Ruined

by Anders, Annabelle

  Not taking the time to put on a dressing gown, she rushed across her room and out into the hallway only to halt at his door. “Luke? Are you all right?”

  When he didn’t respond, she pushed it open and peered inside.

  A shaft of moonlight provided just enough light to see him thrashing and turning, caught up in the quilt twisted around his waist.

  “Down!” he shouted. “Get down, damnit!” And then he jerked and tucked his head into his hands.

  “Luke! Wake up!” Mindful of the baby, Naomi lowered herself onto the edge of the bed in an effort to still him. He was shivering and covered in sweat. “Luke!” she shouted louder, half-afraid he’d knock her from the bed in his panic. He opened his eyes finally, staring at her in confusion. And fear. There was fear there.

  “You’re having a nightmare. It’s okay. You’re okay.” She smoothed her hands over his shoulders, his jaw, his hair. When she rubbed her fingertips along his brow, he blinked a few times and then finally seemed to come back to her. As she stroked her fingers through his hair, whatever hell he’d been caught up in faded away and his muscles relaxed.

  He shook his head and, rather than allow himself a moment, pushed himself forward so that he was sitting up. “My apologies.” His voice came out gravelly.

  “Don’t move.” Naomi rushed back to her own chamber, poured a glass of water from the pitcher, and then quickly returned to his side. “Here.” She shoved the drink into his hands.

  Touching him now, confusion that had plagued her for days now was replaced with excitement but also belonging. She’d felt this before. The day they’d met—when she’d danced with him—when he’d assisted her off the dock and onto that little boat.

  And then Arthur had come along and Luke had all but disappeared…

  Because Arthur had lied to him.

  Everything was different now. Luke was different. She was different.

  And Arthur was gone.

  She recognized this for what it was: a connection between two souls.

  The realization shouldn’t have made sense, and yet, it did.

  He lifted the drink, swallowed, and when he lowered it again, stared into the bottom of the glass. “I’m sorry I woke you.” He rubbed one hand down his face. “I didn’t take a moment to think I might have one here.”

  “You mentioned once that you don’t sleep well. Is it because of the nightmares?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the nightmares are from battles.”

  “Yes.”

  It was obvious by his terse answers that this wasn’t something he wished to discuss.

  “Is Arthur ever in your dreams?”

  He dropped his lashes. The shadows from the moonlight made them appear even longer and thicker than usual. He exhaled a shaky breath. “Sometimes. Yes. More lately.” He was talking to her, but Luke didn’t sound at all like himself. Naomi lifted her bare feet off the floor and scooted across the bed so that she was sitting beside him.

  And then she simply waited.

  “It wasn’t as bad in the beginning,” he offered into the silence.

  She took hold of his hand. How many times had he comforted her?

  His other arm swiped across his face. “I just want to sleep. One night without seeing them.” His words broke her heart.

  “Perhaps they’ll fade once you’ve sold your commission—if you can put it in the past.”

  “Yes. I can only hope. But I don’t know. Damn, I still need to speak with Blackheart. New orders will come through any time.” He turned his head and grimaced. Because he could likely guess her feelings regarding his return to combat. A soldier could never promise that he would return. He could only offer a promise to keep vigilant. She’d learned this the hard way.

  Naomi yawned, and Luke slid his arm around her. “You deserve so much better than this.”

  “Better than Arthur?” Because that would be the logical assumption as to his meaning. “Or better than to fall for another soldier? Better than to fall for you?” She’d not pretend. Life was too short to pretend she didn’t have feelings for him—to pretend that it wouldn’t break her heart all over again when he inevitably left. She turned and raised her other hand to his chest, snuggling closer to him.

  “All of it.” His voice caught.

  He stilled her hand with his and the rejection from earlier nearly had her climbing off his bed to return to her own. But he was squeezing her hand and moved it to cover his heart.

  “When Ester returns, I’ll depart for Sussex—I shall summon this courage I supposedly possess and have the conversations I’ve been putting off. And then I’ll ship out for one last mission.

  Naomi nodded, tamping down the panic at his words.

  “But after—Naomi—after I’ve met my obligations, I’ll come back for you.” Warm lips touched the back of her hand. “I’ll come back when you are truly free. You’ll have had time to come to terms with all of this, the baby, Arthur’s betrayal. And then we will have our chance.”

  We will have our chance. At love?

  He must feel at least something close to the same as she did. “I’ll miss you.”

  “But you will reconcile with your family—and you will meet Arthur’s mother and brother. I’ve known Lady Tempest longer than I knew my parents. She is not a bad person. She is going to want to see her grandchild. She is going to want to know her.”

  The realization that she was going to have to take up her life without him was a chilling one.

  His implication was that he’d be gone nearly a year. She’d observe a proper mourning period all the while praying for Luke’s safe return.

  “Are you making plans for us, Major Cockfield?” She would tease him tonight. She would pretend he meant it.

  “I am. If you’ll allow it.” Somehow, the two of them had slid down the headboard and were laying side by side, sharing a pillow but staring up into the darkness.

  She’d never had this sort of intimacy with Arthur. With Arthur, she’d often lain awake in bed feeling distant, anxiously wondering what he was thinking, what he was feeling. After asking a few times and having her questions dismissed, she’d ceased making the effort.

  She pushed thoughts of him out of her mind. If she was only to have a few days more with Luke, she would make the most of them. She was not fool enough to deny the possibility that he would change his mind while they were apart. People fell in and out of love all the time. Arthur had.

  As had she.

  “I won’t,” he growled. “I won’t change my mind if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “But you can’t promise something won’t happen to you.”

  “No. I can’t. The sooner I speak with my commander at the War Office, the better, but I don’t want to do that until I’ve met with my brother.”

  “Your brother’s opinion matters greatly to you.” As did her sister’s. The thought sent a pang of sadness through Naomi, knowing Theo would never barge into her room in the morning again to wake her, nor would her mother be present to encourage her when the baby was ready to be born.

  She even missed her father, for all his overbearing decisions. She was beginning to suspect he’d been right in his assessment of Arthur, after all.

  “My brother…” Luke paused as though to consider his words. “Not many understand him. Our parents were killed in a fire while Blackheart and I were away at school. Servants barely managed to save my sisters, who were four at the time, and Blackheart… he always believed he should have been there. There was no funeral, the bodies were never recovered, and so rather than allow me to return home with him, he insisted I finish my schooling while he dealt with the solicitors and the care of Lucinda and Lydia. While he dealt with everything.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Ten and three. Blackheart wasn’t much older, ten and seven, and yet he became an adult that spring, for all intents and purposes. I resented him for it at first. He immersed himself in running the dukedom while I fooled around a
t school, got into trouble simply because I resented him making decisions for me, decisions my father ought to have made. I didn’t realize his sacrifice until I graduated.” His voice trailed off in self-recrimination.

  “Did you like school?”

  “I didn’t give myself a chance to. Perhaps I might have if I’d been any good at it.”

  Naomi pondered the image of a young man coming of age, not allowed to mourn his parents in any real way, struggling to meet academic expectations of a domineering older brother.

  Luke could build almost anything with his hands. He understood military strategy, and he showed compassion and empathy for those who served under him.

  He was a doer. Not one who spent hours reading or studying or debating. If he saw a problem, he went right to work fixing it. If Naomi, or even Ester, was in need of anything, he’d set himself immediately to providing it.

  He raised one hand to pinch the space between his eyes.

  Luke’s brother wasn’t the only person who’d emerged from their parents’ deaths with a heightened sense of responsibility. Luke had become yoked by his brother’s expectations. Knowingly or unknowingly, Blackheart had burdened Luke to fulfill the scholastic endeavors he himself had been denied. When Luke hadn’t excelled there, he’d pursued other jobs at his brother’s suggestions. The church, the military.

  This would explain the anxiety that arose whenever the subject of talking to his brother about selling out came up.

  Apparently, the Duke of Blackheart hadn’t spent much time with his younger brother over the past decade. Had he done so, he would realize Luke was a man of hidden depths, but also a natural-born manager, gifted in the ability to rebuild and maintain. He’d casually offered several suggestions for the land itself, improvements that could make her property more profitable.

  “At some point,” she said gently, “we must shed the expectations of others.”

  He didn’t answer but she sensed his reluctance to be consoled. When beliefs, even mistaken ones, entrenched themselves into people’s souls, it was difficult to shed them.

  Talking with her wouldn’t automatically erase his worry. Nor was it going to help him fall back to sleep.

  Naomi burrowed into Luke’s bare chest, smoothing her hand over his skin, teasing the smattering of hair that circled his taut nipples.

  She didn’t want to abandon him yet to the darkness of his dreams. She wanted to provide the comfort he’d so often provided for her.

  “You do not sleep in a nightshirt?” She should return to her own chamber. Hadn’t she learned her lesson before? Apparently not, because lying beside him like this, she acknowledged willingly, to herself anyhow, that she was, indeed, something of a wanton. Her fingertips walked a teasing path from his sternum to just above his navel.

  And then she swirled gentle circle in the short curling hairs there.

  Luke groaned and turned on his side so that they were face to face. “I want everything with you.”

  Naomi held herself perfectly still, her senses heightened where he dragged his hand over her shoulder, and then down her side. He lingered in the valley of her waist, but then coasted his palm to lay flat on the swell of her hip.

  Not for the first time, she considered that he might be repulsed by her swollen belly.

  “You’re so beautiful, Naomi.” He gathered the fabric of her night rail into his fist, drawing the hem up her legs. “Everything.”

  When the warmth of his hand skimmed the bare skin of her thigh, sensual heat surged to her core where only a few hours before…

  She resisted the urge to raise her knee up onto his hip while he curved his hand around her back and then over her belly. “So precious.”

  Resisting her own desires grew more and more difficult.

  But he’d told her already that he wanted to wait.

  “I want you, sweet girl, so much.” She could hear his breaths now, laboring almost to match her own.

  “But you said—”

  “I’m an idiot.”

  “So…?”

  In answer, he lifted his hand and covered her breast. His touch was so much more satisfying than her own had been. Incomparable.

  He squeezed with just the right amount of pressure and then tweaked the tip. The combination of this man, the rugged soldier in him but also his dedication to honor and good manners, melted her heart like butter.

  Need dissolved into surrender.

  His eyes flared, reflecting the moonlight and in an impatient movement, he pushed the counterpane down and then used his feet to free himself from the covers. At the same time, she drew her night rail up and over her head.

  She meant to toss it aside but froze at the sight of him.

  “Luke.” Her gasp was partly from need and partly in awe.

  Watching him, appreciating the filtered light of the moon slanting across his form, she couldn’t move her gaze away from the perfection of this man. Shadows revealed contours she’d only imagined. A short but jagged scar ran down one side of his torso and a second one curved over his shoulder.

  This man. He was a soldier, a brother, a friend. She would have him for a lover. Could she have more?

  Tears stung the back of her eyes. Was it possible? Were they possible?

  When she finally met his eyes again, she recognized the same need. Even as his gaze settled on the bulge of her midsection.

  “Does it bother you?” She had to ask. She needed to know. She didn’t want him to make love to her out of pity.

  “God, no. Naomi. You’re incredible. Being with you like this is a miracle.” His throat moved as he swallowed hard. “I wish she was mine. I won’t lie. But she is a part of you.”

  And Arthur. Would he always be between them?

  He countered the question without her having to voice it. “We won’t always be defined by his choices. We will make our own.”

  And tonight would be theirs alone.

  They would not speak his name again.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.” He oh-so-gently drew her against him again and it was he who lifted her knee and settled it onto his hip.

  “Touch me,” she begged. She did not need to ask a second time.

  He fondled her softly at first, but then slid his fingers along her crease. “You’re so wet for me.” His palm floated up to just below her belly and then down again, around. “You like this.”

  “So much,” she moaned.

  “And this?” He entered her with one finger, stretching her wider as he added another.

  “Mmm...”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Luke had thought he could wait. It would have been the practical thing to do, the proper thing to do. But love wasn’t practical and the things he wanted to do with her sure as hell weren’t proper.

  Upon suffering yet another nightmare, and then waking to find her beside him, all the reasons he’d had for waiting suddenly seemed flimsy at best. Not taking this opportunity when they had it seemed idiotic—possibly tragic.

  Because he was going to have to return to his command to lead one more mission. Tomorrow wasn’t a given and that made today all the more precious.

  Tonight.

  Furthermore, the woman he loved was in bed with him, stroking his cock and slick with desire.

  So many curves. Some of her flesh soft and tender, and other places stretched taut. But all of it uniquely feminine. And she was eager for him to touch her—everywhere. He dipped his chin and claimed a rosy nipple with his mouth. It tightened against his tongue, giving him tiny ridges to graze his teeth over. She moaned.

  This was a dream. It had to be a dream.

  Soft hands sliding to the base of his length assured him it was real.

  If he wasn’t inside of her soon, he’d embarrass himself—embarrass both of them. And he needed to be gentle.

  So precious. This woman had become so damn precious to him. His sweet girl. A dream he’d thought he’d forgotten.

  Not moving his gaze from hers, he raised h
er leg higher, and together they guided him to her opening. So ready.

  For him.

  This wasn’t about anyone but the two of them. She was with him, completely, watching him steadily.

  Careful not to spend desire he’d held in check for weeks, he eased himself inside of her, only exhaling when she sighed, her lashes dropping.

  She was tight. So damn tight.

  Velvety warmth embraced him.

  “Tell me if it’s too much.” He spoke through gritted teeth, sliding deeper. Her flesh welcomed him. Her hands clutched at his backside. It wasn’t too much. She wanted more.

  Luke thrust forward, almost to the hilt, and she gasped his name, throwing her head back, parting her lips. An unfamiliar combination of lust and sentiment had him vowing he would have this forever.

  Have her.

  “Sweet girl,” he murmured.

  She moved with him; she ground herself against him. Whatever it took, he’d make her his. The need to fight for her had him thrusting harder. And she urged him with her words and her hands and her most intimate muscles.

  This was why the two of them existed. He felt her tensing. She was close. Luke reached between them and touched her where they joined. She jerked back and then forward and he clutched her tighter. So vulnerable, this woman. But also so strong.

  Soft whimpers and the pulsing squeeze of her climax sent his self-restraint bolting.

  White spots clouded his vision as he drove faster, harder, joining until the tingling in his spine exploded and he spilled his seed into this woman.

  It was a pinnacle, a revelation, and a satiated relief all at the same time. When he returned to earth, he opened his eyes and the sight of her watching him from beneath half-closed lids convinced him he was the luckiest man alive.

  He drew her closer and pressed his lips against her temple. “This is forever,” he whispered. He would accept nothing less.

  * * *