Page 76 of Outlaw Ever After

The guardsman jingled closer. Her stomach jumped into her throat as Alex blanketed her with his front. Her body fired alive. His head dipped to her neck, blocking her face.

“Alex, what are—”

“Wheesht, sweeting,” he breathed across the skin behind her ears.

Sweeting? He buried his face there as if rediscovering secrets. Her heart drummed hard against his torso as memories of him leaning on a crumbling wall flashed. Her breath quickened at his liberal touch.

“Ye didna’ flinch,” he muttered. She hadn’t flinched.

Their eyes connected. So close. She could see the olive and jade striations in his gaze. Could see the nuances of the bruises and the crusted scab of his split lip. Traced his fanning lashes with her eyes. Breathed in the saltiness of his neck against her nose, as her bosom heaved up and down nervously against his torso.

“Does it mean ye trust me again, lass?” he beseeched on a croak. “I’d do anything to ken my songbird’s faith is restored in me.”

She chewed her lip. He thumbed it free, tracing the flesh with his scratchy calluses, pushed it out of shape with such restraint, she could see the strain torquing his neck and jaw.

Did she? If what he’d explained about leaving her was true, then at worst, he’d made an error in judgment, but he hadn’t tried to hurt her. Her hand snaked across her belly. Why was this trust so hard to summon again?

“Wrap yer arms around me,” Alex gruffed, his jaw ticking to be left unvalidated.

He adjusted the basket on his shoulder to keep their faces blocked as the guard approached, and rested his forehead to hers.

He was…pretending they were villagers in an embrace, like so many others around them, as boots and weaponry jingled closer.

“Touch me as if ye want me still.” His whisper was filled with gravel, as if he wasn’t sure anymore if she did.

She could see the tiny cracks in his lips from the cold weather, could see the silvery vestiges of his life as a warrior.

She slipped her hand around his waist and a shudder rocked his frame. His forehead dug harder into hers. His grip on her tightened, but as if realizing how hard his fingers were digging, he took to stroking her. And yet, as her hands caressed up his back, down his back, refamiliarizing herself with his form, her eyes fluttered closed, too.

“That’s my lass,” he whispered, as her heart beat a fury against his massive form. “Ye nay always have to flee into hiding.”

She could hear his teeth working together, waiting for the soldier to pass. His nose subtly traced the crest of her cheek.

The boots were past now. She could feel the presence lumbering away, yet they remained in a lover’s embrace he didn’t deepen with a kiss, even if his breath came out hot, his lips were parted, and she could feel him leaning into her, arm holding her lower back to him, invisible as if he truly was an expert at hiding in plain sight.

To be swallowed in his hold again, to feel like the most beloved object of his attention had felt like heaven once. The feel of his beard brushing against her skin, the tug of the Comyn mantle around her as his heart pounded a matching cadence to the soldier’s receding boots, felt right.

Patchouli filled her senses like freshly baking bread and her eyes blinked open again. His were still closed, brow pleated, lost in some thought as his nose brushed along her cheek and his braided beard tickled her, taunting her to touch and remember the lost dream.

Her breath came in erratic bursts as he traced her heartbeat in her neck with his nose. Dusted his lips over the wee freckle there. Worshipped her skin with his breath as if she a spirit he was afraid to drink, leaving emptiness lingering amid the pleasure brewing within her at the pressure of his brawn blanketing her.

Her finger slipped up between them to twine his beard, tempted to grasp this memory and feel if it was actually real—

He sucked in. Jerked subtly, as if her touch hurt. His beard unraveled from her finger as his eyes opened. Could it be that he, too, was truly pained by the months apart?

He flashed that pearlescent smile of a playactor, though it was stilted. “Weel done. Ye fooled them. Ye nearly fooled me.”

Except they weren’t fooling anyone. Because the castle maids now knew that they knew each other, and so did Seamus.

“Mayhap we only try to fool ourselves,” she said sadly.

“I’m nay fooled.” He bit out. “I kenned what I wanted the moment I first met ye.”

…

Alex hurried her onto a footpath, cutting toward the stables, where Thomas saddled Faunus. He’d not meant for his remark to hurt her, though he’d seen the sting of it on her cheeks. But it was becoming hard to hide the pain of these past months. It was harder to smile when he felt her yearning for him in her agonizingly hesitant touches, knowing she still didn’t believe him.

Damnation, he’d nearly confessed who he was as he’d slid that ring back onto her finger.