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Apologies on her lips, her fingers clawing at her eyes to keep them open.
He didn’t blame her. She’d been manhandled and bruised and dropped onto the road and her body had to be angry with her.
If anything, he admired the raw tenacity that kept her awake and prodding him forward when she had such little energy left.
How her body unconsciously moved between his arms had told him what he needed to know about her injuries from getting tossed from the carriage.
Her right ribs were bruised, but not broken. He’d managed to check with a hand running along the bones of her ribcage one of the times she had slumped onto his arm. Aside from that, she appeared to be intact except for the blood smeared across her face from a cut he hadn’t discovered and the bruising of her lower lip.
It could have been worse. But it was still too much.
He’d be cracking heads the next time he came upon Wally and his crew.
The last time Victoria’s body drifted off to the side, landing on his arm, it had stuck, and she had gone dead to the world.
He waited for a few minutes, the muscles in his arm straining against her dead weight and the odd angle she had landed. When he was convinced she wasn’t about to wake up, he wrapped his left arm around the front of her body and pulled her back onto his chest.
Finally. Stillness. The constant wiggle of her in front of him had been driving him mad. And she was warm. Whereas she should be a cold icicle at the moment, she was toasty against his chest. She hadn’t been lying about always being warm.
Why had he ever, for one moment, believed he needed to avoid her? This plan was much better. So much better. Seducing her, compromising her would be so much sweeter than the original plan.
Her head nuzzled against his chest and a tiny moan drifted from her lips.
His cock reacted. Instantly.
Yes. This plan was much, much better.
He pulled the horse to a stop minutes later and awkwardly dismounted while holding Victoria up, then had to bang on the door of the coaching inn to get the innkeeper to the door.
He’d propped Victoria up next to him, his arm down around her waist, holding her upright, for her eyes were still closed and she was sleeping on her feet.
The innkeeper showed them up to a room and by then, Rafe had given up trying to have her shuffle her feet along next to him and had picked her up at the base of the stairs.
Into the room and he set her onto the bed.
The innkeeper handed him the keys to this room and the one next to it, stoked the coals in the fireplace, and then had disappeared, grumbling about the late hour and all the sleep he was missing.
Rafe barely heard him, for all his attention was on Victoria. The way her forehead was still wrinkled, even in her sleep. The way her body twitched with every deep inhale, as though pain was being set off with each breath.
The blood.
She’d wiped most of it off her cheek hours ago, mumbling something about biting her lip when the carriage veered up on its side. But the stain of it still marred her flawless skin.
That shadow of red sent a fresh surge of anger through his veins.
Unharmed.
He’d specifically pointed it out.
But she was fine. Shaken, but fine.
He stared at her sleeping form for a few minutes longer, letting the peace of her safe in a bed abate the anger.
It occurred to him he should probably take off her boots.
That seemed like an appropriate thing to do.
He moved to the foot of the bed, digging through her skirts until he found one foot, then the other that she had curled up toward her body.
