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An hour passed, two or more, she wasn’t sure. Yet sleep still wouldn’t grace her.
He thought she was long asleep when he moved from the chair and sat on the bed, swinging his legs up and settling his back against the headboard. His hands slipped down around her torso, flipping her body toward him and she let him, not willing to give up her farce of sleep.
Gently he lifted her head, settling it softly onto his lap, his fingers stroking her hair.
“I cannot lose you, silver bell.” The whisper came down to her. Vulnerable, raw.
She let it sit for long breaths in her mind, in her chest, before opening her mouth, a murmur just above her breath back to him. “Then don’t.”
He didn’t answer her back.
Not that she expected him to.
Yet she couldn’t move her head from his lap. Not when it was the one spot where safety and comfort seemed to exist in this upending of her world.
In his lap, she promptly fell asleep.
{ Chapter 25 }
He loved her.
It was the moment when Victoria popped the lock free and her eyes flashed up to him in surprise and delight, like she’d figured out all the secrets of the world and he had been the one to give her them.
That was the moment when he was willing to put a name to it.
Love.
There had always been a cold, empty cage in his chest where blood and air had once flowed through unhindered, but this woman had crawled into that space and made it her home. Shoved and pushed out everything in his chest until it felt like he was going to burst for the sheer pain and joy she infused into him at the same time.
No one should feel like this.
He would be so much better off if he didn’t. But he did.
His entire being sat in the palms of her dainty hands. Her presence next to him making his heart beat, loud and demanding and angry, when he’d only known a wasteland in his chest.
Love.
Unwanted. Unexpected. Undeniable.
But that meant giving things up. Revenge. An empire.
As he stepped out of the coaching inn after their hurried bid to get onto the road at dawn, his gaze landed on Victoria just outside the door, waiting for him to settle with the innkeeper. Her stare was sleepy, set on her horse hitched to a post.
She’d been exhausted for weeks and that had to stop. He wanted her in a bed, naked with him, with nowhere to be and go for a month. Probably more.
They just had to make it through the next few days.
He stopped next to her and she looked up at him, a trepidatious smile on her face. “We are ready to depart?”
They hadn’t had time this morning to talk, and nothing had been resolved last night before she went to sleep, but she did fall asleep. She didn’t fall asleep alone on the bed, she fell asleep in his lap. And that told him everything.
She was with him.
No matter what he decided.
Whether she’d admitted it fully to herself, he knew it in his bones. Somewhere during those silent hours last night, her allegiance had shifted to him, no matter the consequences.
So how could he possibly cause her anymore pain?
