Then he started to pull back.
She reached out, wrapping her arms around him to keep him there. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she hadn’t wanted him to kiss her, so she kissed back.
It was slow, cautious. Neither of them were entirely sure what they were doing and worried about scaring the other off.
Veronica’s heart pounded in her chest. Her hands moved uncertainly from his arms to his shoulders to his back, unsure where they were supposed to go.
Then he pulled back, eyes searching her face. “Was that all right?”
“Yes,” Veronica whispered. “I would say that was more than all right.”
Then he smiled, a small but dazzled curve of the lips. “I don’t know that I will be very good at it, but I am going to try.”
Chapter Eighteen
The next day, the pair make their way through the forest. Despite the chill of the night no longer clinging to her skin, Veronica couldn’t feel the warmth from the sun. there only seemed to be the damp cold that clung to her skin, making her pull her barrowed cloak tighter arond her, biting back a shiver far more often than she would like to admit.
It had felt like they had been walking all day, but Veronica knew that couldn’t be true. The sun was still low in the morning sky. If she had to guess, it couldn’t have been later than ten in the morning.
Still, the pair had begun their walk as soon as they had woken in the morning and there could be no doubt they had already been walking for many hours.
“Not long now,” Christopher assured her once again.
“You said that more than ten minutes ago,” she grumbled, narrowly resisting the urge to roll her eyes.
“But I do actually mean it this time.”
“Are you finally admitting you didn’t mean it when you said it before?”
“Not at all. You know I would never lie to you,” he said, bumping his shoulder lightly against hers. “Besides, it’s such a nice morning for a stroll, wouldn’t you say?”
She opened her mouth to argue. As far as she could tell the morning was cold, damp and hardly good for anything but sitting near a fire with a cup of tea. Before she could say a word of any of that, he cut her off again, a bright smile on his face.
“See, look there,” he pointed. “That’s the edge of the forest just up ahead.”
Her eyes darted up to see it and when she saw the tree line in the distance, relief coursed through her.
“Finally,” she groaned, picking up her pace, narrowly resisting the urge to run straight towards it, to the safety and warmth of the place she had began to call home.
“Veornica, please slow down,” Despite the chuckle in his voice, Christopher sped up to match her pace.
“Why? Can you not keep up?” she shot back.
“That’s isn’t the issue at all I am managing just fine.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
“I just don’t want you to over do it and make yourself feel worse than you already do. There’s no doubt we’re both on our way to a cold from being in that river.”
“If we’re already going to be ill, then there can’t be any harm in it, now can there?”
“I don’t-”
“Oh, come on! We’re so close!”
He tried to call out to her again, but she didn’t listen, charging on ahead. The second they burst though the treeline and Ashton Castle came into view, relief crashed over her.
She couldn’t help herself, she fell to her knees in the damp grass.
