Not that she really minded.
“Mercy!” she gasped.
She tried to push at his head to make him stop, but he only chuckled at her efforts.
“I’m nae finished until I prove just how beautiful I’ve found me wife this evening,” he spoke into her skin, a shudder rippled through her whole body.
She tried to crawl away once more. All that earned her was being flipped onto her belly, his hands cupping her hips as he arched her indecently, one knee on the bed and the other attempting to gain better leverage.
The new angle was incredible.
It wasn’t long before she collapsed on the bed once more, utterly boneless and very, very satisfied.
“Where are ye going?” Kaden growled. “I havenae proven me appreciation yet.”
It was going to be a long night, in the best possible way.
28
This couldn’t be happening.
Emily stretched her arms out around her to attempt to ease some of the tension from last night’s activities, only to be met with cold bedsheets.
Her fingers reached out and patted the mattress for any hint that Kaden was still in the bed with her, like he had said he would be.
She had truly thought that this was going to be the moment he trusted her, that he would finally allow himself to get closer to her. In her mind, there was absolutely nothing so important that he needed to leave her while the sun had barely even started to rise in the sky. She knew very well what time they had breakfast every morning, and it would still be a good while yet, no matter how early the castle woke.
She even stretched out her legs, as if that would somehow make him appear on the edge of the bed, sitting in the pensive way he tended to get.
She quickly slipped out of bed into the cool morning air and reached for the closest dress that she could find. It was somewhat awkward, attempting to get dressed in the dark, but she managed fairly quickly. Then, she pulled a warm shawl around her shoulders.
Maggie was pawing at the door to be let in, so Emily cracked it open. Maggie bounded inside, her tail wagging. It was a mixed blessing that she was so comfortable finding her way around the castle now.
Emily almost followed after her, but she paused at the last moment to check the door that connected hers and Kaden’s room. She walked over slowly, almost anxious about whether or not he was in there. If he had left her just to go to his own bed, she wasn’t sure exactly what she was going to do.
She knocked and waited, but there was no answer. Another moment, and she slowly pushed the door open.
“Kaden?” she whispered, but only the darkness answered her.
She didn’t know if that made her feel better or worse.
Pressing her lips together firmly, she wrapped her arms around herself and headed out of the room toward the sounds of life.Which was usually the servants’ hall and the kitchens, this early in the morning.
The sounds of laughter guided her feet toward the kitchens. But when she recognized the voices, she paused before entering the room. She had only heard Kaden laughing once before, but it was a sound that she was going to commit to memory. It had felt like such a rare thing, and she had felt so special for coaxing it from him, but now…?
She crept around the door so that she could see inside better and spotted him with the same maid from the library—Shona. Before seeing them together, Emily couldn’t even say that she had ever noticed the woman, but now she was attuned to her. She couldn’t stop watching her in her duties.
Was it going to be like this now? Keeping his bed warm at night until he could steal away to be with a woman who actually held his attention?
She knew good and well that he had said there was nothing between them. Kaden had gone to such lengths to prove it to her, and yet jealousy reared its ugly head again.
Even if she had given herself to him last night, in the way that a wife was supposed to, would the outcome of this morning have changed? Her mother had always warned her that a wife who couldn’t keep her husband’s attention was doomed to have to endure another woman in their bed, and Emily hadn’t ever taken it seriously, not like this. She hadn’t thought that this would ever be her.
She chewed on the inside of her cheek, hoping that it would change and that she was reading too much into it. But their conversation sounded too intimate. They were sitting too close to one another.
Emily pulled away, her back flattening against the cool stone wall as she tried to steady her breathing. She wasn’t going to compete with another woman. She wasn’t going to have toearna place that should have just been given to her.
She turned to leave before either one of them could notice her presence.
