Page 64 of My Hero
He rose to the bait at once. “My brothers?” He stopped her fingers in his.
She shrugged and gave a small sigh. “But then, you aren’t quite like your brothers, er, half-brothers, are you?” Cruelty overlaid her sweet words like bitter poison dissolved in mead as she patronizingly patted his limp ballocks. “Not quite the man that Holden and Duncan are.”
She slunk from the bed then, brushing past him like a sultry current of air blowing through a chill day, then moving on.
If a man had spoken the insult, he would’ve slammed him up against the wall faster than a cat pouncing on a mouse. No one compared him unfavorably with his brothers. And since he’d earned his spurs, no one dared call him less than a man.
But Mariana was a lady. She cared for him. Whatever she said, she said out of love and concern, or pity. He was sure of it. If Mariana believed him inferior to other men, then maybe it was true.
Suddenly, he grew painfully aware of his nakedness, of the shrunken member slumbering in its dark nest. It took all his will not to cover it with his hands, to hide the despicable thing from her sight. Shame scorched his face, burning him with a hotter fire than lust ever had, a fire that would never be extinguished.
Yet even as he watched the trailing hem of her scarlet robe slither out the door and heard the brittle jangle of her departing laughter, from the edges of sleep came refreshing solace. Someone stroked his fevered cheek with a wet cloth, gently blowing mint-scented breath across his skin to cool him.
The painful dream melted like chips of ice. His tension eased as the furrow between his brows was wiped gently away.
Briefly, he raised his sleep-heavy lids, just enough to peep through his lashes.
Tousled orange curls. Strong, graceful hands. Eyes darkened in concern and compassion.
Cynthia.
Relief swept through him.
Cynthia. Not the lust-filled dragon wench stealing through his dreams, but a real woman, kind and genuine. He sighed. With that sweet comfort, he closed his lids and sank deeper into sleep, past the land of dreams.
Cynthia held her breath. Had Garth wakened? Or was it only a figment of her desperate imagination? After two days of watching over him, grabbing what rest she could in short, fitful naps in the chair the prior had brought, she wasn’t sure.
Those two days, Garth had smoldered like a slow-burning log, alternately sweating and shivering, and breathing with the shallow gasps of a child. He’d tossed weakly on his bed, his sleep plagued by upsetting dreams, and he’d been unable to keep down even the weakest broth with eggs she’d smuggled in.
There wasn’t a part of him she didn’t know intimately now, from the rough stubble of his unshaved chin and the glossy scar traversing his chest to the fine line of hair dividing his belly and the carved hollows of his buttocks.
But none of his features, not even his man’s staff that occasionally, inexplicable decided to rouse, could distract her from the overpowering dread that she was going to lose him.
She dropped the cloth into the basin of water and ran a tired hand through her sticky hair. No healing flowed through her hands now. She was too drained. Now she relied on sheer instinct.
She leaned back against the table and watched him. As absurd as it seemed, she couldn’t stop the feeling that she was partly to blame for his condition. If he hadn’t been in such a rush to leave Wendeville…
She curled her hands in frustration, catching splinters of wood under her nails.
If only she’d stayed in her room that night, if only she’d resisted her desires and hadn’t pushed him so far, he might not have trudged all night in the damp, killing fog to reach the monastery, weakening his resistance to the murrain.
She turned her back to him, unable to face her guilt. Vials and packets of extracts and herbs covered the table before her. Two days ago, they’d been effectual cures, the reliable tools of her trade. Today, they seemed like the counterfeit oils and ointments of a traveling chapman.
Behind her, Garth’s breathing grew ragged. She feared it would become much worse. Then coughing would set in and eventually difficulty drawing air into his lungs. Finally…
She couldn’t think about it. Since that first night, she hadn’t called upon her powers. She wouldn’t do it now. She didn’t want to face despair.
She eyed the medicines on the table again. Somewhere in that vast array of rainbow-colored bottles, there hid a cure. She had to find it.
Garth’s dreams possessed such accurate memory when it came to painful details.
Slats of black hair obscured Mariana’s smoldering eyes, but diluted none of her scorn.
“Marriage?” She rocked backward onto her bread-soft buttocks, gripping Garth’s trembling thighs between her own. “Why would I want to marry you when I can have you anytime I want?” She coiled a lock of his hair around her finger.
“Because…” Because he loved her—utterly, desperately, devotedly. But he couldn’t tell her that, not while derision tainted her voice. “Because it’s the proper thing.”
“And do you always do the proper thing, Garth?” Grinning, she reached behind her back and gave his ballocks a tweak.
