“Not at all.” He sounded courteous but felt anything but at the prospect of unlacing his lovely wife. It was no imposition. In fact, he would relish it. “Your room or mine?”
She paused, a smile lifting the corner of her mouth. “You haven’t looked in mine, have you?”
He hadn’t, in fact. He’d left the décor to Carlijn’s oversight, and it somehow felt like an invasion of privacy to visit it without Hannalinde’s explicit permission.
She led him to her bedroom door and pushed it open. It was decorated more as a sitting room than a bedroom, with a pair of cushioned chaises rather than a bed, and another seating area with a table and chairs by the large bank of windows. Her sewing things were arranged here, and her books, new and old. Though one could rest and relax in the room, she clearly did not intend to sleep here.
She’d already chosen to share his. She’d had the option not to, and she’d chosen otherwise.
“I sleep better when you watch over me,” she murmured, watching him take it in.
“As do I.” He swept her up in his arms and carried her through their connected dressing rooms to his—nowtheir—bedchamber.
He set her down beside the enormous canopy bed and turned her gently by the shoulders. He worked her laces free, mindful that his claws did not slice through them. One eyelet gave, then the next, until the gown sagged from her and slid to the floor.
Her shift had loosened at the neck. He drew it down off one shoulder, baring the soft slope of skin there, her scars pale in the moonlight that streamed through the balcony doors. He traced over their lacy patterns, and she shivered.
“I wish I had made these,” he said, kissing where his finger had touched, hoping to warm her.
“You would never hurt me like that,” she said firmly, turning to him with her shift clutched over her breasts and belly.
He brushed a stray lock of her hair from her forehead. “No, but I wish we had the bond you share with him. I often wish I could feel your thoughts.”
“And I, yours?” she asked teasingly.
“Not so much,” he admitted, chuckling. The inside of his mind was a tempest sometimes. Half-remembered battles, bitter resentments. Impatience, boredom, lust that could never be sated. She would think less of him if she knew that he was as scarred inside as out. “I’m afraid they are not as pretty as yours.”
She sobered. “Perhaps mine are not as pretty as you assume.”
“And yet I want to know them,” he said, a little surprised by himself. But it was true. He wanted to feel her frustration when her stitching went wrong and her fear about the prospect of giving birth. He wanted to feel her impatience with his more somber nature and her annoyance when Carlijn and Lucan ignored their warnings. Every petty emotion.
“Then ask, and I’ll tell you. It’s as simple as that.”
He bent his head to nose her ear and breathe in her rosy scent. It was not so easy. Beyond knowing her mind, he also wanted to bite her. He wanted to sink his teeth into her shoulder himself, taste her blood, bind her to him forever. Some biological drive to mate, he assumed.
He walled off the impulse. He’d promised her no biting. Ironically, it was the line he could not cross if he wanted to keep her. She’d drawn it before any other boundary.
He would not ask her or even hint at it again. He would not allow the hunger to show on his face, because if she saw it, it would destroy the trust between them that had taken months to build.
And evenif, years from now, she agreed to his bite, it would not bind them. The mating bite was singular. One per lifetime. She was already bonded to the gargoyle who’d used it to track and torment her, and a second bite would not take. Her bodycould reject it because another gargoyle was already in her blood. And the rejection would mean he’d put his teeth in her for nothing, reopened a wound that had finally healed. Proved that gargoyle desire always ended the same way: with her skin broken and bleeding.
He’d never do it. He held on to that thought as she drifted off to sleep in his arms.
Chapter 24
Hannalinde
It was an astonishing thing, waking in her own home in her husband’s stone arms. She could not remember the last time she’d slept so well. She wriggled out of his grasp when she could no longer linger in bed, then kissed him and pulled up the blankets. It was a silly gesture, as he would not get cold, but she couldn’t deny herself the impulse to care for him while he slept as he cared for her.
With a new ladies’ maid to help her, she readied for the day and breakfasted with Carlijn.
“What should we do today?” Carlijn mused as she slathered her toast with gooseberry jam. “We can go anywhere now that we don’t have to manage all those ladders. We could visit the market. Or go to a theater to watch a pantomime!”
Hannalinde huffed a laugh at the thought of such an ambitious venture. “Have you seen my belly lately? I’m afraid I can’t manage more than a walk around the garden.”
Carlijn grinned. “It is getting large. And your bosoms are spilling out of your bodice.” Hanna threw a piece of dry toast at her, and she squealed indignantly, tossing one back.
Hanna laughed. “Now you have to pick them both up, because I can’t bend over, and we don’t want to anger the housekeeper on our first day in Rose House!”
