Confusion clouded his eyes.
“You saidagain. Are you saying you killed him, Sterling?”
He surged up onto his elbows, annoyance flashing in his dark eyes. “Are you seriously asking me that? Again? I’ve answeredthat accusation ad nauseam.No,” he finished on a bellow. Then he lowered his voice. “For the last bloody time, I did not kill your brother.”
With that, he flopped off her and onto his back, slinging his forearm across his forehead.
After a brief hesitation, she scrambled atop him, cupping his cheeks. “Forgive me?”
He aimed a baleful glare at her.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” she said, contrition in every word. “Of course, you were speaking in hyperbole. Even your so-called desire tokillhim was hyperbolic.”
“I beg your pardon?”
She lowered her gaze to his chin, embarrassed, now.
“You’ve repeatedly stated you don’t countenance the notion of risking life and limb over mere insult.”
“That was before,” he muttered.
Her gaze snapped back to his. He stared at her, his eyes blazing with cold fire.
“Before?”
He shook his head and looked away. “All I can say is, no one will touch a single hair on your head and get away with it,” he vowed.
I love you so much,her insides screamed. No one had ever treated her as he did. Like she mattered. Like…she was valuable, just as she was. Even when she said things to annoy him, that vein of protectiveness never diminished.
The urge to tell him she loved him burned on her tongue—and with it the longing to hear him echo the sentiment. If he did, if he said he loved her back, she might expire on the spot from sheer happiness.
But what if he doesn’t?
And that was the more likely outcome. That he didn’t love her. It was his nature to be protective of his inner circle.
No matter.She loved him, and that was more than enough.
She tucked her head into his shoulder and fingered the hollow at the base of his throat. She’d never been in love. She felt breathless and weightless. As if she could float on the air. She hoped nothing ever made her put her feet on the ground again.
Chapter 33
Sterling came awake before the sun burned past the horizon. Shadowed stillness filled the guest chamber, punctuated ever-so-slightly by Annabelle’s rhythmic, steady breaths as she half-sprawled atop him, head resting on his shoulder, one arm across his chest, one leg curled around his hip.
With care, he lifted his head from the pillow to contemplate his wife and how best to disentangle himself from the soft, supple woman without disturbing her. The diminutive size of the bed they shared struck him as almost comical. Once back in London, he would see that both his and his wife’s chambers—theiradjoiningchambers—boasted king-sized beds.
Relaxing back onto the pillow, he silently admitted he relished sleeping with Annabelle. Having her draped over him as she used his body as a human pillow or blanket, depending, was thoroughly addictive.
He’d kept mistresses in the past on the rare occasion a particular woman caught his fancy for more than a passing fling. But never, not once, had he found himself the least bit temptedto spend the whole night through with a mistress, however enjoyable their interludes.
It went without saying he’d never contemplated marrying anyone. No one before Annabelle.
One minute, he was accusing her of plotting to entrap him, the next, she was his wife at his insistence. His wife, to have and to hold, forever more. His wife, his lover, and one day, God willing, the mother of his children.
What a fool he’d been not to see the shimmering beauty beneath her glossy veneer. Caroline had seen it. Hell—even Babette had recognized the kindness in his wife, buried under years of neglect and torment.
Her brother—how he wished he weren’t dead so he could knock his pearly-white teeth from his patently false smile. Imagining her growing up with Gaston, subjected to his casual cruelty, was nothing short of harrowing. She’d been a mere child when the bastard had left her in the cruise ship’s engine room—and no one but the governess had noticed.
Her parents had much to answer for—and favoring their worthless son only added to their culpability. He’d yet to decide how to deal with them. Oh, but he would. He would. That damned letter in his desk assured that and had his blood hammering in his veins anew, rousing him ‘til he could no longer lie still.
