And if he could be encouraged to procure the fifty marks, well, better the devil she knew…
Drake didn’t knock a second time. He shouldn’t have knocked at all. Going to Greer’s room was a poor decision, as his gut had told him from the first, but he’d foolishly ignored that.
This lass didn’t need some man approaching her, especially not in the middle of the night. But how could he speak candidly with Bean nearby?
The lad would no doubt be listening to the entire conversation and offer commentary throughout. As if the right words would not already be hard enough to muster up without the overly righteous squire within earshot.
Aye, Drake ought to go, return to his chambers before someone saw him. Heaven help him if Bean happened to catch sight of him before Greer’s bedchamber.
He stepped back, fully prepared to leave, when the door swung open. Greer stood there with her hair unbound from its usual braid, the rich auburn tresses falling in silky waves that scented the air with something floral he couldn’t name but found he liked far more than he should.
“Forgive me,” he said.
One auburn brow lifted. “For being here?” Bemusement played over her lips, an action that appeared to be intentionally sensual. She opened the door wider in silent invitation.
He stiffened at the impropriety. “I can speak from where I am.”
She glanced about and furrowed her brows. “Where everyone can see ye? Mayhap just come in while no one is about, aye?”
Apparently, there was no good way to go about a private conversation without compromising her, so he swiftly stepped into her room. She closed the door behind him, locking him alone with her in the small space. The familiar sweet scent of her was everywhere in an intimate way he could not help but acknowledge.
He swallowed, and he turned to her. Her feet were bare below the frayed hem of her homespun dress. They were as slender and fair as the rest of her. Seeing her thus, so casual and at ease, felt like a glimpse into her private life, one he had no right to view. Suddenly the discomfort of intruding on her intensified. He truly should not have come.
“I…” He pulled his eyes from her feet and met her gaze. “Forgive me for my anger with ye earlier today.”
“I stole. Ye’re honorable.” She shrugged as if that was all the explanation needed. “Is that why ye’re here?”
It was, and it wasn’t. He needed to explain to her how he had once lived so that she wouldn’t feel judged. So she would understand. While the words had come easily enough as he thought them before, they were difficult to force aloud.
The way he had lived was never something he talked about, it was just something he had done. Survival. Struggle. One day at a time.
She stepped toward him and ran a hand through her hair, sweeping it back to reveal her bonny face in the firelight. And she was indeed bonny. Wide eyes fringed with dark lashes, a lush mouth, a pert nose sprinkled with freckles as perfectly as God had distributed stars among the night sky.
“I understand,” Drake said abruptly. “Why ye steal.”
She gave a mirthless laugh. “So ye keep saying.”
“I wasna always so honorable,” he admitted.
“A wealthy knight’s son with too much time?” she surmised.
He frowned with distaste. “Nay.”
She tilted her head in silent question.
“I was…” A knot of tension tightened at the back of his neck. “For years, I was a reiver.”
The word was like ash in his mouth, the byproduct of his razed youth and the sacrifices he’d been forced to make. For reivers were thieves. They resided on the border between England and Scotland, their lot in life cast so poorly, they had only the prospect of stealing to keep food in the bellies of their families.
Reivers were men without honor.
Greer laughed again and shook her head. “Ye expect me to believe that?”
“Aye, because it’s true.” He ran his hands through his hair, wishing he had something to do with his hands, to take his focus from what he was about to tell her.
“But yer da was a knight,” she protested.
“An English knight.” He strode over to the fire and crouched to put another log into the flames, though it wasn’t at all necessary to do so. “He was killed in a fight against the Scottish.”
“But yer Scottish.”
“Aye, on my mum’s side. When he died, she had no one to help with my sisters and me. My da’s liege lord gave me a sack of coins to compensate for his death, but it doesna last long when there are accounts to settle and when there are so many mouths to feed. Especially with people we’d once assumed to be friends being suddenly hostile.” He watched the flames lick greedily over the tinder, curling and crackling at errant bits of splintered wood. “We had no choice but to travel back to Scotland.”
“Ye’re really being honest, aye?” Greer’s voice drew his attention from the burning log.
He straightened from where he knelt by the hearth. “Aye. English friends turned spiteful when we had little ties to England after my da’s death. They no longer saw us as any part English but as their enemy instead. There were many days we went without food, back when I was too young to make more money to feed us all.”
Greer chewed her bottom lip as she watched him, her expression hesitant as if she were afraid to believe him.
“Ye say I dinna know hunger,” he said. “But I can still recall the sharpness of it gnawing at my stomach. The way ye look at the grass and wonder if eating it might somehow stop that awful pain. I knew nights on the open road where we had no’ the coin for an inn—when I couldna sleep for fear something might happen to my mum or my sisters. I lay awake, flinching at every sound, holding this verra sword.” He set his palm on the sword at his hip. “Ye see me in my finery, but it wasna always this way. What ye dinna see are the years where we barely survived, when I went without so my sisters and mum could be fed and clothed and safe.”
“I dinna know.” Greer went to him, her bare feet silent on the scuffed wood floor. She reached for his hand.
Her caress was light, tender, and it soothed a ragged place inside him he hadn’t known could be reached. Those lovely green eyes searched his gaze now, seeming to see down into his very soul. But he didn’t look away as he might ordinarily do. Let her see him—let her realize why he rose above a life of thievery now, and see every horrible, hateful struggle he had lived through.
Let her see that he understood.
“I never speak of such things,” he admitted.
Greer ran a finger over his jaw, the caress feather-light. “Ye've no’ ever told anyone before?”
“Nay.” He gently withdrew her hand from his face lest the temptation to touch her in return got the best of him. “My da was the most honorable man I’ve ever known,” he continued. “I’ve always done what I could to be worthy of being his son. Having to resort to thievery to survive cost a piece of me I willna ever be able to get back.”
She stared up at him, her eyes wide with an appreciation for what they shared.
He should back away, put space between them. Except that their closeness, and the way she saw him so completely, held him rooted in place. His hand rose and lightly brushed the edge of her jawline. Her skin was warm against his fingertips and made him crave to brush the rest of his fingers over her cheek.
“I dinna want that for ye,” he whispered. “I want to protect ye.”
She gave a gentle exhale that teased against his chin as tears sparkled in her eyes.
9
I want to protect ye.
It wasn’t the first time he’d said as much, and the impact of those words was as visceral to Greer this time as they had been before. It loosened in her a poignant longing to allow herself to soften into his strong arms and let him envelop her in everything safe, so nothing bad could ever touch her again.
Heat tingled in her eyes, and she knew her emotions were overwhelming her. She swallowed. “’Tis too late for all that.”
His brows flinched together, his expression pained.
“I’m already a consummate thief.” The admission was not given boastfully. Indeed, she was not proud of her skill.
“Ye havena always stolen.” He lowered his hand from her face and reached for her fingers, where the skin was still chapped from so many years of working with harsh lye soap. She understood what he was implying, but it changed nothing.
“Laundering doesna pay as well as stealing.” She looked away, hating that such an honorable man would see her misdeeds laid so bare. “’Tis hard for a woman to make good money without a man.”
He nodded. “I’ve always had my skill with a sword, I know. But I watched my mother struggle for years to do whatever she could to provide us with food.”
Greer pulled in a hard breath. Never before had she talked about her life with anyone. Not even Mac. What was the point when he was living it alongside her? Especially if he might feel guilty for what she did to ensure he had a meal in his stomach.
But then, Drake had shared his story with her, the hurt of their neighbors’ betrayal in England plain on his face, the memories difficult to spill free from whatever dark place he had locked them in all those years ago. She had a similar place inside of herself, a place no one had ever cared to see opened before.
But then, no one had sought to protect her before, either.
Until now.
“My mum left when—” She stopped herself just in time to keep from saying their mother had left when Mac was two. If she mentioned Mac, Drake would want to know more about him, including where he was now.
It was then she reminded herself that Drake and Bean traveled to Lochmaben to secure the castle, the very place her brother was being held prisoner.
“My mum left when I was ten.” She looked up at Drake to find him watching her intently, his large, blunt fingers still wrapped loosely around hers. There was a quiet comfort to the way he held her, offering consolation without expectation, and she found she rather liked it. “My da dinna care for anything, save the drink that left his throat on fire and his temper fierce. Were it no’ for stealing, I’d have starved long ago.”
It was such a simple explanation of all those terrible years—of trying to protect Mac from her da’s staggering belligerence when the old drunk insisted that she must surely have money he could use for more whisky. It didn’t detail the times she and Mac had fled the house to be safe from him or how they had found refuge in the streets. Greer understood too well Drake’s inability to sleep in the open for fear of not being awake to keep his mother and sisters safe, for she had also experienced many a night when she hadn’t slept to ensure her brother remained safe.
But she couldn’t share as much, not when she was not yet comfortable mentioning Mac.
Drake’s hand tightened more firmly around hers. Like a shield.
Greer felt her walls crumble but held them intact at the last minute. She could not tell this man, who meant to heighten the skill of Lochmaben Castle guards, that her brother was a prisoner within and she was gathering coin for a guard to be bribed. Nay, not when it might cost her Mac’s life.
“No one has ever tried to protect me before,” she admitted, a slight catch to her voice.
“But people have hurt ye,” he surmised.
The emotion returned, clenching at the back of her throat in a hard, unyielding knot. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak at that moment.
A muscle worked in Drake’s jaw as if he were reigning in his rage. Not at her. But at the men who had tried to hurt her.
“I dinna trust ye before…” She paused to clear her throat. “I dinna think I’ve ever received anything without having someone expect a favor for their efforts. Most men, they will expect a bonny lass to offer her appreciation. Especially wealthy men who assume because I am poor, I can be bought.”
The muscle in his jaw ticked again. “Ye dinna have to—”
She shook her head to stop him. “I have never shared my story with anyone either.”
He didn’t protest again but folded his other hand on top of hers, sealing her gently in his large grip.
There, in the safety of that embrace, she finally spoke. “The first man who offered a place for me to stay forced himself into the room with me.” She omitted how Mac had been with her, only five then and asleep so deeply, he hadn’t roused. “I had a dagger with me.” As was necessary when living on the streets. “I was able to fend him off, thanks be to God. It’s been with me ever since and has helped me fend off many others.” She patted the sheath at her belt where the knife resided when it was not tucked under her pillow.
“No one has ever offered to protect me before,” she reiterated. There was that ache of anguish at the back of her throat again. She swallowed it away. “Not once in my entire life.”
“I will keep ye safe,” he vowed. “And if ye dinna trust me—”
She shook her head, not wanting him even to say those words, to make it apparent in the quiet room that while she trusted him more than she did any other man, she might never entirely trust him. Even her admission had the glaring absence of Mac. If she had trusted Drake completely, she would have told him about Mac. Mayhap asked for his aid.
But she trusted him more than she had anyone else. And for her, right now, that was enough.
It was more than enough. It made her body go warm, and her head spun with a lightness that drew her toward him. She wanted his strong body around her the way his hands had been, curling her in a shell of strength, a promise she wanted him to make good on.
She withdrew her hand from his and put it to his chest, where the thud of his heartbeat patted against her fingertips.
Drake glanced down at her hand, then lifted his gaze to regard her, his expression tender.
“Drake,” she said in a quiet voice.
His nostrils flared. But he did not touch her. Nay, his arms remained at his side.
She wanted them to wrap around her, to secure her to him. Her focus went to his mouth. His lips were thinned with a determination she could practically feel emanating off him. A sudden longing to kiss them into submission overtook her.
She flattened her hand to his chest, so her palm caressed the place over his heart as she rose higher to bring her mouth within a breath of his. His heartbeat was no longer steady but wild and erratic.
Because of her.
The thought thrilled her. Usually, such a realization with other men left her filled with disgust. But not Drake. Nay, he made her blood go as hot as fire and her mind swarm with sin.
He was good. Moral. Handsome. A protector intent on saving her. And somehow, his asking for nothing in return made her want to give him everything.
“Greer,” he said gently.
They were close enough that she could detect the slight spice of his breath, and it made her throb with desperation. She angled her face and closed her eyes as she rose onto her toes.
Before her lips could touch, he pulled away from her. She staggered forward a step without the support of his chest under her hand. He reached out to steady her and immediately released her.
“I dinna require anything of ye for my aid,” Drake said vehemently.
She closed the distance between them again and slid her hand over his collarbone, up his strong neck and behind his head where his hair was surprisingly silky. “I know.”
He stiffened. “I’m no’ like those other men, Greer.”
“I know.” Her fingers toyed with his hair as she smoothed her other hand back over his chest, which rose and fell with his quickening breath. “Kiss me.”
His heart raced with a frenzy under her touch. “Greer…”
But though he offered protest, he did not withdraw from her again. She tilted her chin, and their lips whispered against one another.
The yearning inside her caught her in a merciless grip then, demanding more. Her hand glided up from his chest to his jaw as her lips parted and fitted to his more firmly.
His mouth was
soft, sensual, and intoxicating as his lips moved against hers. Desire thundered through her and echoed in her ears as the lust racing through her veins left her arching against him.
Aye, she wanted this kiss. More than that, she wanted this man, to slowly tear down his staunch rules and get him to lose control.
The same as he was doing now to her.
There were many mistakes made that night.
Drake shouldn’t have gone to Greer’s room. He shouldn’t have let her touch him. He should not have allowed her to kiss him. And for certes, he should not have kissed her back.
Lust roared through his body, his control barely tethered as his mouth claimed hers, again and again, their tongues brushing as he gave an audible groan. Greer clung to him, her hands clasped around the back of his neck as though she thought he might back away.
And truly, he should.
Though clearly, he wasn’t doing anything logic screamed at him to do.
His hands glided over her slender waist, wrapping around her, fitting her more snugly against him. She leaned into him, her stomach nudging against his groin where his prick was swollen with a need he had too long denied himself.
His hand fisted in the rough homespun cloth of her kirtle in an effort to keep his wits about him. He wanted nothing more than to flex his hips against hers so their pelvises could meet in a grinding intensity that would further stoke the flames of their lust. Except he didn’t. With every thread of willpower, he managed to maintain his control.
Greer arched against him, moaning softly into his mouth. Each whimpered sound crumbled his resolve a little more. If she continued thus, he might not be able to hold back any longer.
He caught her hips, intending to stop her, but instead, his hands followed the undulation of her hips, guiding her directly to the throbbing pulse of his arousal. She sucked in a breath at the contact and kissed him more deeply, her excitement evident in every lick, every little affectionate nip.
She grabbed his hand and put it over her breast before he realized what she was doing. “Touch me.” Her breath was hot and sweet where she panted against his ear.
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