“I’m… no, no, not opposed,” I tried to reply, but my words were lost in a soft gasp as his mouth closed over mine.
His kisses were gentle but insistent, hungry but measured, and it was all I could do to breathe between brushes and touches and the skim of his tongue.His hand slipped around the back of my head, large and warm.Soon the other came up to meet it, cradling my head and grazing my cheeks, my jaw, the curve of my ears.
“I’m dizzy,” I finally managed to whisper.
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No.”
“Then I will hold you up.”His arm slipped around my waist, pressing my hips into his, and the world receded for another few moments—now just a haze of warmth and want and need, of his touch and his closeness.
“Do you believe that I want you, now?”Sam’s voice wheedled through my stupor, just as I was beginning to contemplate shedding my gown and dragging him to the floor.
His lips retreated, and he rested his forehead against mine as he waited for an answer.
“Yes.”My reply was so soft, I almost didn’t hear it myself.“I’ve no doubt.”
The door clattered open.
“Skirts up, trousers down, that’s the next step,” Benedict advised, a satchel over one shoulder.He no longer wore his robes but had found breeches and a heavy, wrapped Mereish coat with a broad belt.He’d also lined his eyes darkly with black paint as Mereish sailors did, and his hair was mussed.
I stiffened.Something had shifted in Ben, and it was more than the shedding of monk’s garments and the dulling of fatigue.He was more intense, more self-satisfied, the malign threat of him closer to the surface.I felt it at the same time as Sam, whose touch became more protective than amorous.
Ben smirked, slipping past us and depositing a small barrel of water on the table.“Should I take Grant for a drink?Give you two some privacy?”
“Drinks?Where?”Charles came through the door behind him, noted Sam and I entangled, and unfurled a slow, knowing grin.He nudged Benedict.“We should, ah, yes, go find drinks.”
Sam stepped away from me.The interruption and his brother’s words had clearly jarred him.“No one should go out again.We need to sort all this and sleep while we can.Mr.Grant, Mary, you’re welcome to sleep first.”
The last thing I wanted to do was rest, my body still heated with need, but fatigue was there too.“I feel like it’s dangerous to leave you two alone,” I said, looking between the twins.
“There is no ‘alone’ in a place like this.”Benedict threw out an arm to encompass the room, then reached into a crate.I saw a knife glint and he stabbed it down, lifting it a second later with a small wheel of cheese impaled on the blade.“Cheese?”
Charles glanced between all of us, then joined Benedict with his hand outstretched.The tension dissipated, and Samuel stepped back from me as Benedict began to carve portions of hard, pale cheese.
“I am sorry,” Samuel murmured.
“Sorry you kissed me?”I whispered back, though I knew that wasn’t the case.I simply wanted him to speak plainly.
“No, for the interruption.”He looked back down at me.Despite the shadows and Benedict’s presence, the smile on his face was true and his eyes intent in a way that made my belly heat all over again.“Not for kissing you.Never again.”
THIRTY-THREE
Rosser House, Aeadine
Twenty Years Ago
SAMUEL
Iawoke with a coin in my hand and a scream in my throat.I registered figures shifting around me in the dancing light of a fire—leaning, reaching, conversing in tense, hushed tones.They were hunched and grotesque, distorted by shadows, and so close.Too close.
I let the scream loose.
“Samuel, my dear boy, stop.Stop!Listen to my voice.”A large, warm hand cupped the side of my face and pressed me into the damp softness of a sweat-soaked pillow.“It is only Uncle John.Your aunt is here too.You are safe.”
I choked on a sob and pinned my eyes closed, anchoring myself to his hand, his voice.I wished his was my father’s voice but had long grown accustomed to that disappointment.
“Where is Ben?”I whispered.“Is Papa back?Where… where is my mother?”
