Once the horses had collided and the carriage overturned, Christian had little memory of the night of the accident that took his sister. What he did recall were the feelings. He remembered crushing grief as Matilda’s life left her eyes. He remembered throbbing, ripping pain in his body that made him scream in agony, that made him lose consciousness. That pain had lasted for days, for weeks—it had lasted until he had no sense of time or place. Until he had prayed for death.
Now, as he read his sister’s journal, a whisper of that pain returned. It wove into his mind and broke him apart like a heavy stone thrown through a beautiful stained glass window.
“She wanted a part in my war,” he murmured, blinking to clear his vision as he stared at Matilda’s small, even handwriting, which he knew so well. He could not even pretend this work wasn’t hers. “She wanted to fight at my side.”
Ava’s head dropped and she shuddered. “Yes.”
“She turned to your brother in an act of war, a way to hurt him, to obtain information from him,” he continued with a shake of his head.
“But she fell in love with him,” Ava offered, her lips pale and shaking as the words fell from them. “It tore her apart, knowing how you would disapprove the match, but she fell deeply in love with Liam.”
“She ran because she feared my reaction,” Christian said. “She died because I drove her into your brother’s arms. She died because I tried to drive her out of them.”
He set the book down carefully, gently on the arm of the chair in which he sat and stared at the light as it streamed through the windows. How dare it be so beautiful? How dare anything exist now that was beautiful when the world, his world, was such a dark and dank place?
Ava moved toward him slowly and dropped to her knees before him. She reached up and cupped his cheeks.
“Christian,” she whispered. “She might have done this for you, but it isn’t your fault. Your sister made her choices when it came to my brother. And there is so much blame to go around for the war between our families. Blame for our fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers. Please don’t shoulder it all yourself.”
He stared at her, her face upturned to his, her eyes soft with caring and a desire to help him. Perhaps for the first time, he realized this woman had no ulterior motives except to make peace. To help him. To give him something he had not felt for so long, perhaps had never fully felt before.
And all this even after he had kidnapped her, forced her into a humiliating bargain, accused her of lying and worse and essentially been an ass of the highest order. But she was still here. She was still cupping his face gently. She was still absolving him of sins he knew full well were unforgiveable.
“Christian,” she repeated, and her soft voice pulled him from those maudlin thoughts. “Please hear me, even through your grief and pain.”
He stared into her eyes, trying to hold on to this statement she was making him about blame, but it was impossible.
“I am a murderer,” he insisted and to his shock he felt tears sting his eyes. “Do you know how much I loved her?”
“Tell me,” Ava whispered.
He shuddered. “When my mother died, my sister was the only person in the world who gave a damn about me. I tried to protect her from my father’s fists, from pain and fear, but in the end I became just like him.”
Ava flinched. “That is not true, Christian. You are not your father.”
“I am.”
The tears flowed now, cresting over his cheeks. They should have been humiliating, but he didn’t care anymore. The pain was too powerful to deny.
“I am like him because I let my hate blind me,” he continued, voice shaking. “I let my drive to destroy take over until it was out of control. I should have seen Matilda’s intentions. And once she cared for your brother, I shouldn’t have turned away when she tried to tell me. Oh God, she tried to tell me.”
He covered his face as he thought of a day, just before her death, when Matilda had come to him and tried to soften his stance, tried to free him from the chains of this war. He had pushed her away. He had ignored her. In fact, his last words to her before she left to run away with Liam had been, “Don’t be a foolish girl—I expect more from you.”
Ava pushed up and wrapped her arms around him, holding him as the pain and guilt racked him. She smoothed her hands along his back, she rocked him in comfort as she murmured soft, incoherent words of support and love and forgiveness.
He clung to her, allowing her to see his weakness, allowing her to give him her warmth and her protection. It made him vulnerable, he knew it. And yet he somehow trusted her to see that frailty and never use it against him. No matter what happened next.
He trusted her. Such a foreign sentence and yet so true.
He pulled away from her slightly to look into her face. She smoothed her fingers over his cheeks, wiping away tears as she smiled at him.
“Christian, all this pain, all this anguish—she wouldn’t want you to carry it with you. I know she loved you.” She leaned down and pressed her lips to his briefly. “Let go.”
He stared at her. “Let go?”
She nodded. “Let go of your guilt and your pain, let go of your anger and your hate. Let go and live a life your sister would have been proud of. That is the very best thing you could do for her.”
He stared at her once more, shocked and stunned by how she had summed up a plan for him in a mere three sentences. And for the first time in almost his entire life, what she proposed seemed like the most beautiful life he could imagine. A life free of the chains of his hate, the duty of his war.
Could he have that?
She leaned up and kissed him again. It was meant as comfort, but before she could pull back, he caught the back of her head and held her steady, deepening the kiss to something else. Something with passion and desire.
When she pulled away, her eyes were lit with surprise but also interest.
“Christian?” she whispered.
He cupped her chin, stroking a rough finger over her impossibly satiny skin. “The only thing that has ever made me forget, made me forgive, made me want something beyond the brutal, laughable version of the life I’ve created for myself…is you.”
Her eyes went wide at the confession, and he could scarcely blame her. His admission was as unexpected to him as it was to her. But it was also true. He knew it as well as he knew anything else in the world.
“I want you, Ava. Will you help me begin to forget?” he asked.
She nodded without hesitation. “Come to my chamber?” she murmured.
He shook his head and rose to his feet. Slipping her hand into the crook of his arm, he led her from his sister’s room. “No. Come to mine.”
Ava stared around Christian’s room as he lit a few lamps and drew the curtains. She had never been to this chamber, but she could admit, if only to herself, that she had imagined it more than once.
At first, she had pictured a beast’s lair, dark and dire. But the more she came to know Christian, the more she came to see him as something more than a sensual threat, the more she had wondered what his room would look like.
It was a large chamber, painted in a pretty blue that she imagined his sister must have chosen for him. Against the wall was a huge, roaring fireplace with a mantelpiece that rose all the way up the wall with an intimidating stone face. Across from that fireplace was his bed.
A very large bed with four posters, done in dark wood and with bright, sparkling white coverlet. It was big enough for three or four and she wondered, briefly, if before his accident there had ever been three or four sharing it. She banished the shocking thought immediately, though.
He turned from the last lamp he had lit and waved his free hand around. “What do you think?”
She smiled. “It suits you. Dark and yet light, sensual and yet practical.”
“It sounds boring.” He laughed.
She shook her head. “It is anything but, Your Grace.”
She moved
toward him, mostly because he was a flame she couldn’t resist, even if it would burn eventually. He opened his arms and she stepped into them, molding her body to his while she lifted her lips for a kiss.
As always, just the brush of his lips on hers swept her away. Of course, he did more than just a mere brush. He drew her against him even more firmly and drove his tongue to dance with hers. She tasted a faint hint of whiskey, of mint, of him, and her body shivered and began to soften and grow wet. He groaned against her lips, murmuring something she didn’t understand, and began to unbutton her gown.
She shivered as he dropped his mouth to her shoulder, peeling away the dress and pressing his lip to bare, exposed skin.
“How have you done this to me?” he whispered against her flesh.
She let her fingers thread through his hair, tilting her head back as he drew her dress farther down and revealed more and more of her body to his seeking mouth and tongue.
He spoke of what she did to him, but all she knew was what he did to her. One word, one glance, one brief touch, and she was lost. Utterly his for the taking. And even though that was foolish, she didn’t care. She surrendered most willingly to whatever his mouth and hands demanded.
“Christian,” she whispered, gasping as he pushed her gown to her waist and focused the heat of his mouth on her right breast.
Pleasure ricocheted through her, settling in an electric line between the nipple he tugged at gently and the throbbing nub of her clitoris between her legs. She found herself arching against him, grinding her hips to his.
But it wasn’t enough. She wanted a more active part in this encounter. Because it was different now. He had revealed a vulnerable moment to her, they had connected in a way that could not be undone. And this time when they made love, it wouldn’t be like it was before. She wasn’t about to just let him lead her without having her will done, too.
She began to unbutton his shirt and slipped it away. He tensed but didn’t pull back as she revealed him. She slid her hands over his skin, as comfortable in providing pleasure now as she was in receiving it. Her fingers danced along the muscles of his arms, the broad expanse of his shoulders and down the hardness of his chest.
“God, you are beautiful,” she murmured before she kissed his shoulder as he had kissed hers.
He broke his mouth away from her flesh and gasped, his fingers digging into her back as she peppered little kisses across his chest, down his stomach. She hesitated at the waist of his trousers, then stood up straight.
“I think we should move to the bed, don’t you, my lord?” She took his hand and led him backward. When they were positioned on the bed, side by side, she smiled at him. “I’m glad you took me that night,” she said softly.
His eyes went wide. “You are?”
She nodded. “I hadn’t existed for years, hadn’t yearned for anything except the end of whatever party I was attending. You changed that. And I am so glad you did.”
She could see he wanted to argue, but she didn’t allow that. Her statement didn’t require a response—she only wanted to say it before it was too late. Before something changed and she wouldn’t be able to express it.
So she kissed him and cut off his words. He relaxed against the pillows, pulling her across his body as she sank down into his kiss. She slid a hand into his hair at his temple, feeling the crispness of it pass through her fingertips as she tasted him, claimed him, gave to him in every way she could.
Already her excitement was at a fever pitch. She pulled away in order to remove the dress that was bunched around her hips. A few more swift movements let her underthings join it in the pile on the floor beside the bed, and she smiled at him as he looked at her naked body.
“I want to be inside you,” he said, his voice rough and strained. “Now.”
She nodded and helped him as he unfastened his trousers and lifted up gingerly to slide them down over his hips. His erection stood proud, and she stroked it once, twice, before she straddled him and slowly eased down over him. He fit into her like he was coming home, and as she took him fully inside, they sighed in unison.
She began to rock over him, riding him as he stroked that sweet spot within her that made her come so hard and so fast. Within moments, she found her release, crying out as she pounded over him.
“Turn around,” he ordered, sweat breaking on his forehead as she panted over him.
Her eyes went wide. “I—”
“Simply reverse your position. Your back facing me, but still straddling my cock,” he clarified.
She nodded and adjusted, weak when they were parted and filled with passion again when she dropped her body onto his a second time.
“Oh my God,” she moaned. “It feels different.”
“We haven’t even begun,” he muttered, the smile in his voice that she couldn’t see facing away. “Now ride me.”
She did as she was told, finding her rhythm a second time. She felt him straining, lifting toward her as his breath came faster. She rolled her hips over him, grinding down to rub her clitoris on the base of his cock. She felt a second orgasm about to burst within her body when there was sudden pressure right at the entrance to her bottom.
She peeked back over her shoulder in surprise. “Christian?”
“It will feel good,” he said, voice strained. “I promise.”
“I trust you,” she said, her voice half a cry as he slid his finger into the rosebud of her bottom and drove his cock hard in her pussy.
She exploded, rocking back and forth against both invading, pleasurable sensations. Her orgasm just kept coming, sweeping her away, torturing her with pleasure and forcing her to keep thrusting over him until he cried out and the heat of his release filled her aching, twitching sheath.
She flopped to her side next to him and cuddled against his chest. He smoothed her hair with one hand absently as their breath merged to one breath and both of them relaxed into drowsy satisfaction only found after an amazing session of lovemaking.
Christian fell asleep first. His breaths grew long and deep, and his hand stilled in its stroking of her hair. She looked up. In sleep he looked so much more peaceful. So much younger. After today, she was pleased he could find such rest.
He had given her so much. More than she could have asked for. Truth. Confession. Emotion. Desire. When she came here she had expected none of them, and now she clung to them like floating salvage wood after a shipwreck.
Because she was in love with him.
She started as that terrible, unbelievable thought popped uninvited into her mind. And yet, as she looked at him in the dying lamplight, the concept didn’t seem so very foreign or wrong.
She loved him. Truly loved him.
She settled her head against his chest and clung to him, trying to forget that it was a love that could never be returned, could never be realized, and would end far too soon.
Chapter Twenty
Things were crashing in the distance of Ava’s mind. Loud crashings like dishes breaking and doors being kicked in. Slowly, she let her eyes come open and looked around. Daylight filled Christian’s chamber, sending a glow along his naked body that made her want to climb on top of him and wake him in a way most pleasant.
They had spent a marvelous day yesterday after their nap. Luncheon in bed, more lovemaking, a walk where they talked and laughed. And her love for him, just a mere kernel of recognition the previous morning, had bloomed even further. She could have stayed this way with him forever.
Except that outside the crashing from her dream continued, and it was most real.
She sat up partially and tugged the blankets up to cover her breasts.
“Christian?” she murmured.
He kept his eyes shut. “I hear it.”
“What in the world is it?” she asked, because the banging was coming closer.
He sat up and kissed her naked shoulder. “I have no idea, but I shall go find out and then come back and wake up properly next to you, perhaps inside you.”<
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She laughed as he got out of bed and slid his trousers over his hips with a wince. She frowned. She needed to massage his injury again, which was never enjoyable, but it helped him. He was starting to improve in his movements. She put it on a list of things to do that day and was about to lie back down to wait for him to look into the hall then come back to her when the door to the chamber was kicked open. It flew back and hit the wall behind it and revealed, standing in the opening, panting, red-faced and with two servants trying to hold him back, her brother.
“Liam!” Ava screamed in surprise, in horror. Especially when she looked down at herself, barely covered in the bed of her brother’s most hated enemy.
Liam stared at her, his nostrils flaring. The servants were saying something, shouting and causing even more noise, but Ava didn’t hear any of it. She doubted either Liam or Christian did either. They were all too busy staring at each other, they were all too busy realizing what this meant.
“You bastard!” Liam said, breaking the spell as he moved on Christian with murderous intent in his eyes. His injured arm hung at his side, but his good one was strong enough to do damage.
Christian squared his shoulders and shifted his weight to his good leg, lifting his fists in readiness for a fight. Ava wrapped the blanket around her body and flew from the bed to position herself between them.
“No!” she said, blocking Christian and putting her free hand up to ward her brother off. “Liam, stop!”
Liam looked down at her, face twisted in so much anger, so much disgust that she could barely look at it. “You would defend your kidnapper, your rapist?”
She shook her head. “He did kidnap me, yes, but he did not rape me, Liam. Let me talk to you. Please, please don’t start murdering each other.”
She looked up at her brother, but he was too busy glaring at Christian with so much hatred on his face that he almost looked changed. So instead, she looked to Christian. There was anger in his expression, but she was surprised he didn’t look as hate-filled and driven to destroy as Liam.
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