Chapter 8 #2
The sensual heat in her voice made thoughts of the knights and this day’s confrontation slide away. He walked over to her and stroked her cheek with the pad of his thumb.
“I am going to miss you, Cristina Moffat.” He’d expected a soft smile, a look of tenderness, not for her to try to pull away. He held her against him, suspecting the reason. “You think of your husband.”
She stiffened.
“Your husband is dead, that I cannot change. And I regret that my words made you think of him. It was not my intent.”
“I know.” Her body sagged. “I am tired.”
And troubled, still haunted by memories of her husband. He could tell by the sadness within her eyes when she believed he wasn’t watching. How would it feel for a woman to think of him so, for a woman to long for him, and when the time came, to mourn his passing?
“Cristina, look at me.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she turned.
He stroked his thumb along her moonlit cheek. “Two years have passed since your husband’s death. You cannot live in the past forever. It will steal the time before you and strip away the happiness yet to be found.”
A lesson he’d learned only after his brothers believed him dead. A death he’d allowed them to believe was real. A fitting penance for his attempt to kill his brother’s wife, Nichola, when her only crime was that of being English. If only he could take back that day.
For too long he’d allowed his hatred for the English to taint his life. Through the months as he’d recovered, he’d had time to think, time to regret.
A sad sigh spilled from her mouth. “Do you believe anyone truly finds happiness?”
He thought of his parents, the remembered laughter of his youth. “Aye, but you do not?”
“ No.”
The simple conviction within Cristina’s reply disturbed him more than if it’d held vehemence.
Questions of how much her husband had truly loved her resurfaced.
The more Patrik learned, the more he was convinced her marriage had been crafted for protection, her tenderness toward Gyles that of appreciation, not love. The thought pleased him.
“Tell me about how you met your husband?”
At Patrik’s question, Emma tensed. “I do not want to speak of him.” An understatement since there was no him.
“It has been two years since he died.”
Heart pounding, she struggled for words. What should she say? Already she’d made up more than she could keep straight.
He sat on the stone, drew her to sit beside him, and then guided her head against his chest. “I wish to know.”
“If it was only so simple.”
She recalled a beggar on the streets nearby the orphanage in her youth, a man who had one day disappeared. Not disappeared. Murdered. The fact that his body had never been discovered meant one of two things. The killer had been crafty, or most likely, no one cared enough to try to find him.
But she would give the beggar a role in her life, or, at least speak of him as if of someone who had truly mattered. “I met him on the street one day.”
“When you lived in the orphanage?”
“No. I had run away. He offered me food and a smile. I trusted neither.”
Patrik remained silent.
Spinning the options in her mind, she chose the dream she’d never dared to speak, a notion that would never be. “He remained in town several days. With each one, he’d come to where I worked and talk to me. Nothing more. Just talk.”
“About?”
“The day. The scents coming from the market. Where the ships in the port would travel.” A wisp of her dreams crept into her voice, the longing for them to somehow come true.
“You wished to travel?”
A cold laugh fell from her lips. “At the time, my vision was more to escape.”
“Because of your life in the orphanage.”
The bubble of her imagination burst. “Yes.”
“So you married him?”
Emma hesitated. “What?”
“When the stranger asked you to be his wife, you agreed?”
“Yes,” she lied.
“But you never loved him?”
That answer was simple as a husband didn’t exist. “No.”
He exhaled. “I am glad.”
Confused, she turned. Within the moonlight she found him watching her. “Why?”
“Love is something one should not easily give.”
Mouth dry, she stared at him, too aware, wanting him too much. “Have you ever loved a woman?” Why had she asked? This night, once he fell asleep, she would steal the writ, then leave, break the trust she cherished. Still, she found his answer important.
Patrik stared at the sky, but she caught the shadows of sadness on his face. His gaze met hers. “Never has a lass made me feel a heart’s tender yearnings.” He lifted her chin with his thumb, gave her a gentle smile. “But then, never have I met a woman like you.”
His breath, whisper soft, teased her, his gentle hold as if a caress. Emma shuddered.
“You are cold?”
“ No.”
Satisfaction shimmered in his gaze. “Tell me what you feel.”
“You know.”
“Do I?” He skimmed his mouth along the curve of her jaw. “Tell me.”
Her pulse raced. “I want you to kiss me.”
Slowly he lifted his head, his gaze hot and his mouth but a breath away.
God in heaven, he’d not kissed her lips, but Emma’s body burned as if tossed into a fiery pit. As he stared at her, the desire in his eyes fed her own.
“Now,” he whispered, “I will taste you.” He covered her mouth, his kiss, hot, hard, erasing all coherent thought. In a deft move, he lay back and pulled her on top of him, drawing her body flush against his.
Heat pulsed through her as he pressed intimately against her. “Patrik, ’tis indecent!”
“Aye,” he said, laughter in his eyes. “Because we are both dressed. A fact I will be taking care of posthaste.”
“What if I do not wish you to?” she asked, the sheer wantonness of his intent seducing her further.
His expression grew serious. “Then I would be leaving you untouched.”
“And I would ache terribly from the wanting of it,” she confessed.
“Ah, lass.” On a groan, he stroked his thumb over the curve of her face, then drew her against him for a soft kiss, a slow, easy melt, a soul-tearing kiss that had her wishing for the impossible, one that left her aching for this one last joining, for memories to take, to cherish in the barren years ahead.
“Make love to me, Patrik,” she murmured against his mouth. “I need you desperately.”
Dark eyes searched hers, raw with desire. “Do you now?” he teased, the hardness of his body evidence he played no game.
“Yes.”
Challenge sparked in his eyes. “What would you be wanting me to do?”
He was giving her control. She shuddered at the gift. “Touch me.”
“Where?”
Memories of where his hands and mouth had made love to her filled her mind, the easy kisses, the frantic need. “Everywhere.”
He groaned, but she caught the edge of a smile on his mouth. “Sounds like this might take the entire night.”
A smile touched her mouth. “It very well could.”