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Torrie woke softy, an uncommonly easy entrance into the day.
No nightmare.
No retching.
There was something different about the bed.
When she’d fallen asleep, Roe had been naked and half under her, his heat enveloping her.
He’d brought food back with him to the cabin the night before. No mutiny—at least not on that day. What he’d said to his men to make that so, he refused to tell her.
The dinner on the small table he’d brought in had led to their hands brushing against each other far too many times. And that had led to clothes being discarded. To the bed. To heights her body had never known, the feel of Roe deep inside of her, his hands mastering her body and drawing wave after wave of euphoria from her core.
But now there was emptiness. Cold.
She shifted long onto her left side, blinking the sleep out of her eyes as she pulled the sheet that covered her waist further up her nude body to ward off the chill in the air.
Roe had left the bed but not made it far. He was splayed out long on the floor on his back, his eyes closed and his breathing even and deep. He’d put on trousers but no shirt.
Sleep still heavy in her bones, she flopped her left arm straight out from her body onto the bed, her fingers stretching out past the edge of the sheets toward him, hanging in the air. Pointing to him or reaching for him, she wasn’t sure.
He was so far away. His right arm curled under his head, his left knee cocked out, his other hand on his belly. More comfortable than she ever looked on a bed, for she was forever tossing about in her sleep. She could have sworn he had fallen asleep under the weight of her head and half her body. But maybe she had woken him with her tossing about and he couldn’t sleep next to her.
He jerked, his face contorting and pain furrowing his brow, then his eyes popped open, wild and terrorized for a moment before he saw her in his bed.
His grey eyes calmed. He still looked like death had curled about him in his sleep, but he was calm again.
She blinked, her outstretched hand twitching toward him. “You moved to the floor to sleep.”
“I did.”
“Did I wake you?”
“No. I usually sleep on the floor.”
“Why?”
“Too many years in Newgate.” He flipped onto his side, his right arm still tucked under his head, his left hand picking at the wood planks of the floor. “Too many years sleeping wherever there was a bare spot of ground in the woods, in a stable, in a warehouse.” He reached out and touched the bottom rail of the bed. “This ship has held the first bed I’ve known as my own since I was sixteen.”
“And you don’t even use it.”
“No.”
She slipped her left arm under her head, mirroring his pose. “Can I ask you a question that you may not like?”
His gaze lifted to her. “You can do anything you want to, Torrie. But I can’t promise my reaction.”
“Fair enough.” Her cheek lifted in a half smile. “You said your brother escaped the squalor of St. Giles?”
“Yes. I always knew he would.”
“He left you there?”
“Yes. No.” He paused, taking a deep breath, his head shifting on the crook of his arm. “No, I made him leave me there. He didn’t want to, or so he has told me. But I forced him to do it—to abandon me.”
“How could you do that?”
“My actions alone dictated it. I almost ruined his escape from the cruelty of the life we were destined for there.”
