Page 104 of The Duchess Curse

He slipped a finger inside her, curled it. “Don’t what?” His voice a low grumble.

“I-I… I don’t know. Don’t stop?”

“As you wish.” He stroked up every emotion she’d careened between in the last several days and rolled them toward a high peak of pleasure, and when she climaxed, she didn’t know if she wanted to cry out or cry, melt into oblivion or return the favor.

So she turned and kissed him—a long forever sort of kiss that made her heart grow and the heat between her legs return. And he kissed her back with a confident passion, his one good hand roaming everywhere on her body, the water warming deliciously around them. He whispered little words and rambling sentences she didn’t pay much attention to at first. She hadn’t kissed him enough, hadn’t let him kiss her, and she had time to make up for, lips to learn and remember, a tongue to taste. But he didn’t stop, each kiss a mumbled word that built on another.

“God, I love you, Guin. I have since the moment I met you, I swear. And I’ve loved every version of you—widow, duchess, potion maker. I’m killing Braxton. We can go anywhere together, Bran and Guin. There’s no heir. The title will revert to the Crown, and that’s for the best. I was never meant for it, it never meant for me.”

“Wait.” She pulled away from the kiss, shaking her head. “Slow down. What do you mean?” He’d said something similar the night of the attack. “You can’t kill Braxton.”

“Oh, I’ll die alright. This time for good. There will be no questions about it.”

“But you’re good at being Braxton. You need to be him. The world needs you to be him. If you kill him, then all his work disappears. No one will take up his cause, and men will continue to douse women with love potion without their consent, no consequences. And women who do the same will end their lives at a hangman’s noose.”

Something in his face shifted, a brief reluctance he shuttered immediately. “I don’t want to be Braxton. I want to be with you, even if it’s just as your guard. I was never meant to be a duke. I’m not built for it.”

“You are. There’s no one kinder or who fights harder. You can’t. I won’t let you.”

The panicked rush to simply keep this man alive that had driven her since the attack drained away. He was alive, and everything between them had changed. He loved her. And she… good Gaia, she loved him. And this thing between them, built on hate and betrayal, once so safe…

It no longer was.

This was the curse, killing him in a different way, killing her as surely as a knife to the gut.

Her despair must have shown on her face because he kissed her and stood, bringing her along with him. He helped her out of the tub and handed her a towel, which she slung over her shoulders. “Shh. We’ll talk about it later. Let me kiss you. Since you’re letting me kiss you.”

She let him and more as they dried off and returned to the bed. Someone had changed the sheets. Everything was new and fresh, and even her makeshift worktable had been tidied.

He was tired and dragging, and she donned a shift and wrapper as she brewed a sleeping draught for him.

When she tilted it toward his lips, he made a face, but she lifted a brow and he let her feed him the potion. Then she laid down against him and buried her face in his chest. She remained there until his breathing settled into a deep, slow rhythm.

Then she remained there even longer, memorizing the strength and smell of him, memorizing the sound of a heart that beat so openly for her.

Perhaps she’d rip it out to keep him safe.

She couldn’t move. The curse became a solid thing inside her—an eventuality neither she nor Bran could escape.

No. No. It was merely an unknown. A thing she could discover and fix.

But a lifetime of fear and misery screeched much louder than the gentle whispers of a newly formed hope.

She ripped herself away from his side, and as she slung her legs to the floor, Artemis winged in from the bathing chamber. She perched on the mattress and danced toward Guin, cocking her head.

Guin ran a finger down her wing. “Don’t squawk. You’ll wake him.”

As if she knew exactly what Guin meant, the bird hopped over to Bran and ruffled her feathers before settling beside him.

Her heart a stone, Guin dressed. She needed to think. And there was too much emotion clogging the room to do so here. Bran was too large here, too consuming. So she grabbed her walking stick and tiptoed out of the bedchamber and down the hall. She met the doctor going down the stairs, as he was coming up.

She swallowed a lump of emotion in her throat. “He’s sleeping under the influence of a draught I made. He has been awake and walking about. He’s grumpy but much better than before. No more signs of infection.”

“Excellent, but I think I’ll check for myself.”

“Yes, take good care of him.” At the front door, she met Ned, who stepped in line behind her.

“Where we off to, Lady G?”