Page 105 of A Lady of Means
He laughed, nipping at her shoulder.“Why would I want to walk?I have everything I need right here.”
He brought her fingers to his lips to kiss each of them in turn.
“Devyn?”
“Hmm?”He said, settling into a pillow with one great arm behind his head.Moria pulled the coverlet and sheet over both of them.
“Will you tell me?What it was like?I want to know everything.”
He arched a brow at her.
“Everything,” she reiterated, kissing his broad, bare chest and resting her head on one of his tattoos.“I couldn’t be there with you, you didn’t allow me to be there for you when you got back, but I wanted to.Desperately.”
“At first, I started my rehabilitation to spite you,” he said, his hand drawing little circles on her bare shoulder.“But what was it all for, without this?”he said, taking her mouth in a slow, sweet, drugging kiss.
And then he told her, about all of it, as she lay warm and safe in his arms.
ChapterForty-Two
Many times,Moria woke in a warm bed with soft linen sheets in a small cottage, to the feel of Devyn’s lips on her skin, his hands on her body and in her hair.They made love again, at some point.He kissed the top of her head and pulled her so close and told her to get some sleep.She had the same dream as many nights before, of shrouding green fronds blocking out the sun, Devyn’s laugh, and the wind blowing her hair from her face.But this time, the man she’d dreamed about, dreamed to life, even, held her while she slept.
Now, she watched the sun alight on the sharp planes of his face, the slope of his shoulders and pectorals honed by battle with enemies both foreign and within sprinkled with golden light for the first time and likely the last.Even though Moria was curled in his arms, she felt like he was already slipping through her fingers yet again.They’d been pulled apart by circumstance so many times, maybe it was a sign.What they had was an aberration, it wasn’t the kind of thing that was built to last.
She had been brought up with a singular goal: a nobleman’s wife.But Devyn had been a rock in the current of her life, sending her wants rushing in a different direction.The more she wanted something, the more likely it was to be taken from her.Time had proven that.
Devyn stirred, his rose tattooed arm coming up to cradle his pillow.
Moria’s eyes stung at the sight of his tattoo, a reminder that this wasn’t an aberration.What he meant to her, what hehaddone for her, what hewoulddo for her, was perfectly real.
Devyn opened one eye and looked at her.“Stop,” he said.
Moria moved closer to him in the circle of his arms.“Stop what?You don’t know what I was thinking.”
“I do.I can hear your over-thinking from here.Stop complicating this.”
If the world outside didn’t exist, or if it could maybe just go on in her absence, she’d let her calling be to stay inside the protective encircling of both of Devyn Winter’s massive arms.She’d let the tobacco and whiskey and parchment of his scent be the only thing she smelled.She’d wear those crumpled sheets as the only bespoke couture she needed.But several blocks from here, resided another man who’d made plans with her, who’d stood up for her, who’d been decent to her.Several blocks from here was her family, and a woman with a book filled with words she’d written that would make their lives more difficult.
Moria’s panicked heart thudding reached her ears.
Devyn’s breathing was steady, like he was.For a moment, she let the rhythm of his breaths temper her pulse and stampeding thoughts.His hands skimmed down her arms, falling on her abdomen, stroking over her hip, then lower, to her core.
Moria gave a strangled gasp.Her entire body responded at his touch, she knew enough of love and lust to understand that she had been starved for touch, craved affection and intimacy like this; and it wasn’t something that could be replicated.
“What is it you want?”The smokey, wicked rasp of his voice curled inside her ear.
“You know exactly what I want,” she turned in his arms to speak into his lips, the linen sheets clinging to her bare skin.
“Say it,” his hands stilled, warm and powerful resting against her skin.
Moria wrapped her arms about his neck.“I want you to take me.”
Devyn raised a brow.“And then?”
Moria traced a finger over the pointed slopes of his handsome face, committing him to memory.The wine in the bottle they’d been drinking had run dry, the sand in all their hour glasses had emptied.She’d been trying to outrun the goodbye for hours, days, now.But the time was nigh.
“And then, I dress, I return home, make my excuses, and prepare to say my vows in a church in a couple of days.”
Devyn swore and sat up, the sheets covering him slipping to his waist.His exposed back bore the marks of all ten of her fingernails.Selfishly, she hoped the last signs of what they were to each other took days to fade.Moria swallowed the sourness rising in her throat.How was she so willing and free with her love for him in this room, and so reluctant to give him more?
