It was his words, the loss of control of his breath matching hers, the increase of tension between them—she couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand it.
‘Alice, please...’ The heat of his hand was cupping her. His fingers were rubbing, pressing. ‘Let me,’ he repeated.
‘Yes!’ she gasped.
With a wolfish grin, he did as she commanded him to do.
Chapter Seventeen
Their breaths caught; their hearts slowed. The uncertainty of her future with Hugh was more terrifying than the darkness to her now. Still, she eked out as much happiness she could as she leaned her head in the crook of his arm and rested her hand against his chest. She adjusted her hips to tangle their legs even more. It was Hugh with her now, touching her, loving her. More glorious and heartbreaking than she’d ever dreamed this would be.
How could someone be happy and heartbroken at the same time? She lifted her palm, skimmed her fingers through the hairs on his chest, over the flexing muscles underneath. His warrior’s training, his strength, were so evident in the cords of his muscles, in the ridges along his abdomen. She would never get enough.
‘We have spent so many years apart.’
‘And I regret them all,’ he said.
Misunderstandings and missed opportunities. And now their monarch was after them, and there was nowhere they could run.
‘I cannot regret this,’ she said. After he brought her pleasure, he’d taken her maidenhead...just as she begged him to do.
‘Maybe we never had the perfect time, but we did have it—we simply needed to be able to see it. I see it now.’ He paused. ‘I didn’t hurt you?’
‘Did it sound like you did?’
Hugh clenched his eyes. ‘If you keep reminding me of our pleasures, Alice, we’ll never get out of your bed.’
If only they could. Happiness. Grief. Joy. All were somewhere in this moment. ‘I like us this way,’ she said, curling into him and splaying her hand to feel his heartbeat.
‘Me, too.’ His shifted, his idle caresses now becoming more purposeful.
Alice basked in the feeling of Hugh’s fingers tracing circles behind her knee before trailing up, then down again. Rejoiced in the way he breathed and how his heart thumped under her ear.
‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask...’ he whispered.
‘Hmmm?’
He gave a low sound, almost a chuckle. ‘Why did Allen lower you into the well?’
She tilted her head to see him watching her with a tenderness she’d never known existed. A happiness she was only beginning to glimpse. ‘You never asked me that question before.’
‘Well, at first I was preoccupied with saving your life...and then saving my nose. Afterwards—’
‘You were trying to escape a six-year-old girl’s vow to marry you, and a young woman’s demands for a kiss.’
The lightness in his eyes dimmed. ‘I regret all those years,’ he repeated.
She sighed, rested her head against him. ‘Well, the last demand wasn’t your fault. It was mine.’
‘Yours? I almost killed you that day. I said so much in anger—no wonder you fled.’
It was easier to talk to him this way. So much had already been revealed between them, so much shared, it was simple to share more. ‘I didn’t flee; I ran away.’
‘I told you to, though, didn’t I? Told you to run away.’
‘I shouldn’t have listened. You didn’t mean it, and I was a coward.’
His hand stilled. ‘I was the coward who demanded that you go. Do you know how long I was haunted by your standing against me like that? I dreamed of how you would have tasted.’
