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“It’s done now. You’re mine.” The knots weren’t coming undone fast enough.
“I already was.”
Fear followed his elation. What if the brand got infected? What if she died and it was his fault? He needed to hire a live-in doctor. What if she fell down and hit her head, or choked or something one day? The house was so far from town. Paramedics might never get to her on time.
What if she went into shock and died right this minute?
He checked her pupils as he picked her up, walked to the couch with her then sat. She laid her head on his chest, and gazed up at him, her face full of an emotion he couldn’t identify. When he glanced up to look for Rodrigo, he wasn’t in the room.
“Are you okay, Mister Leduc?” she asked, her breath cooling the sheen of sweat on his chest.
He exhaled a long, shuddering breath. “You’re the one who just got branded.”
“I’m okay – just so sleepy. I don’t want to stop staring at you, so just know that if my eyelids close, I’m still staring at you through them, okay?”
He shifted her even closer, holding her to his bare chest and enjoying the contact. This was his woman. She was like an extension of him. With their skin bare, chest to chest, and Minnow looking up into his eyes, he felt strange. Calm. As if breathing air that had already been inside her undid the knots of tension that held him together. His eyes prickled like a sneeze was coming, and he frowned.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, her words slightly slurred the way they got when she was in subspace sometimes, or coming down afterward. “Buyer’s remorse? Too late, sucker.”
He laughed, but the feeling didn’t pass. “No. Never that. If anything, you’re the one who’s going to regret this, not me.”
Rodrigo came back into the room, still shirtless, and now wearing a pair of track pants he kept in his room upstairs. Severin liked him like this – relaxed, his civilized veneer gone. He pulled his gaze away before Ro noticed his perusal.
“When I decided to start leaving clothes here a few years ago, it was so I’d have something to wear the day after drinking. The possibility of coming in my jeans had never occurred to me. This shit isn’t supposed to happen to grown men, Minnow.”
Minnow shifted on Severin’s lap but only to settle in closer. “I’d say sorry, but instead I’m just going to silently mock you.”
“I have to change too,” Severin admitted.
“Shh. You were supposed to let Rodrigo think you were able to hold out.”
Severin squeezed her. “You knew?”
“Mister Leduc, I’m lying in it.”
He probably should have been embarrassed, but he was too content to feel ashamed. Besides, it was all her fault. “We should have taped that scream. Sadists everywhere would pay to hear that.”
“We’d be rich men,” Rodrigo agreed.
“Like either of you need more money?”
Rodrigo moved around the room, cleaning things up, casting amused, affectionate looks at them that Severin was far too mellow to object to. It would be odd if Ro didn’t feel anything for her at all.
Too bad for him. He’d have to go looking for some second-best girl. This one was his. Forever.
Chapter Fifteen
“They’ll be fine.” Severin looked down at her and squeezed her hand, amusement glinting in his pale blue eyes.
The mellow lighting of the church lit his face the same way firelight did at home, making him all hard, chiseled lines. This place was different from her parents’ church, and with Severin and his family surrounding her, she felt happy rather than damned.
“It’s a long time for them to be alone.” She bit her lip, hoping the puppy gate would keep them in their room. There’d never been an issue before, but they’d always been nearby in case of emergency.
“It’s only two hours, and there’s nothing for them to get into.” His gravelly voice was reassuring.
She tried to focus on the predicament at hand. Entering a crowded church for a Christmas service had to be freaking Severin out, but he was hiding his apprehension well, other than the customary public glower. People gave him wide berth even without the glare.
Church punched Severin’s shoulder. “Quit scaring the villagers or they’ll show up with torches and pitchforks.”
