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He felt like kicking himself for his foolishness. He had allowed his own misgivings to interfere when his only concern should have been for her. How many times would he need to remind himself that she was unlike other women? How long would it take for him to truly get to know hiswife?
“She is well?” he asked standing and reaching out to slip her wet cloak off her shoulders.
“She was too ill to leave on her own. My people have taken her to my cottage and will look after her until my arrival.”
“Two days at least to get there,” he reminded, draping her cloak on the back of a chair near the fire.
“She is in good hands and should do well until I arrive though I feel that she will need to stay with my people or perhaps seek shelter with yours. She should not live alone any longer. Dolca needs family.”
“She is welcome in my home,” Trey assured her.
“No doubt she will be,” Bliss said with a shiver.
“You need to get warm,” he said, reaching out to rub some heat into her arms. His hands met wet wool. “And you need to get out of those wet clothes.”
“As do you,” she said, grabbing a handful of his shirt and squeezing the rainwater from it.
“We’re a good pair,” he said with a laugh. “Wet—”
“Tired.”
“And hungry,” he finished.
“Dolca should have food about, and she might have left a garment behind”—Bliss grinned—“though I daresay none that would fit you.”
“Then I will just have to go naked until my garments dry.” He quickly slipped out of his shirt, leaving his chest bare.
Bliss’s cheeks burnt red, and she hurried over to the single bed tucked in the corner of the one-room cottage. She grabbed the blanket folded at the bottom and tossed it to Trey. “That should do nicely.”
“It embarrasses you to see me naked?” he teased.
Bliss grinned from ear to ear, walking over to him. “It embarrasses me to think what I would do if I saw you naked.”
Her response stunned Trey speechless.
“Now turn yourself away from me as you strip naked so that I don’t do anything foolish,” she said, and gave him a slight shove.
It took Trey a moment to regain his senses and realize that if it was a game she played with him, he’d join in the play. He grabbed hold, his fingers closing tightly around her wrist, and drew her nearer.
“I beg you ... be foolish,” he said with a challenging gleam in his eyes.
Chapter 7
Bliss wasn’t sure how to respond or how to escape a folly of her own making. All reason failed her, and when she felt the drops of rainwater trickle down along her neck and into her already soaked blouse, she stuttered, saying what made the most sense to her. “I-I am wet.”
He smiled and rested his cheek against hers to whisper, “Ready for me then, are you?”
She jumped away from him so fast that she stumbled and would have fallen on the bed if Trey hadn’t grabbed her around the waist.
“Eager to get me into bed?”
She struggled to escape his embrace, shoving at his chest, her hands meeting hard, damp muscle ... and a scar. She ceased her struggle, recalling his injuries, and her hand stroked along his chest over a scar that had proved difficult to heal. She had recalled Tara, Reeve’s wife, detailing the trouble she had in stitching it. It had healed well though it would take time to fade. He let her go when her hand slipped over his shoulder, and she moved to walk around him.
She stopped, her hand traveling down the length of another scar. Bliss had wanted to lay her hands upon it when she had been helping to heal him, but Trey had remained on his back in bed, mostly sleeping, and, not wanting to disturb his rest, she had never gotten to lay her healing touch on it.
But she could now.
“Be still,” she whispered softly, “and let me touch you.”
