But now that he remembered it, it made itself known with a heavy, painful throb.
Reality.
Here it was, crashing down onto his shoulders.
“I don’t,” he bit out.
She blinked, and her eyes filled with uncertainty. Whatever enjoyment they’d been experiencing was decidedly a thing of the past. She reached for the sides of the tub and pushed to a stand.
He averted his gaze.
To watch would’ve been torture.
“I could send for more hot water.”
She was attempting to care for him, he understood that.
But what he also understood was that he couldn’t be one of her wounded animals.
While she slipped into her robe, he pushed himself up and out of the bathtub, willing his right leg to behave, though it ached. He reached for a dry towel and wrapped it around his waist. Her gaze swept over him as if it couldn’t help itself.
His cock felt on the verge of returning to life for a second round.
No.
“I’m going to bed now,” he said. “It’ll be an early morning to get the caravan repaired and moving again.”
Emotion passed behind her eyes. Emotion that looked so similar to hurt that he nearly succumbed to another bout of madness and begged her to stay.
She nodded slowly, as if she were hearing both what he was saying—and what he wasn’t saying.
He would be going to bed—alone.
It was necessary.
Surely she would see that in the morning.
As if she could hear his thoughts, she said, “I won’t be here in the morning.”
Bran couldn’t trust himself to say anything, so he kept silent.
“Bathsheba will be missing me terribly,” she continued, her words tumbling over themselves. “So I’m off to London to check on her.”
Bran heard the lie in her words, but decided to leave it be.
It might even be for the best.
Really, it was hard to know what was for the best at the moment. The biggest part of him seemed to think it best to implore her to come to bed with him.
Then she nodded, and the door was clicking shut behind her within seconds.
As he lay in bed, staring at shadows moving across the ceiling gray with night, he held a single thought in his mind.
How easy it would be to fall in love with Artemis again.
As easy as one breath flowing into another.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
