Page 23 of Pride: The Rogue
“Ahhh,” Livian jumped unevenly to her feet and raced for the bastard. However, each step she took, depressed the mattress.
Livian lost her balance. Squealing, she went flying through the air; and closing her eyes, she tensed in anticipation of her collision with the floor.
When the fall came, the air exploded from her lungs, sucking all the breath out of Livian’s body.
Running through a brick wall would’ve hurt less.
Her body went limp but she remained standing. The icy chill had faded from the floor and left her surprisingly, but welcomingly warm.
Livian, addled from the force of her collision, tried to understand what’d happened.
Strong, wide, but gentle hands came to rest upon her back.
She cried out and tried to wrestle herself away.
A smooth murmuring whispered against Livian’s temple. “Wohh, darling.” Those strokes, no, caresses, became lighter, gentler. “I’ve got you.”
…I’ve got you…
Unlike every moment that’d built to this one, fear didn’t hold Livian in its grip. Maybe she was the only mad one of their pair. For Mr. Latimer’s husky promise combined with the quixotic massage played a new kind of havoc on her senses.
Instead of fleeing, she closed her eyes and shamefully welcomed his soothing caress.
“I’ve got you,” he repeated, against her temple.
She’d yearned to have a man make that promise to her.
None had.
None ever would.
Out of respect for their employer, any of the men from her station she knew because of her brother-in-law, kept a distance.
The nobility with their weak spines, lily-white hands, and undeserved arrogance, had never looked her way. Nor had she ever wanted them to. They’d all left her feeling as out of place as a fish on land.
Thought, at the end of the day—or more accurately, this fraught journey’s conclusion—one of those lords awaited Livian.
Tears threatened.
Maybe it was exhaustion and the reality of what she was days away from doing, but she found borrowing strength from this stranger’s arms. He, her captor, became her unwitting comforter.
Livian buried her face deeper into Mr. Latimer’s wet wool jacket. The cool of his garments didn’t transfer the chill she expected, but instead a peculiar heat radiated throughout her.
Her throat worked spasmodically.
Despite her sister’s thoughts to the contrary or complete lack of knowing, Livian had been as strong as, or stronger than Verity—just in different ways, ways Verity didn’t know. Now, she, who never cried, strangled on a sob.
Here she stood, taking solace in the arms of a stranger, who might or might not be a thief or murderer or—even though he insisted he wasn’t—a rapist. If he were going to do any of those things, he’d likely have done them by now.
All the while, she silently wept, her unexpected comforter continued massaging her back in that soothing way. He did so until her body ceased trembling, and her tears faded.
With a soft exhalation, she sagged against him.
How peculiar, she felt somehow better from being held by this man.
Mr. Latimer pressed his lips against her temple. All the shockingly discovered calm vanished.
He…is kissing me.
