Chapter Sixteen #5
He could see that she was staring at his mouth and chin, an astonished expression on her face, so he kissed her hand again just to see how she would react.
He heard her sigh raggedly.
“Have you never experienced such a thing, Annie?” he asked softly.
Annaleigh didn’t even notice that he called her by her nickname. “Not really,” she murmured. “Not from someone that I wanted… that had my attention.”
He grinned. “Then I do have your attention?”
“Ye have all of it.”
Somehow, he’d pulled her closer and then he was holding both hands. He held them up to his face, her palms on his cheeks, gazing at her as he’d never looked at a woman in his life.
“Tell me again,” he whispered.
Annaleigh could hardly breathe. The man’s hot, scratchy flesh was against her palms and she found herself fingering his skin. That graduated to stroking his cheeks, acquainting herself with the feel of him.
For Annaleigh and War, the journey had begun.
War felt her caresses and he lost all of his self-control.
It was ash, blowing upon the wind, completely vanished.
He put his enormous arms around her and pulled her against him, his lips slanting over hers carefully so he wouldn’t startle or frighten her.
With utter tenderness, his lips claimed her own.
For an instant, Annaleigh was surprised, but that quickly vanished as she collapsed against him.
There was nothing in the world but War at that moment, the all-consuming embrace that went beyond delight.
Beyond comfort. It was a world where she could lose herself and did quite happily as his lips suckled hers with incredible gentleness.
He kissed her mouth, her chin, scratching her face with his stubble.
Giddy, warm sensations filled her body, flowing through her veins, and her breath began to come faster and faster.
It was a kiss beyond imagination.
Annaleigh wasn’t entirely sure how long they’d been in a heated embrace when they began to hear voices down the stairwell.
War’s head shot up, his lips red and chaffed, and he quickly released Annaleigh and put his finger to his lips in a silencing gesture, indicating for her to go back into her chamber.
He pointed to the bed and she quickly made her way to it as he closed the door.
Breathlessly, she climbed into bed and pulled the coverlet up just as she heard voices near the top of the stairwell, louder this time.
It was Jordan as far as she could tell.
Her door swung open.
“Annie?” Jordan said as she scurried into the chamber. “Are ye ill, lass?”
Annaleigh was laying on her side, turned away from the door, and rolled over to face her cousin.
She yawned.
“Not ill,” she said. “But I was up most of the night with the wounded and when I became angry with Talus, I thought… I came back tae rest. Is something amiss?”
Jordan nodded, pulling her into a sitting position. “Talus is dying, lass,” she said quietly. “Get yer shoes on and come with me. He’s asking for ye.”
“He is worse?”
Jordan simply nodded again without elaborating, so Annaleigh pulled her shoes on and quickly followed the woman from the chamber.
But as she did so, she kept looking around to see where War was.
There were other chambers on this level, so he must have slipped into one of them, waiting for Jordan to leave the floor.
She was, with Annaleigh right behind her.
They made their way to the first-floor unmarried men’s wing where Talus had slipped into unconsciousness.
There were several people still in the chamber but Annaleigh didn’t look at any of them as she resumed her seat next to Talus’ bed, taking his hand again and apologizing for running away.
She made up some excuse, that she was too overwhelmed with his generosity, hoping he could hear her.
But he never awoke.
The hours slipped away.
Sometime near sunset, Talus du Reims’ fever-wracked body gave up the fight.
As Annaleigh held his hand and William and Kieran stood on the other side of the bed, he simply stopped breathing.
Whatever poison The Bones had put on their blades, one that seemed to be affecting other wounded men but not to the extent it had affected Talus, had done its job.
A knight with a bright future was now walking the fields of heaven, more than likely wondering how he got there so quickly.
Annaleigh sat with Talus’ cooling corpse into the evening as William and Kieran made arrangements for a casket.
They had them in the vault, in storage, plain pine boxes to transport bodies in, but Jordan had insisted on something nicer for the son of the Earl of East Anglia, so William had sent men to Coldstream where there was a barber surgeon who was also a woodworker and, later in the evening, the men returned bearing a nice pine casket for Talus.
The last Annaleigh saw, Talus was being lifted into the box by William, Kieran, and Anthony.
For her friend, the young knight who had tried so hard to woo her, she’d genuinely wept.