“You were in danger the entire time.” My voice cracked like a whip.
She flinched, barely a tiny movement. But I felt it.
“The city teems with criminals,” I went on, struggling to leash my temper. “Men who would not hesitate to rob, abduct, or worse. Those vanished young women, the very ones whose disappearance you’re investigating, were taken from the streets. Heaven knows where they are now or what has been done to them.”
I stepped closer and softened my voice. “You are not invincible, Rosalynd.”
Her breath hitched, and, for the first time, her eyes fell. Her shoulders, so proudly set moments before, lowered by a fraction.
The sight gutted me.
I reached out—slowly, giving her time to recoil. She didn’t. My hand cupped her cheek, warm and soft under my palm. Her lashes fluttered. Her breath trembled.
“You cannot continue to put yourself in danger.”
She didn’t look up. Not at first. When she finally met my gaze, emotion shimmered behind her eyes. “It is hard for me to ask for help,” she whispered, her voice wavering. “I am used to doing everything myself. I’ve been that way since I was eighteen.”
I stood motionless, afraid to breathe lest I disrupt her courage.
She turned and put distance between us as if her admission was too painful to do it facing me. “When my parents died,” she continued, “I took on the responsibility of my younger brothers and sisters. There was no one else.”
The truth of it hit with brutal clarity.
“Cosmos should have shouldered that duty,” I said.
She turned back toward me. “My brother was twenty-two, Steele. He’d just inherited a title, an estate, a fortune. He was drowning in it. And Grandmother…” Her breath shuddered. “She’d lost her only son. When she disappeared into grief, I handled everything—lessons, meals, nightmares, broken hearts.” Her voice thinned. “I had no time for my own sorrow. I feared everything would fall apart unless I was in total control. So I learned never to let go. Never to give in to grief.” Her shoulders curled in the slightest, most fragile way.
I could not bear her pain. Without thinking, I pulled her against me.
She gasped softly before her hands lifted instinctively and gripped the front of my coat. Her forehead fell against my chest, and her breath eased. And ever so slowly, the tension in her melted away.
“You can depend on me, you know,” I whispered into her hair. “You must know that.”
She leaned back just enough to look up at me. Her eyes were luminous. Searching. Bare.
I brushed my thumb across her lower lip. The soft give of it, the way her breath hitched, the way her eyes darkened?—
Something inside me snapped.
My mouth found hers with the weight of everything I had held back—every fear I’d swallowed, every moment I’d wanted her, every sleepless night spent pretending I did not.
She drew in a quiet breath against me, then rose to meet me, returning the kiss with a softness that undid me.
Her hands slid up my chest, over my shoulders, and came to rest at the back of my neck, not pulling, only holding—as though she feared I might vanish. I breathed out against her lips, a helpless sound caught somewhere between relief and want.
She opened to me at once, trusting, and it nearly brought me to my knees.
She fit against me, warm and unmistakably real, and I lifted a hand to the back of her head, fingers threading gently into her curls as I deepened the kiss—not in urgency, but in awe.
I wanted to gather her close and keep her safe.
I wanted to be worthy of the look in her eyes.
I wanted…far too much.
And the madness of it was, she wanted me too.
When breath finally forced us apart, she didn’t step away. She remained exactly where she was, her fingers still curled into my coat, as though letting go was unthinkable.
