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He didn’t feel.
And this.
This was bloody well feeling.
{ Chapter 14 }
“Tell me a story. Keep me awake.” Victoria looked up from the sleeping puppy against her belly, wishing she were him. Her gaze shifted to Rafe, the glow of the setting sun creating the warmest, red-orange hued shadows across his face.
They’d been riding all day—after leaving so early—and they were still a half-day’s journey to Seahorn. Why was the last stretch home always the longest?
Somehow, during the course of the day, they had eased back into the easy banter that they’d enjoyed early on.
Thank the heavens.
She wasn’t looking to explore any further the brutality of his reaction to what she had told him earlier about her response to his hands on her. His words, his voice, had bordered on possessed.
But now, he looked over at her with a raised eyebrow, an easy quirk at his lips. “I’m not your dancing jester, Vic.”
“But I’m betting you also don’t want to have to carry me into another coaching inn.”
He chuckled. “You have me there. I’ll attempt to make up a story that will keep your eyes propped open. Name a topic.”
She smiled, looking him up and down. Her gaze caught on his left hand holding the reins of his horse. “Your finger. What happened?”
He looked down to his hand. “I wondered when you would ask.”
“About your pinky?”
“Yes.” His gaze shifted to her, his dark eyes mischievous. “You saw it the first night. I knew it when you saw it. You were looking me over, assessing me, and your look hiccupped at my hand.”
“I am that easy to read?”
“It is rather ridiculous how emotions play out on your face, yes.”
That was news to her. Then again, was it? Everyone in her family always seemed to know what she was thinking.
She puffed out a sigh, then glanced down to his hand once more. “I did notice how the pinky stayed straight when you made a fist, so I suspected, but I wasn’t sure until I saw you without your gloves on. Why have you been curious about when I would finally ask about it?”
“It is a measure of your comfort with me.”
“How so?”
“It marks the point where your comfort with me outweighs your manners. You trust me enough to ask me the question now.”
Her lips pursed. “Comfort and trust are not the same thing.”
He paused, considering her words for a beat. “No, I suppose they are not.”
“How did you lose it?”
The horses took a few more steps before he continued. “My mother died before I knew her. I was one. Or so I was told. It could have been earlier or later for all I know. I had a number of governesses come and go every few months. But none of them ever stayed for long. When I was five my father was sick of hiring them, so he just stopped. It was just us then. Him and me. He’d have tutors come for my education, but my time with them was strictly for learning. All of our staff—the maids, butler, and footmen in the household, never much regarded me.”
She perked in her saddle, her attention riveted on him. He’d never talked about his past, where he’d come from and what had made him. She realized in that instant how very wrong what they had been doing was—where he had touched her—when she didn’t have the first clue as to what made the man.
Anytime she asked a question about his past, he’d easily deflected the question into another topic that didn’t dig into history. He’d done it so flawlessly she hadn’t even realized it until that moment.
He gave her a quick glance and for one horrible second, she thought he was going to stop.
