Page 67

He made a noise in his throat that sounded disgusted.

“Allow me to show you, then.”

“Show me what?”

A log popped in the grate and I flinched. His hands always seemed to be the weakest part of him. No matter how solid his legs were beneath me or the press of his ribs, his hands were the one thing that remained not quite there.

“How you should have always been taken care of.”

Even with the flickering of his fingers, I felt one hand settle on my head, idly twining through the waves in my hair.

The room was warm, dancing in the orange glow of the fire.

I was dry and safe.

Rain slammed against the glass and mixed with the roar of the sea.

Wolfe smelled like home, like cinnamon and honey and whiskey.

He cleared his throat and began, launching us back into Elise’s story. It seemed even with their marriage, her father’s clan was not satisfied and launched a secret raid. The Irish Lord believed that Elise had betrayed him, sold him out to her father and showed him the weakest parts of his keep. Elise swore she didn’t, telling him she loved him, but the lord didn’t listen. He locked her in his room and went to fight off the men wreaking havoc in his home.

“This doesn’t bode well,” he muttered. “Why are all men so stubborn?”

I chuckled, the sound tipped in sleep. “You’re a man. You tell me.”

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “I think if I were him and I loved someone like that, I would believe them over everything else.”

I stilled, fingers pausing in the tassels I’d been toying with for the last hour while I listened to the deep timbre of his voice.

“Really?”

“Really.” He shifted, bringing me closer. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well, think of how it started, I guess. They had no interest in each other. They were forced to get married. There were chapters of them fighting and avoiding each other. She spent the beginning half of the book wishing to go home.”

“And home can’t change?” he countered softly. “She couldn’t have decided that home was now with him?”

My heart gave a sickening thump, palms growing damp around the blanket Wolfe had draped over me.

“I suppose…”

“I would like to believe such a thing is possible,” he said, voice husky. “That two people can find each other and can create something new from the wreckage. A place that belongs wholly to them.”

I commanded myself not to look up at him, but my traitorous eyes lifted anyway. His gaze was vacant, trained on the way my hair shimmered in between his fingers.

“You’re a romantic,” I said teasingly. I wanted—no, needed—to lighten the mood.

“Aye.” The answer was gruff, like it cost him something to admit. “Hard not to be when you live in a place like this. Where magic lingers in the ground beneath your feet. Where the world falls off and the sea begins.”

“Maybe you should have been the writer,” I mused. “That’s lovely.”

His laugh was humorless, almost dry. “Perhaps, though I think you’re better suited to it than me.”

“Oh,” I said evasively, “I don’t know about that.”

“Why did you start?” he asked suddenly. “What made you want to do it in the first place?”

The answer was embarrassing. I didn’t want to admit it to him and reveal more of the shattered parts of who I was—the parts that felt too dark and heavy to share with someone else.