“In two minutes, it will not seem quite so disorienting. You will grow accustomed. You will sleep.”
The darkness was like being dropped into a void, cold and thick and disorienting. Spreading her fingers wide, she slid her hand in the direction of his voice. She felt cool sheet and the boxy edge of the mattress. She reached farther. Her fingertips brushed the back of his hand. He jumped at the contact but did not move away. Ryan went still, one trembling finger pressed to his knuckle.
When, finally, he moved, it was all at once. He snatched her hand from the mattress and interlocked their fingers. Ryan squeezed and closed her eyes. For a long moment, she lay with fingers clinging, heart running away, breath held.
“You’re alright,” he said lowly, his voice a rumble.
She didn’t answer. Ever so slightly, she gave a slow, slighttugto his hand.Stay, she thought.
“Lady Ryan?” he whispered, a plea.
She said nothing. She blinked her eyes open. There was no difference between the inside of her eyelids and the black chamber. It emboldened her, this blindness. She increased the strength of her grip on his hand and pulled.
Stay.
“Ryan,” he warned.
Heart pounding, eyes open or closed—she didn’t know—she increased the slow, steady pull of his hand. She didn’t yank. It was more like she was trying to prevent him from drifting away.
Gradually, he allowed her to draw him down. He nudged closer, then closer, then finally, all at once, he sat heavily on the bed beside her. The weight of his body caused a slant in the mattress, and Ryan tipped in his direction. She let out a small, desperate sound. Triumph.
Without pausing to think, she released his hand and began to feel her way up his arm, sliding, tracing, using the tips of her fingers to see.
“Ryan,” he rasped. His breath was faster.
She didn’t answer. She swam through the dark and found his thigh—hard muscle encased in buckskin—and then felt her way to his waist. Above his waist, she found his elbow, his bicep.
Her hands moved at a moderate pace, not frantic but swift. She touched him like she was carefully searching for the handhold on a rock face. In truth, she searched for the trigger that would release him,that would ignite him, that would lure him from hiding place and... and—
She could not say what she hoped his trigger would do. Could he touch her like he had in the waterfall; hold her like when she’d fallen from his cupboard? Could henot go?
He remained, but he didn’t touch her or hold her. Her hands roved over him, and he sat, bolt upright, frozen, breathing hard.
“Gabriel?” she whispered.
“Please,” he said.
“Gabriel?” she called again. Her hands had reached his neck. She lifted from the bed, feeling his beard, cupping his face.
It was enough.
On a growl, he reached for her, scooping her to him, dropping her against the pillows, and coming down on top of her.
She whimpered—part thrill, part relief—and slid her arms around his neck. Her head sank into the pillow and he buried his face in the crook of her shoulder, his mouth against her throat. He didn’t kiss, he didn’t nuzzle, he simply held her tightly andbreathed. Ryan struggled to catch her own breath, and they lay there in the blackness, holding each other, sucking air in and out. He smelled like rain, and horses, andhim. His hair tickled her face. His hand cradled the back of her head. His body was so very heavy against her, deliciously heavy—heavy like an anchor, like a hillside.
“What do you want?” he whispered into her skin.
“I... I don’t know,” she breathed. “I want you to stay.”
“If this is a game, it’s a dangerous one, Lady Marianne.”
“Please don’t call me that.”
“Please don’t...” and here he paused, as if he couldn’t say what he didn’t want. Finally he said, “Please don’t make this more of a challenge than it already is.”
“This?” she whispered. “What do you mean—this? We are two lonely people who... who need not be lonely tonight. For once. Here and now.”
“What is meant by ‘not be lonely’?” he rasped.
