Please let it be Colyne.
Pulse racing, she strained to hear the murmurs of other men,grumbles to alert her if they were English. Seconds dragged, each one stretching her nerves tighter.
“Alesia?”
At Colyne’s whisper, she sagged back.
The door thunked against the wooden bar as he tried to enter. “Alesia?” he whispered, this time louder.
Relief sweeping through her, she sheathed her dagger, tugged the barrier free, and flung open the door.
Colyne stepped inside.
She ran into his arms and poured herself into a kiss, erasing the hours of uncertainty.
The door shut against his body’s weight as Colyne turned with her and pressed her against the wood, his mouth taking hers as desperately.
A long moment later he drew back, his eyes dark with desire. “Had I known of your hearty welcome, I would have spent time away before.”
Heat stroked her face at his playful taunt, but when she made to turn away, he caught her chin. “You must think me foolish.”
“Alesia, I was but teasing.”
She floundered for a second. “I missed you.”
Laughter simmered in his eyes. “Is that what you would be calling launching yourself in my arms and sweeping my breath away?”
He was enjoying himself, she mused, feeling even more foolish. As her pulse slowed, she studied him. An earl. How had she missed his aristocratic mien when his every act, the very chivalry of his decisions, stated the obvious?
But she knew. Since her youth she’d seen too many within the gentry who used their powerful positions for their own benefit. And with each selfish act she’d witnessed, her views on nobility had grown jaded.
Marie tried to pull free, but he held her snug in his arms.
“I have missed you as well,” Colyne said, his mouth covering her own with ferocious heat.
Lost in the tumble of sensations, she wasn’t sure at what moment he carried her to the bed. He quickly relieved her of her gown and himself of his mail and the remainder of his garb. With his mouth skimming over her flesh, nothing else mattered.
“I want you,” he murmured as he caressed her breasts as his tongue teased hers, driving her blissfully insane.
She tried to maintain her grasp on sanity, but as he continued to kiss her, touch her, he shattered her hold on that as well.
Until it was only him.
Only her.
As if the dangers beyond their chamber didn’t exist.
Her cries entwined with his husky murmurs. She arched as he sank deep within her over and again. And with his every stroke, she ascended higher. Until her world exploded with a rain of purple mist and swirls of lavender.
Then she was floating, drifting back to find herself in Colyne’s arms, his mouth claiming her every cry, his body’s trembling matching her own.
The rightness of the moment made her yearn for all she could never have. Shifting in his arms, she settled against his chest. How did one’s heart ache and swell in the same instant? But hers did, painfully so. She truly loved Colyne, and the acknowledgment made the pain of leaving him all the more unbearable. “Colyne?”
At Alesia’s sated whisper, a breath of male satisfaction slid through him. “Aye?”
“Why were you so late in returning?”
He lay his head against the curve of her neck and allowed himself this moment of peace. But as he listened to her slowing heartbeat, he couldna dispel the disquiet Robert’s ignorance of her or her party’s journey to Beauly Priory had caused. “I took another route back.”
