darkened his clothes, his countenance. His implacable eyes swirled with more emotions than she could name. More emotions than he’d shown last night when he stopped those men. When he tended her wounds.
‘You made twenty-five cakes last night,’ he said, enunciating each word until they held a bite.
‘And I made twenty-five more this morning,’ she added.
He leaned forward as if to strangle her and just held back. Even so, she felt his anger, surprise and displeasure as his eyes raked down her now-drenched form.
She knew she was lacking, knew she was disfigured. But she could cook and bake; she was resourceful. When he left last night, she’d gathered her strength as she thought through her plan of leaving the only home she had. When she’d made up her mind, she left for the kitchens.
It made sense for Rhain to take her. He had to know her situation. There was no way she could get his money back and consequently she made the rest of the cakes. Even though the kitchen’s heat had pained her more than ever and her ribs protested her every move. But it was worth it because she wanted to thank him for last night and for the expected ride today.
She didn’t think it would come to this. That she would be bargaining a life for herself over some flour and honey. That she would be using a cake to prove she was worthy of him taking her.
‘We have no horse for you,’ he said.
The village didn’t have any spares. ‘I didn’t expect a horse.’
Her heart flipped and churned until she was sure he would notice. Something had changed, but she tried not to get her hopes up. He wasn’t saying no any more, though nothing he said yet proved otherwise. He merely talked of horses and convenience, but those were obstacles, not refusal. This couldn’t truly be about his sweet tooth, but exactly what it was about, she didn’t know.
His tightly locked countenance told her nothing. Especially since even though his hood was up, he was almost too precisely beautiful to be real. The only indications that he was real were the slight exasperation of his breath and the fleeting emotions in his amber eyes.
‘I’m not a savior,’ he said.
She, of all people, knew no one was and that she didn’t deserve one. ‘I’m not asking you to be.’
He nodded once, scanned his eyes around the men before he said, ‘She rides with me.’
Rhain regretted his action immediately. It wasn’t the delay of departing the village, though by the time they strapped Helissent’s few possessions to the horses, and sat her atop his own, the rain had begun to fall in earnest.
The sky was darkening in every direction. The storm was coming and soon even a modicum of comfort, of carrying on a conversation, would be denied them.
Even that he could ignore. He couldn’t ignore the woman bundled until he shouldn’t feel her and yet her trembles became his. He didn’t know why she trembled, it could be the cold. It could be fear. Over Rudd and leaving her home? Or did she fear them? If she did fear his band of mercenaries, it wasn’t enough to make her stay away.
It didn’t matter he and Nicholas came from nobility. Their lineage was in the past. They were no more or less than what they made of themselves now, which were killers for a price.
Yet this woman had begged to travel with them. He didn’t need to guess why and anyone who had suffered as she had would have to be stubborn and brave.
But his admiration for her or her stubbornness wasn’t why she rode with him, why he felt her trembles. Why he hadn’t kept his hood up for her last night.
For he hadn’t.
And she hadn’t done what every other woman had ever done. He’d expected it, had taken advantage of it at one point of his life. His face had simply been his reality.
She’d stared and then averted her eyes. It had been almost amusing, if not for the disconcerting fact he actually wanted her eyes on him.
He didn’t recognize what it was about her, but he had felt it the moment he entered the inn and it raged like an inferno through him when he realized those men meant to harm her.
Then in the quiet of her home, she’d allowed his touch. She had braced herself, hid her gasps, but she still let him close enough to feel her.
He hadn’t thought to brace himself as he touched her. He’d been intent only to see if she’d fractured a rib, only wanted to relieve her pain with the ointment. So he hadn’t been ready for how his own body reacted.
The soft heat of her skin, the way she smelled. The feel and textures of her underneath his fingertips. All of it should have made him only think of her injuries, but that wasn’t what he had felt at first.
First he felt her as a man would a woman and desire recklessly arced through him. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak because he had to choke the sounds of need clamoring suddenly inside him.
Unexpected, and all because of her. Only her. His reaction had nothing to do with his lack of female companionship. Over the years more women than he could count had bent over him or abruptly sat in his lap. Trailed their hands and fingers along any part of him they could reach and he’d felt nothing.
All of that dead to him because he had to make it so. Because when he’d learned the truth of his lineage, he could never take matters further with a woman.
So he hadn’t been prepared he’d feel anything when he touched her. He shouldn’t have felt anything when she was hurting.
All of it was made worse when she took his frozen state as revulsion because she spoke those broken words about her scars. Only then did he realize too late what else he felt.
The roughness warring with the softness of her skin underneath his fingers. That was enough to jar him, to remind him she was injured, and he needed to check for broken bones and apply the ointment.
But it didn’t stop his desire for her, not when she inspected herself and he’d wished it could be his fingers trailing along the front of her ribcage and the gentle swells hinted there.
Desire, which was all the more torturous when he yanked off his tunic and watched her eyes widen, her lips part.
Felt the echoing of his desire from the air on his bared skin and the tightening of his body. As he stood half-naked in the dark intimate quiet of the room, she was suddenly someone he needed. His mind and body in complete conflict with each other, he’d viciously stripped his tunic and tied the ends.
All to bind her and unerringly tighten his need as he walked slowly around and watched what the tight binding revealed, what the thin chemise did not.
Her slender shape, the curves of her breasts, the indentation of her waist, the breadth of her collarbones, the curve of her jaw. Her long, long legs. Another circle and he knew exactly the height of those legs, the width and shape of her hips, the location of each jutting bone and all her womanly softness.
All of her, every inch of her in proportion
