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I tilted my head up to look at him but could barely see him because of the glare of the headlights behind him. “I just wanted to follow the fence, to see how far it went.”
He stroked the back of my head. “And what conclusion did you come to?”
“It goes far,” I muttered to his shirt, suddenly feeling foolish about my adventure.
Sebastian chuckled. “If you weren’t so proud, sweetheart, you could have just asked. I would have told you. I own one hundred and sixty acres and it's surrounded by government owned natural forests.”
“Then why didn’t he try to stop me?”
Sebastian looked at me with a puzzled expression on his face. “Because I told them not to interfere. Their job is to observe. Not a damn one of them has the authority tell you what to do.”
I punched his arm as hard as my exhausted body could manage, which wasn’t much because he didn’t even grunt. “Then why didn’tyoustop me?” I wanted to be angry with him, but it came out as more of a high-pitched whine.
“Because I said, you could try to escape and you tried. I let you do what you clearly wanted to do. No one made you walk this far, Princess. You did that all on your own.”
“I got sidetracked.” And cold. I shifted in his arms to seek his warmth by wrapping my arms around his waist.
“It’s easy to do out here. Come on. I’ll take you home.”
I let him pack me up in the jeep and luxuriated in the return to civilization as he turned on the seat warmers.
The car was still running. Sebastian put it in gear and continued forward down the dirt road.
“Don’t you need to turn around?”
“No. It’s a good thing you decided to not go wandering down the road. It forks up ahead. If you don’t know which one to follow, you go down a never-ending road of loops and circles that double back on themselves. In the dark, it would look like different trails, but you’d end up going around in circles.”
“Lovely,” I snorted under my breath.
He reached over to cup my knee. “If you’d like, I’ll take you on a drive tomorrow. You can explore to your heart’s content, but with a motor vehicle instead of on foot.”
I wanted to take him up on his offer. The property truly was spectacular, but I was too irritated and cold to be that accommodating. But I didn’t have it in me to resort to my surly bitchiness, either.
“Maybe. I’ll see how I feel in the morning.”
“Fair enough.”
He let it go easily. I expected a fight or to be chastised for wasting the day walking a fence line to nowhere. We didn’t talk again during the drive back to the house. When we got there, Sebastian parked the jeep in the drive, then got out and walked around to my side to open the door. I should have pushed him away like I did Fabian, but I didn’t want to. I wanted the warmth of his hand on the small of my back and the steady reassurance of his strength beside me.
The silence continued as he walked me to my room and pushed the door open before giving me a slight nudge.
“Are you hungry?”
I nodded.
“We’ll eat soon.” He looked down at me with an expression I had trouble reading. Amusement mixed with tenderness, mixed with...what? I couldn’t decipher him.
Sebastian he dropped a soft kiss on my forehead, such a tender touch I wanted more of. “I’ll come get you when dinner’s ready. Go take a shower. It’ll make you feel better.”
He let go of me and turned to leave.
“Sebastian?”
He paused and turned around. “Yes?”
I swallowed. “Alone?”
I thought he’d pounce at the invitation, but he cupped my cheek. “Yes. Alone. I’m not what you need right now, Princess.” His warm lips skimmed the top of my forehead again and I sighed out loud. “I’ll be back when dinner’s ready.”
The door closed behind him and the room felt just as empty, cold, and dark in his absence as the forest had been.
Sebastian was wrong.
He was exactly what I needed.
