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“Chastity.” His voice was thick and gritty.
“Yes.”
“Chastity. Duke’s Daughter.” He lifted his chin. “All wrong.”
Did he mean she was all wrong? Or that this situation was? She shook her head. Analyzing his drunken ramblings was pointless.
“We need to get you to bed.”
“No. I’ll stay here.”
“You must go to bed,” she insisted.
“It is no less than I deserve.”
“You are quite the brute at times, it is true, but even I do not wish you to die from sleeping on a cold floor.”
He snorted, lifted a hand, and let it drop, slapping the wood hard. “Cold floor is good enough for me.”
“Good Lord, I am not certain why you are determined to flagellate yourself but I am not going to waste any more time listening to such nonsense.”
Valentine smirked. “I like a commanding woman.”
“Good. Now I command you to stand and go to bed.”
With a heavy, overly dramatic sigh, he dragged himself up from the floor and she dropped the candleholder onto a console table to rush to his side as he flopped against the wall. He looped a heavy arm around her shoulder, and she pressed hands to his back and chest to navigate him toward his bedroom in the dark.
She resisted the urge to mutter about how heavy he was or think on the muscles currently flexing beneath her fingers. Once she successfully dumped him on the bed, she lifted his legs on top of the blankets, lit a candle, and debated his sprawled form.
“Too many clothes.” He tugged his shirt, and she heard a button ping across the room and clatter to the floor.
“Really?” She rubbed both hands over her face and eyed his struggle. “I am not removing your trousers though.”
With difficulty, she fought to remove his shirt after carefully setting aside his cufflinks. She tugged the fabric from beneath him and cast her gaze up to the ceiling as he set a hand behind his head and the other upon his bare chest. His open collars revealed the slight tuft of dark hair to her before and seeing the dark, wiry hair over hard muscles and ridges made her throat tighten. She needed to go. This was too intimate.
He took her wrist before she could escape. “Stay.”
“Most certainly not.”
“I cannot be alone.”
The words were low and so quiet she had to pause and debate them. Had he truly said such a thing?
Chastity met his pained gaze, glanced at the chair in the corner of the large room, and let her shoulders sag. “I shall be here.”
He closed his eyes, the furrows between his brows softening. Her fingers twitched with the desire to press her fingers to his skin and smooth them out altogether. Whatever had caused him to behave so, it pained him greatly.
She would stay. But only until she could be assured he had fallen asleep. Which would not be long with any luck.
“It’s all my fault.”
“Pardon?”
His eyes snapped open, and she sucked in a breath at the agony in them.
“I killed him, you see.”
“Killed who?”
