His head cocked to the side, his voice low. “Ness—”
“No. I won’t hear such ridiculousness from you.” Her arms unfolded and she reached out, her fingers wrapping around his forearm. “You are not death because of a few short minutes in an entire lifetime. Those moments in the whorehouse, those moments that your parents died—they aren’t everything, Talen. They’re not all of you. You have always been so much more.”
His mouth clamped closed. She was denying what he knew full well. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I do.” She nodded, her face solemn as her hand fell away from his arm. “I know because I touched death. Touched it on my own accord. And those minutes do not define me. They can’t.”
His breath stilled in his chest. “Ness, what did you do?”
She let out a breathless scoff, the side of her mouth pulling into a strained smile. “You weren’t the only one that Juliet saved.”
“What happened?” His voice hard, he didn’t want to know what she’d done to herself. Yet he had to know.
Her head bowed, her shoulders sank as remorse washed over her small frame. “It was just after Gilroy had broken my arm, broken me. Broke me so completely, set so much pain into my body that it was all I thought I had left. My own death. My own death, under my control. My room was high—so high in that castle. I climbed up onto the window and at the very moment I let myself go, falling to freedom, Juliet tackled me away, pulling me back into the room. Pulling me back into life. Yet I still didn’t want it. Hated what she’d done. Hated her actions until…”
His eyes closed for long seconds. To imagine her drowning so far in that pain that she would leave this earth on her own volition set agony deep into his own chest. Her scars, so deep and wounding becoming his own.
His eyes opened and he stared at the top of her bowed head, wanting nothing more than to erase the past for her but knowing he couldn’t. Instead, he prodded her onward. There was nowhere to go but forward. “Until what?”
Her eyes slowly lifted to him, the golden strands in her irises glowing with intensity, a sheen of tears glossing them. “Until I opened my eyes and you were there. You were dead. Long dead. But then you weren’t. You were alive, breathing when you shouldn’t have been. I know death, Talen. And you. You are not death. You are the opposite. You are life. You brought me back to life.”
She stepped closer to him as her chin lifted, her stare desperate as it pinned him. “When you were young, you were funny and smart and mostly kind, except when you got that wicked gleam in your eye and wanted to make me squeal. But your heart…your heart has always beaten gold, no matter the iron you’ve since shackled it in. It is still in you. I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it.”
He closed his eyes to her. “But I don’t remember that—what I was. I don’t remember anything more.”
“Nothing else?”
“I only remember that night. That one night.” His hand lifted, his fingers rubbing across his forehead and eyes. “Why can’t I remember more?”
“I don’t know. But if you remember the worst of it, maybe the rest will follow.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
She worried her lip for long seconds. “Did you recall anything more from that night? What happened after your mother dropped in front of you?”
He shook his head slightly, his eyes still covered, then he shrugged. “Just that I was choked. I remember that. After my mother died, they found out I was alive and I was choked.”
She gasped. “It’s the rasp in your voice. It was never there before. But it is now. I thought it odd, but it makes sense that is where it came from.”
His hand dropped away from his face and he found her eyes. “I couldn’t speak for a long time on the ship. Weeks it took, my throat barely able to let breath in and out, much less talk. That’s how I became Talen. Talen Blackstone. Some old sailor named me because he was sick of calling me boy and he said I had eyes like a hawk—watching everything with intent to strike.”
His eyes opened wider and he swayed, the blackness he’d just emerged from suddenly threatening to swallow him again. “I never remembered that. Never. The memories of it, of my first days on the ship. All of it just slipped away. Forgotten when it never should have been. I should have remembered. Remembered everything.”
He swayed again, his body threatening to collapse and she stepped into him, wrapping her arms around him to balance him, the splint on her left arm jutting into his side.
So unsteady, his body wavering, shards of black cutting across his vision.
His face buried into the top of her head, drowning himself in her scent. “Hold me. Hold me against this. I can’t go into the blackness again.”
Her arms tightened around him. It had to pain her left arm, but dammit, he needed this. Needed her to keep him from slipping away again.
“I have you, Talen. I do. Always.” She pulled her head away from his chest so she could look up at him.
Worry strained her face. Worry he hated. She shouldn’t have to worry, not on him.
But he didn’t know how to stop the blackness from taking over again. How to stay here with her when his mind was determined to make him abandon everything around him.
Abandon her.
Her amber eyes pinned him. “Even if you slip away, I am here. Waiting.”
His left hand moved up and he found her jawline, holding onto her, her face cutting through the black shards cutting across his vision.
She could hold him here. Hold him in the present.
His head dipped, his mouth finding hers, his kiss desperate and pleading.
He pulled slightly to the left, his lips still brushing against the skin of her cheek.
“I never needed anything from you, from anyone. But I need this, Ness. Need this to ground me in reality. Need you. Need you to keep me here, where I am. Not where I was.”
Without a word her lips moved to his, kissing him. Her mouth parted, immediately demanding more from him, her tongue flickering against his. A force he was not about to deny, his cock already an iron rod throbbing for her.
This was what he needed. Nothing but her. Her hands on his body. Her mouth on his. His body consumed with possessing her, the taste of her—leaving no space for anything else in his mind.
No memories. No anger. Just Ness.
Ness and the sweetness of her lips, her breath steamy fire on his skin, her sultry moans filling his ears when he set his hand behind her neck, tilting her head to deepen the kiss.
Sinking into everything she was. Hiding from everything he couldn’t control.
Without breaking the kiss, the tips of her left fingers fumbled in trying to help her right hand with the fall front of his trousers, nudging him backward as she worked the buttons. He was naked by the time his calves hit the side of the bed and her shift had fallen to the floor.
She broke the kiss and pushed his shoulders back and down, sending him flat onto the bed, then crawled in after him, straddling his thighs.
The blood in his cock pounding, he stared up at her as she hovered over him for a long breath, her golden eyes fixed on him, making sure he didn’t think to leave her again. The tips of her left fingers went along his cheek, her nails sinking into his skin. “You are here with me, Talen. Here.”
Then she lifted her hips, grabbing his shaft to center him and drove downward in one harsh motion. It pulled him into her, into a world where there was nothing but his cock buried deep in her tightness. The exquisite sensation of her muscles contracting around him.
With a gasp at her lips, she lifted up, and sank down again and again. His eyes locked onto her face, the gyration of her hips driving him to madness in less than a minute.
As if he could be anywhere else when she was on top of him.
He reached up and grabbed the back of her head, burying his fingers deep into the thick of her dark hair. Pins flew and strands fell about her as he yanked her downward, his mouth taking hers. Ravaging her lips, he bu
ried himself in the soul of her. Her hips kept gyrating, lifting, descending. Furious and fast, her body pitching herself to the edge.
Her teeth bit his tongue as she slammed down onto him, sending her into a writhing orgasm with a scream. All of her muscles hardened under his touch, her body clenching viciously around his cock, drawing him deeper with every wave storming her muscles.
His mind consumed, his body desperate to devour her, he flipped her onto her back, slamming into her in time with every contraction of her orgasm. Thrusting until he was frantic, pummeling her so hard he was sure he was hurting her when all she did was scream, “More.”
Every piercing drive into her, “More.”
His hips moved in a fury until he lost his bloody mind, his body going carnal, his teeth raking over the skin on her neck, one of his hands holding her arms high above her head so her body stretched to accommodate the full length of him. His other hand gripped her breast as her hips bucked, meeting him with every thrust. And still she begged for more, her back arching, needing all of him.
It hit him in a furious landslide, his muscles shaking as he came into her, his seed spurting so brutally he lost all sense of time and place except for his cock buried deep in her. Her body taking everything he needed to expel in that moment.
Fury and anger and confusion and anguish.
She took at all. Willingly, not buckling under the onslaught.
Before he could breathe, before he could think, he wrapped an arm around her and spun onto his back, dragging her body with him, capturing her fully between his legs. He wasn’t going to let her go.
Probably never.
He’d long since reconciled the fact that he had no control over himself when it came to his cock deep in her. He was a damned mess, never pulling out of her when he needed to. It didn’t matter. He was ready for the consequences. He’d been ready from the first moment he’d set his naked body to hers, whether or not he’d admitted it to himself.
His breath rasping in his throat, he searched for some semblance of sanity. Worried that the last he’d known of it was in the second before Ness had appeared at the Alabaster.
She’d gone limp atop him, her cheek nestled in the center crook of his chest, her body exhausted but her breath still gasping for normalcy. His arms stayed locked in place around her, not letting her roll off of him. He needed her there, atop him. The weight of her continuing to ground him to the present, if not sanity.
Her breathing finally evened out, each inhale sinking deep into her lungs.
Asleep.
He reached over on the bed and grabbed the sheet, pulling it up over her rear so she didn’t get chilled, not that it was possible for how hot his skin was on her.
She rustled slightly, all of her limbs stretching for a moment before she snuggled back into him. Her voice, raspy with sleep, whispered into his chest. “You’re not death, Talen. You aren’t. And I’m not going anywhere.”
He didn’t believe her.
But for that that moment, that night, he’d not argue it. Let it be.
For he’d never been at such peace.
{ Chapter 22 }
“This is where you lived, or at least where you lived when I knew you.” From atop her horse, Ness pointed to the right with her left hand, the motion in her fingers not causing the slightest discomfort along her arm. She probably didn’t even need the splint attached to her forearm anymore, though Talen insisted on keeping it on her, patiently rewrapping her arm three times a day so her skin didn’t rot against the splint or itch too much.
She warily looked at Talen on his horse. The knuckles of his hand holding the reins were strained to white.
He didn’t want to be here.
But he’d come because she’d insisted. She was pushing too hard and she knew it, but she couldn’t stop herself. He’d been the one to teach her how to fight, so that’s what she was doing.
Fighting to get him to remember. Remember her. Remember his past so that he could believe in himself. In the good that he held within him. Because right now, he still thought he was death. Death to her.
He may have stopped saying it, but he still believed it. She saw it in his eyes. In the angst etched deep in his blue irises.
His look flicked from Washburn Manor to her. “We should be headed north right now, Ness. Not on some fool’s errand to look at a monstrosity of wealth and privilege.”
She glanced to her right. The main house was a bit much. It had been a grand palace of fun when she was young. Portland stone graced all sides of the manor house. Fat and wide and perfectly symmetrical. A beacon of light against the green surrounding it.
Wide green lawns unfurled in every direction until meeting with the forest on the back side and grazing fields on the right and left. The lawn held perfectly manicured evergreens all about, a labyrinth, several ponds and a multitude of gardens where one could easily get lost. The stables were beyond a swath of forest in the rear, five barns that had, at some point, housed some of the finest breeding horses in England, if she correctly recalled what her father had once said.
Grandeur and pomposity oozed in every direction. But that had been Talen’s childhood. A childhood she knew he’d been happy in. Happiness he could take solace in, happiness that could steal some of the pain away from what he’d remembered.
She cleared her throat and looked to him. “The coach got stuck twice yesterday on the way back to the village, and the driver said the roads were much worse this morning. So our options are to sleep on the roadside tonight when we get stuck halfway to the border because you are too insistent on leaving, or to spend the day here in the area. And there is no harm in visiting the estate—it may help you to remember more.”
His stare had moved off of her to fix on the manor house, his jaw shifting back and forth. “I don’t know that I want to remember more. Yesterday was enough.” His head swiveled, his wide eyes finding her. “The coach got stuck twice yesterday? How did you get it out?”
“The driver and I both pushed on the rear corner of the carriage as he turned the horses with a long lead rope.”
His brows lifted. “And I sat inside the coach the whole time?”
She didn’t try to hide her grin. “You did.”
“Pathetic.” He exhaled, his head shaking. “Well, I am back in the land of the living, you can be assured of that.”
A wanton smile crossed her face. “Anytime you need me to ground you to the present time and place, I am more than willing.”
A chuckle rumbled from his chest. “I may black out more often if that is my reward.”
She motioned with her left hand that had been resting in her lap. “Shall we at least go up the drive? We don’t have to inquire about going inside or meeting anyone in residence. Just poke about.”
He looked up the long gravel drive, staring at it for a long moment before nodding his head.
She flicked her reins with her right hand, sending her mare into motion next to his horse. They moved slowly, Talen’s eyes shifting across the landscape, the land unfurling out from the manor house, the lane lined on one side with majestic oaks about to drop their leaves.
His focus landed on the manor house up the hill, his eyes squinting at the structure. “Who are these people that I come from?”
Her lips drew inward for a long moment as her heart sank.
He really hadn’t remembered anything past the night his parents died. She’d hoped sleep would help him. He’d been so quiet the previous night about everything that was going on in his mind, that she hadn’t wanted to badger him with a lot of questions about what he did and did not remember.
She forced a neutral smile on her face. “You were one of the grandsons of the Earl of Washburn. Your cousin, Harriet, she was my friend, and she was why I would always be so happy to visit this place. I’m sorry, but I don’t recall how many grandchildren there were or who her parents were or who your parents were—I was so young and I didn’t pay attention to all the adults. And then after your
parents’ funeral, we no longer visited. I do not know why we stopped. I wish I had paid more attention, could remember more to help.”
His eyes closed for a long moment as he nodded. His face suddenly scrunched tight in a long wince. “My father—there was a uniform.”
Ness looked to the manor house, searching her memory. There had been so many adults there when her family visited and the adults rarely interacted with the children.
A faint recollection perked into her mind. “Yes, maybe. I partly remember a man in a red uniform. I believe he may have been in the army?”
Her head shook as her eyes closed. “I’m sorry I don’t remember more. I remember the funeral for the three of you, we traveled here for that, but there were so many hushed tones of people talking about what happened to your family, and I didn’t understand any of it. Just that Harriet was so sad and scared she barely spoke two words to me. I never heard what happened to you three, just that you all died in a horrible accident. We didn’t visit again. And I missed it, missed Harriet, missed you. I’m trying to remember more and I hate that I cannot.”
“It’s not up to you to piece my life back together for me, Ness.”
She opened her eyes to find him staring at her, worry on his face. Worry for her when he should only be worried about his own mind.
She gave him a bright smile. “I just want you to know where your place in the world once was. That you were happy here. I knew that about you. You laughed too easily back then to have been troubled. Real laughter. Your laughter was so light and carefree. It was a rare thing. Even I understood that at that age. Wondered at it.”
A distance in front of them, a carriage pulled up from the far side of the manor house and stopped at the front door of the home. Anyone exiting the manor house was blocked from view, but Ness could see through the open space under the carriage dark boots and skirts shuffling about. Then the coach was on the move, clipping down the drive toward them.
Talen shifted his horse off to the side of the lane and Ness followed suit, tightening the reins to still her horse until the carriage passed.
Dangerous Exile (An Exile Novel Book 3) Page 15
