But reasoning was how she’d decided she loved Brundage.
They regarded each other almost somberly.
“Good morning,” he said. He gave her a little smile. His voice was still gravelly from sleep.
It was a long moment before she could speak. “Good morning.”
He didn’t make a coy lunge for his shirt. The way his torso tapered from shoulders to waist made her head light. She knew he wanted to touch her, and kiss her, and more, and it thrilled and unnerved her. He would not do it unless given permission, because that was the sort of man he was. He loved her, too, after all. She was certain of that, too.
“Hawkes, does it seem unfair to you that I have touched your skin, and you have not touched mine?”
Hawkes’s lungs ceased pulling air.
They were both still for a fraught moment.
“You may have noticed that the world does not pivot on fairness,” he said finally. His voice was a rasp.
This made her smile. Ruefully.
Good God, but how he liked her. She was just so damnedgallant.
He took a breath. And of all the things he’d been obligated to endure in his life, her gaze on him now seemed the least fair. The yearning flickering with the uncertainty. The heat and wonder and invitation. Desire that she clearly felt but perhaps did not fully understand because that first experience of it had been brutally stolen from her.
“I will do it,” she said matter-of-factly. “I cannot bear to watch your face go very stoic and brave. It will be easier for me.”
She already knew him so well. She’d said it because she knew he couldn’t bear for her to suffer. She knew that he couldn’t deny her a thing.
So he handed the handkerchief to her.
She dipped it in the water. He drew in a breath, and gently, gently she cleaned.
“It is not true that you are an old cynic who trusts no one,” she said softly. “You trust me.”
Her strokes were feather delicate and so careful.
His throat was tight. He couldn’t speak.
And his groin was tightening, too.
“Salve now,” she said.
He’d brought it with him, and he’d had the jar out and opened in preparation.
Very gently she applied it. And then with great precision and delicacy wound the bandage around his wound again.
And when she was done, she laid her hands softly, softly, flat against his chest.
His breath stopped.
“Christian,” she whispered. “May I touch you like this?”
And slowly, slowly, she slid them upward.
It seemed an eternity before he could answer. The words needed to travel through endless layers of sensation.
“Yes,” he said hoarsely.
He stood motionless while with her fingertips, her nails, she traced the gullies between his muscles, slowly, softly, as if he were a rare map she was poring over at the beginning of a quest. She tangled her fingers in copper hair over his chest.
