.”
Her gaze glinted with desire that replaced the worry, just as he’d hoped it would. She drew him down for a kiss that went on just a moment too long. Then she sighed.
“I know you will crow about this, but you’re right, of course. The only way for me to know my path forward is to resolve what I did. And I know you don’t want to go, but I appreciate you being willing to accompany me.”
He said nothing, but took her abandoned seat before the fire and picked up the book she had set aside. He couldn’t say what he wanted to say. He couldn’t admit that he would be willing to accompany her to hell if it meant a moment more in her company.
He couldn’t say it to her, because it could never be. He couldn’t say it because she still didn’t know the whole truth about him, about Ellis and about exactly why his cousin would do such dastardly things to the earl Anne’s sister had married.
Chapter 16
Anne sat up straight on her horse and looked down into the valley where Harcourt Heights was nestled. It was a fine prospect, with a lake to one side and the sea just in the distance to the west. Whatever the Earl of Harcourt’s financial difficulties, he hadn’t yet allowed them to put the estate in disrepair. Probably why he had been in such a rush to marry a Shelley Sister and receive a fine dowry.
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