‘Comfortable?’ she asked softly.
He made a noise he hoped sounded like a yes, because he was beyond speech.
‘Good,’ she said, her voice low in the darkness.
She continued to move her fingers around his scalp. His shoulders began to sink into the bed. He closed his eyes, listening to her steady breath. Without doing it consciously, he realised he had matched her rhythm.
‘I want you to concentrate on your heels,’ she said softly. ‘Think about how they are pressing into the mattress.’
He half-debated opening his mouth to protest at the absurd idea, but his mind was moving sluggishly and he could notsummon the energy to speak. Instead, he did as she suggested, following her words as she told him to focus on the soles of his feet, his toes, the backs of his calves. He was half-intrigued what she would do when she got to his waist, but he never found out. By the time she reached his knees, his world had turned black.
Chapter Twenty-five
Kate kept her fingers in his hair long after Edward had succumbed to sleep. She should pull them out of the soft strands and leave the room, but she couldn’t make herself do it, not yet.
Approaching his room, she’d been so confident she could help him with his sleeping problem, but when he’d stood before her, so large and male, her idea had seemed foolish. The notion she could send a grown man to sleep with her touch and her words were laughable in the face of reality. And yet it had worked with surprising ease.
Now she wished she hadn’t blown the candle out. Although possibly slightly sinister, she would have liked to watch him sleep, to see his powerful body finally relaxed.
He turned, one large arm flinging itself across her waist. It would still be easy to slide out from under it, but she stayed exactly where she was, enjoying the weight of it on her body. Since her mother’s death nearly twenty years ago, she’d had very little human contact, none of it male. Yes, she found him desperately attractive, but he was still her friend, someonewhom she liked more than most people, more than anyone really, and being in his arms, albeit accidentally, was a joy she was not going to give up. Glad to have a reason to stay a little longer, she shifted slightly, straightening her legs out on the mattress.
She woke with a start. The room she was in was pitch dark, but she could tell it was not her bed she was lying in.
‘I am sorry,’ said a deep voice next to her. ‘I did not mean to wake you.’
For a moment, all she could do was lie there in stunned silence, unable to fully believe that she had fallen asleep next to Edward. It was so beyond inappropriate she could not begin to fully comprehend what she had done and yet she did not appear to be leaping from the bed to get away from him.
‘I am very sorry. I did not mean to fall asleep. The last thing I remember thinking was I should get up and then…’
‘It is fine,’ he said softly, his deep voice warm and addictive. ‘If you are worried about people finding out, I can promise you I will not tell a soul.’
‘My brother would challenge you to a duel if he knew, even if I explained it was entirely my fault.’
‘Then we are lucky I sent him to America.’
The mattress moved beneath them with their shared laughter. It was strangely normal to be lying next to this man making jokes in the dark like this.
‘You are awake again.’ That was disappointing; she had thought once he was deeply asleep his exhausted body would carry him through until morning.
He hummed in agreement. ‘I am, but I have never fallen asleep that quickly, so your plan worked. Besides, for the first time ever,I do not mind waking in the night. Your quiet snuffling is very endearing.’
‘Snuffling! You make me sound like a pig.’ It was strangely not strange to be having this conversation while lying next to a man who wore no clothes. She waited for embarrassment to set in or even some slight shame, but instead she felt nothing but bone-deep rightness in the situation.
‘Oh no, you are much sweeter than that. A piglet perhaps.’ The mattress shook again as he chuckled to himself.
‘At least I do not snore like a wild boar.’ She had no idea whether Edward snored or even what the animal sounded like, being as they had not existed in England for a very long time, but that was not the point.
Her riposte only made him laugh harder. She lay in the dark listening to it, enjoying hearing him relaxed like this. He was often tightly wound, which she suspected played a large part in his sleep deprivation. If she was allowed to spend more time with him, she would find as many different ways as possible to get him to unwind.
His amusement slowly ebbed away to be replaced with an expectant silence.
‘Should I go?’ she asked into the darkness. She did not want to overstay her welcome, but the corridors would be cold, her bedroom even more lonely without his solid presence.
‘Do you want to?’
‘No.’ Her bold answer surprised her, but if it did him, he did not comment.
‘Then stay.’
