“Thank you,” he said simply, which seemed the best response of all. Still, she was too far removed from him, sitting at his bedside as if he were an invalid.
Demon Winter was not—nor would he ever be—a damned invalid.
“You need not thank me.” She was gracious and polite as ever, his fire-haired seductress.
What had he done before she had come into his world? He did not want to remember. Nor did he want to think about what would happen when she left it as she inevitably must.
“Come into bed with me,” he invited, hungering for her warmth.
Her eyes went wide. “You are injured.”
“Not to make love.” He laughed before grimacing at the pain such a gesture caused him, sobering right quick. “I don’t want to bed you, Mira. Hell, Idowant to bed you. Just not in this moment with my napper hurting as it does. In this moment, I only want you near to me. I want to hold you. Touch you. Feel you against me.”
He reached for her.
She took his hand, and though she was dressed in as fine a gown as he had ever seen on a lady, all proper and perfect, she crawled on the bed with him. Mira slid beneath the counterpane, aligning her body with his. And everything was right in his world. His woman had her arm about his waist, her head on his chest. He was enveloped in sultry floral perfume and something far more intoxicating. Her care and concern.
She was too good for him.
But he was not too proud to bask in her whilst he could.
Hell, if taking a knock to the old nob was all it required for her to storm to his side, he would willingly accept the blow again, just to have her here, warm and tender and soft and wonderful, wrapped around him.
“Why do you think someone would try to do you harm, Damian?” she asked softly.
Ah, his sweet siren. She could not simply enjoy the closeness. She had to worry.
“Likely, the villain was after Hugo. You needn’t concern yourself with my affairs.” He pressed a kiss to her crown, inhaling deeply of her scent as he did so.
Floating hell, he was enamored of this woman. Even in pain as he was, his prick was beginning to rise. That was how strongly she affected him.
“How can you know he was after someone other than yourself?” she asked, her palm gliding over his chest in slow, reassuring motions. “Does this sort of thing happen often in your world?”
“It may,” he allowed, thinking of the vast difference between the rookeries and the life to which she was accustomed.
She was a lady, living in the fashionable West End. She had been born to wealth, privilege, and the strictly guarded circles of her social set. Whilst he had been born a bastard in the East End, struggling from his first breath to now. The bond he had forged with his Winter siblings had granted him some measure of safety over time. Together, they had built a formidable presence. Many feared them. Others envied them and coveted what they had built.
It was the way of the world. He was not afraid to face whatever approached him. Or, as it were, snuck up behind him and beat him over the head.
Mira stiffened against him, her breath falling hot on his neck. “You are in danger, Damian. I do not like it.”
“Here now, I ain’t in danger.” Though perhaps that was untrue, and the insistent ache in his head reminded him of that. So, too, the troublesome thought of Hugo’s boots.
Hugo’s murder.
Hell.
“You are lying to me.”
Aye, he was. But if he was in danger, it was not her affair. There was no way a Mayfair lady could help him. He would take care from this moment on, lest whoever had killed Hugo and attacked him would return.
“I’ll have a talk with the charleys about it.” He nuzzled the fragrant copper curls bound in a tidy knot, wishing they would come undone so he could fan her locks over his pillow and run his fingers through them. “Do not trouble yourself over me. All my cards are trumps.”
But as he lay there with Mira’s soft, sweet warmth pressed against him, his head aching, he could not deny the lingering fear curdling his gut. The fear not just that an unknown foe was after him, waiting to strike again, but that his time with Mira would soon have to come to an end.
Chapter 8
Mira woke, disoriented. And wrapped in man.
