He brought them up to her breasts.
And then he guided her hands in a rough caress over her bead-hard nipples.
Her head fell back hard as shocking pleasure cleaved her; she bit her lip to muffle her cry.
Her breath came in speeding, ragged gusts.
“Everything you felt justnow, Guinevere?” he whispered. “That’s whatIdo to you.”
He gently took his hands from hers.
She didn’t turn as she heard his footsteps on the stairs, leaving her.
In his cozy room, which was softer than a goddamn hug, Marchand brooded.
The brooding embarrassed him.
He was altogether appalled with himself, in general. It was sobering.
He had no experience of this kind of jealousy—the possessive, mindless, reactive kind. He’d behaved little better than the feral boy he’d once been. As if he’d been cornered by thieves in an alley, about to be robbed of a crust of bread he’d stolen. He’d fought like a demon back then for something he’d felt was rightfully his. He yearned for the right to do that now.
But he’d just been anassto her, and now he had a rampaging erection.
He took care of that, adroitly and swiftly, while picturing his hands covering her breasts. He saw stars when he came.
The relief was temporary. The jealousy flowed right back into his veins, cutting off his air.
He needed to learn it like an enemy, so he could discover which weapons he could use to disarm it. He was a grown man, jaded and seasoned and intelligent enough. He could surely rationalize it away.
But that was the trouble: What he felt for her had begun somewhere within him that cynicism hadn’t killed. Some unprotected place where he was still a boy innocently in thrall to the moon. It had sneaked up on him; it now bound him like vines.
The problem with being accustomed to assessing threats was that it was a matter of moments before he realized his jealousy was mainly fear. Fear of both the known and the unknown. Because it was one thing tohearabout Balfort anecdotally.
It was another being compelled to stand in the same room with a man who would more than likely share Ginny’s bed for the rest of her life.
And to understand that sweet, calf-eyed boy was, all things considered, probably a better choice for her.
His entire being rebelled against the notion so powerfully that it felt as though his rib cage were being ripped apart by two mighty hands. He struggled to breathe through that suffering.
Jealousy was also pain.
He was ashamed of that, too. He ought to have been past that by now.
Because he knew too bloody well what it felt like to have his heart gouged out and his world turned to ashes. He recalled too well the slow, painful, halting climb up out of the depths of loss while presenting himself to the world as shrewd, dangerous, and invincible in order to survive. He knew what it had been like to learn himself all over again in the absence of a person he loved.
It ought to have made him even harder and even braver. He wanted to be harder and braver.
It had instead made him humbler. And more patient.
And very wary of pain.
He knew too well the savage price exacted by love. Grief was built right into it, as Ginny had mentioned in the sitting room. That poor bastard Apollo, yearning eternally.
He allowed himself one weak moment to rail at the superfluous cruelty of fate.
Anyone who knew him superficially—which was nearly everyone, except Ginny—would have been surprised to learn his greatest gift wasn’t knowing precisely how to punch a man in the kidneys. It was that he knew how to care. He knew now definitively that it was what made him feel whole. It was what he’d been missing. Whether it was wading into a fight in a gaming hell or tucking a little boy into bed, or looking after spoiled aristocrats at Lucifer’s Fall, or escorting the beautiful, maddening daughter of a viscount on a chase around London. He took care of people.
Mainly, he wanted to take care of her.
