Page 57 of The Vagabond Viscount
He brushed a hand over her face, then bent and kissed a tear from her right cheek. Then he did the same to the other cheek. His lips were a benediction for her teary smile.
Augusta’s smile had always meant the world to him. The memory of it was sometimes the only thing he’d had to bring him comfort during the long, tortuous days of the past year.
It had been the thought of Augusta and their love which had given him hope on those cold, dark nights when the only place he’d had to lay his head was a soft Teucrium bush under a bridge as he huddled into his thin coat and tried to stay warm.
Words might well have failed him, but they had always been able to speak to one another in other ways. Flynn bent his head and placed a soft, tender kiss on Augusta’s lips. He prayed he still had the right to kiss her, because if he didn’t, he would surely die.
* * *
She had thought to ask if he was a ghost, but the way that he held her firmly in his arms told her all she ached to know. Flynn Cadnam was very much alive.
The warmth of his lips shattered any foolish notion that this might simply be an illusion of her grief-stricken mind. When his hand drifted lower and cupped her rear, pulling her hard against his firm body, all remaining doubt fled.
Flynn. God, I have missed this, missed your touch.
When his manhood pressed into her stomach, heat pooled between her legs. She had thought desire had died with the loss of Flynn, but now that he was here, and more than obviously alive, her body roared back to life. Hunger burned within.
He deepened the kiss, his tongue dancing over hers, capturing and claiming what had always been his, what she had never wanted to give to any other man. Augusta clutched at Flynn’s coat, desperate to never let him go.
They had both suffered, endured a year of unbearable pain while separated. She wanted this kiss to last for eternity.
When he finally drew away, almost breaking the kiss, she refused to let him go. Her mouth eagerly chased after his, and she silently exalted when Flynn came back, and his lips crashed over hers once more.
The whole world could stop, and she wouldn’t care—just as long as they were here, and this embrace never ended.
But eventually it did, and slowly, reluctantly, she let him pull away. Her hands remain gripped tightly to the folds of his coat. He might be releasing her from the kiss, but she had no intention of letting her hold on him slacken.
“G. You are here… in Rome. I can’t believe it.”
“What I can’t believe is that you are standing here, hale and hearty. I thought you were dead. So does everyone in Londonincluding your father.”
She hated making mention of Earl Bramshaw, but Flynn had to know what his sire had said, and what little he had done to find his son. The happy grin which had been sitting on Flynn’s face disappeared in an instant. Her heart threatened to break as tears welled in his eyes.
She didn’t yet know what he had been through over the past while, but she could imagine it must have been something terrible.
Her gaze took in his pale, washed-out face—the hollowed cheeks. The dark circles under his eyes. Flynn had aged dramatically since last she had seen him. His bright youth was gone, stolen from him.
Augusta wanted nothing more than to weep the world down for him, to rail against the injustice of things. But she could sense that wasn’t what Flynn needed from her. He wanted her light, her affection.
And that is what you shall have. All of it.
“I’m sorry, G. So bloody sorry you have had to suffer all this time, thinking that I was dead. If I could have arranged to send word earlier, I would have; as it is, the letter I did manage to finally send to you is still somewhere on the high seas. It will beat you back to England. As for my father, I don’t give a damn what he has told the world about me. My misfortune was all of his doing.”
“So, the earl knows you are alive?”
She had always thought Earl Bramshaw was a cold-hearted man, and she would never forget his spiteful response to her calling at his door asking about Flynn, but she had never imagined he would ever seek to actually harm his son.
Flynn sighed. “I don’t know what he knows of my fate. What I am certain of is that he knew full well I was still alive when I left Bramshaw House, but he had put plans in place to make sure that I was dead well before anyone came looking for me. Even now, I am unsure as to what he might do if he did discover the truth about me, and where I am.”
Augusta’s fingers fell from Flynn’s coat, and her hand went to her mouth. This was beyond horrific. Earl Bramshaw had tried to kill his own son.
“Flynn—” Her next question was cut off by his lips meeting hers once more. She didn’t fight it, accepting that the last thing he wished to discuss right now was his villainous sire.
She relaxed into the tender offer of his mouth, sighing as her heart rejoiced in this glorious reunion. There would come a time when Flynn would tell her what had happened to him that day after he left the park, but tonight was for them. For the rebirth of their love.
He broke the kiss but continued to brush soft butterfly kisses over her lips as he spoke. “I love you. I have never stopped thinking about you. You have to know that my every waking moment has been caught up in wondering where you were and what you were doing,” he said. Flynn’s gaze dropped to the floor, and he shifted uneasily on his feet. “I must confess there were times when I drove myself to the point of madness worrying that you had found someone else. That you had given up on me and married another.”
She had threatened to do that very thing not long before Flynn disappeared. Augusta could well understand his reasoning.
