Page 52 of Hazard a Guest
He hadn’t known such a thing was possible. He doubted many people knew. He was ragged with it, spent.
Only then did he feel as though he could pull away and study her, listen to her breathing, and continue to touch, lightly, gratefully. He watched her eyes crack open, a glimmering, molten gold in the candlelight, and when she reached out a hand to him, he happily gave it, falling onto the pillows beside her, pulling her into him, kissing the line of her hair, the sweet softness of her temple, the little dip of her nose between her brows.
He held her tight and close and let her breathe stillness back into herself, grateful for the gift of her warmth.
And then, miraculously and at long last, he slept.
CHAPTER 18
Ember listened to his breathing for a long time. A very long time.
She watched his face, the shadows of his long lashes, the calm set of his lips. She watched the way the flicker of the lantern fire made shadows from his tousled curls and the exposed planes of his chest.
She wanted more. She wanted to wake him up and continue the consummation of their connection, to drive herself past the borders of chaos and pleasure again and again. She also wanted him to sleep. She wanted him to rest. She wanted him to never leave this state of ease and comfort.
It was the strangest pull of desires she had ever contended with.
She had invited him to take her the way she had always known taking to occur, and he’d done something completely different. It hadn’t been selfless, not exactly. He’d found his own pleasure in the strength of providing hers. It felt impossible. It felt like a fire that managed to keep burning in a lake of cool water.
How had the same world that had carried Ember from her first day to this one also produced the likes of Joe Cresson? How was that possible?
She turned carefully onto her side, toward him. She pulled the coverlet up gently to cradle him in it. And she drank in the beautiful stillness of him, the steady breathing, the gentle curve of his lips, the absolute comfort of sleep.
Was this the same man she’d watched dozing in a carriage not two weeks ago? Could all of this have been there, written on his face even then, and she’d just not seen it? Or maybe she had seen it, she thought. Maybe she’d seen it and known on that day too, but could not bring herself to quite believe it.
Even when she’d been married, she never spent the whole of the night next to a man after making love. She wanted to do that tonight. She wanted to sleep next to him and find him still there beside her when the sun rose.
Sometimes her lover left, sometimes she told him to leave, sometimes Ember herself slipped out as quietly and carefully as possible. She could do that tonight. She could do it right now. But she did not want to.
What would he think, if she did that? What would he think if she stayed?
She knew that if she went, he would never mention it. He likely wouldn’t hold it against her. He would be the same Joe he had been before this, before tonight. He didn’t make demands. He didn’t chastise.
But if she stayed? That could mean so many things. It could go so many ways.
She wanted to stay.
She had been naked many times in her life, but she had never felt naked until just this moment, right now. That was silly, wasn’t it? She was practically alone in this moment, not observed, not seen. Why feel naked right now, after her lover had already closed his eyes, after he’d already fallen away into his own rest?
Even on her wedding night, trembling and frightened, she hadn’t felt exposed this way. She’d still kept some part of her tucked safely under her ribs, under the thrumming of her heart, in reserve, lest she need it.
She didn’t think that reserve had survived Joe Cresson. She thought that even if it still lived within her, it was ripped open now, empty.
She almost smiled about it, though she wouldn’t call the emotion at the realization happiness. Not quite.
She couldn’t name it.
And she couldn’t resist reaching out and winding her fingers through his, though his hand was heavy in repose. She might have imagined it. She probably had imagined it. But it seemed to her that he returned the pressure of the gesture, even deep in the mire of his own dreams.
She exhaled. She closed her eyes. And she slept.
She must have movedin the night, because when the sun finally did peek its way through the seams and rungs of the curtainedwindows, Ember found herself fully held against Joe’s body, wrapped in the embrace of his arms.
Her eyelids were heavy, too heavy to raise, her breath coming soft and dense from the weight of sleep that had settled atop her. She tried to listen to him, tried to determine if he had yet awakened himself, and twice in the attempting, she found herself dozing again, losing the threads before her fingers could ever fully grasp them.
The third time, she felt his mouth curve against her, nuzzled as it was just above her ear.
“Will you stop that?” he whispered, clearly amused through his own grogginess. “No one is awake. No one is coming. Stop worrying.”
