Page 73 of Lord Ashley's Beautiful Alibi
She could not help her smile. “You say my name correctly—and you must rest.”
Both his long, dark brows rose in humorous delight. “Did you think we wouldn’t?”
I hoped!She tugged to be free.
“Give over and come let me hold you. No tears tonight now, please.”
She relented, because to deprive herself of his sweet company when she needn’t seemed like a death knell. Curling close, she nestled into all the hollows and curves of his marvelous frame. She tangled her legs with his. Just to be entwined like errant vines was heaven. He was here and for now, hers. She would savor what she could.
He stroked her back and kissed her forehead. “This is better now. We are both warmer. Happier, too.”
She burrowed into his shoulder. He wore a soft old shirt that she’d made him don when she got him to their room. He had on an old pair of breeches that he slept in always. But he was minus his boots and socks. The idea of his big body in little but his skin had her nigh unto swooning with want. Their bigger room, and their wider bed, was a godsend, not only to tend his wound but to lie here with him, spread out in comfort.
“Have you been awake while I slept?”
“I have.”
He lifted her face to him, licked her lower lip, and tsked. “Drinking, too. Not like you. Tell me why.”
She nuzzled her nose into his throat. Out of his sight, she swept her tongue along her lower lip and clutched at the grip of her desire to have him taste her, all of her. She fought for a reasonable response to him. “I celebrate that Amber is in good hands. And that you are not badly injured.”
He continued to stroke her back. “Anything else?”
“No.”
He cupped her cheek and stared down at her, then brushed tears from her cheeks. “Then what do you mourn?”
The sob that broke from her was not what she wanted, not what she needed if she was to part from him soon and never know him again. “You.”
“I am not dead.”
“To me, you will be soon.” She rolled above him, a waterfall of tears destroying all her serenity. She was soon to lose him and never have him back. “I cannot see a future where you are not there.”
He gripped her hair, his nails at her scalp, his eyes molten with urgency. “Then don’t leave me.”
That ripped her heart in two. “I don’t want to, and yet…yet we are done.”
He brought her lips to his. His whisper was a plea. “That is not certain. I trust Ramsey, but I do not trust Fouché or Vaillancourt. We should continue until we know all the details.”
“I should not stay with you.”
He combed her hair from her cheeks. “Why not?”
She dropped her forehead to his chest and cried bitterly. “I am ashamed.”
He flinched—and she felt it reverberate through him. “Of me?”
“No. Never.” Could she reveal how embarrassed she was to want him so dearly?
“But why?” He cradled her close, his lips to her ear. “Tell me.”
“I told myself I was a thing unto myself. Alone. I did not want a lover,” she blurted, letting slip in one raw word where her mind wandered. She lifted her face to tell him the awful truth. “I told myself that men were expendable. Changeable. Untrustworthy to boot.”
His features melted to a yearning she had never before glimpsed. “Awful creatures.”
She frowned down at him. “Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not. I want to make you laugh.”
