Page 50 of Outlaw Ever After

Her hand covered her mouth. She’d noticed that he seemed thinner, but now that she was so close, there was no mistaking that he was gaunt. The hollows of his cheeks were more defined. Grooves crinkled crow’s feet at the edges of his still functioning eye, as if he’d spent many a night sleepless.

“There was no letter.” She shook her head as he turned back to her. “Kendrew said everyone left and then my brother sent out a search until I was found and it was dark and—”

“There’s no way ye could have missed it. I secured it against that rock right in the middle of our greenwood, and there was no rain and no one else to find it there.”

“There was no letter,” she insisted, illness roiling.

“Then someone must have taken it. And ye thought I’d”—his face suddenly crumpled with realization, gouging her with his next words as his thumb caressed her cheek—“nay come?”

His hand dropped. He scoured his beard. That beard. She’d once twisted it so idly. Then he slouched his other hand upon his belt and paced a step away, composing himself.

God, should she believe his convincing plea? She cupped his cheek as if she might find the truth in his touch. It mattered not. Because she was embroiled in a bride tournament. Men had signed legal contracts. She was no longer free to elope, even if she so wished. Which she didn’t.

He winced. She snapped her touch away. “I’m sorry.”

He’d yanked away from her in the hall, and she knew the scuttling feeling of someone touching her without license.

He captured her hands. Dragged them around his neck and her into his hold, burying her in that patchouli and heather that she’d fallen in love with. He burrowed his forehead into the crook of her shoulder and neck where he’d so loved to nuzzle her, as if he could never quite get close enough, and he exhaled, as if he’d finally found a moment of elusive contentment. In her arms.

Chap ter Sixteen

Alex’s nose smarted painfully as he mashed his face against that sweet freckle. She smelled like roses, deprived of him for so long that he’d begun to think he would never smell the fragrant scent again. Like hell he’d let go because of a sore nose. For three months he’d longed for this, woken up dreaming of this.

Yet her slender arms were rigid. Butterflies fluttered through her vein up her neck against his forehead. Her fingers lacing into his hair clenched.

He shivered with unquenched need, no regard for the open door where anyone—including her brother—could strut right in.

That sobered him. Slowly, he eased back, but he didn’t relinquish his touch. She’d thought he’d bedded her, then forsaken her for whatever battle he’d gone to fight. And she didn’t believe him. That much, he could tell.

Somehow, her brother had found out. For a noblewoman, there was no higher disgrace. “This tournament for yer hand.”

She glanced askance. “I have to be married quickly now. I-I’m disgraced—” Jesu he hated what she implied. “My brother needed to protect me before anyone found out…”

The whispered admission, shrouded in shame, poisoned his ears. It’s yer fault I’m in this predicament.

Christ, he’d bled onto her skin. He dragged free the hem of his tunic to wipe it off of her collarbone.

“Ye needs take this off, me thinks,” she murmured, clearing her throat, fingering the open laces of his tunic. “To have yer arm treated.”

He reached behind his neck and yanked up the collar. The garment slipped over his head in one swift move and he wadded it, casting it onto the bed. He watched her chest hitch.

Bare chested save his sheaths for his sgian achlaises beneath each arm and the pouch he kept at his heart, he sat on full display. Wanted her eyes on him. Remembered all too well how divine it had felt to shed clothes and lay her down and nestle himself between her thighs, and feel all of her accepting all of him.

…

He came for me? Had she doubted falsely for three months?

She stared at his chest as distrust warned her off believing him. Aye, he’d found her lyre. But was it all a ploy now to convince her of his lie? She followed the trail of blond dusted over his navel, took in the band tattooed around his arm. Traced the Irish knotwork and stylized sprigs of clover, hawthorn, scythes with her gaze, like she’d once done with her touch.

“Like what ye see, lass?” he gruffed, attempting a smile, though it was weary.

She shook her head, lifting her eyes heavenward. Aye, she remembered his teasing, too. Instead, she pulled a stool from the cobwebs that had belonged to the laddie who’d lived here, gesturing for him to sit before the now-roaring fire as she dunked a wash rag and a strip of bandaging into the pot to boil. She should ignore him—

“Yer cronish looks?”

A rusty chuckle met her back. “I’m glad to still earn yer head shakes.”

She rolled up her trumpeted sleeves, tying them with the ribbons at her elbows, when Alex picked up the stool in her periphery with a snap of his wrist, flipped it over, and twisted a leg tighter with the comfort of someone who’d done it a hundred times. He then flipped it over and swung it between his legs, sitting down so that his knees practically met his ears like an oversized bairn.