Chapter 22 The Spies #3
She bopped back and looked up at me. “Do you want to see more?”
“Absolutely.”
She became confused. “Should I leave it in your room, or Battie’s?”
“Either works,” Battle said.
She looked from him to me. “Do you really think someone will want to publish it?”
What I thought was, it would be so popular, she’d get a movie or streaming deal.
I didn’t share that.
“I really think someone will want to publish it, and a lot of someones will want to read it.”
“Okay. I’ll show you my other stuff. Would you help me with submissions?”
“I’m all yours.”
She hugged me again.
Then she hurried to the door.
“No stalking,” Battle warned.
She threw an exasperated look over her shoulder and left.
The minute the door closed, Battle dragged me into his lap.
I rounded his shoulders with my arms. “I think that went well.”
He just stared at me, hard, with lots of lovely things working in his starburst brown eyes, all of them making words unnecessary.
I framed his face in my hands and put mine closer to his. “And Chassie is going to be okay. It’s time you all let Chassie be Chassie.”
He grunted.
I grinned.
Then I kissed him.
In the middle of that, I found myself on my back with a handsome duke on top of me.
“Do you get many visitors out here?” he asked.
“Occasionally.”
“Do you have a sock to put on the door?”
Another grin from me. “Alas, no.”
“Are we done out here?”
“Absolutely, yes.”
He got up, pulled me up, and he, I, the cats and dog walked to the main house.
We saw no Prue, Chassie or Christian on our way.
We went right to his room.
And I was glad.
It felt like coming home.
* * *
After round one, and before a hoped-for round two, I lay pressed to Battle’s side in his bed.
He was on his back.
While he traced random patterns on my hip (and, of course, my ass), I was tracing the same through his perfect chest hair on his equally perfect chest.
My eyes caught on the tennis bracelet I hadn’t taken off since he’d put it on.
This man noticed the tiny prongs of white gold on the earrings my mother gave me.
This man was becoming everything to me.
So I wanted everything from him.
“At the risk of ruining the atmosphere…” I trailed off.
He clasped my ass and gave it a squeeze. “I’m naked with you in bed after having you,” he announced unnecessarily. “Nothing could ruin the atmosphere.”
Oh yeah.
This was a man who would notice those tiny prongs.
This man was everything.
I pushed up at the same time I partially covered him so I could look into his eyes.
No surprise, his hand stayed on my ass while I did this.
“I’m taking us into the getting-to-know-you-better department,” I shared.
He smiled wolfishly. “I thought we’d already accomplished some of that.”
I smiled back, but replied, “Non-sexually, honey.”
His smile turned to just being his lips curved up before he invited, “Hit me.”
“Your mum and dad.”
That was all I said, and I expected he’d at the very least frown, but he just sighed.
However, since I started it…
“The girls told me he was very traditional,” I said. “And Tempie said he was an ass. She also said he had other women.”
His brows knit, and with them, the mood finally shifted to what I’d expected it to be.
“Do you worry it might be like father, like son?” he asked.
“Hell no.”
That response came automatically because one thing I knew, Battle Talyn would never cheat.
You could never predict life. Unless you had the talents of Ravenna, you also could never tell the future.
And shit could always go south.
But deep in my heart, even if, for some crazy reason, things went that way for us, it would never be about that.
For him or for me.
The mood shifted again at my answer, his arm slid up so he could wrap it around my waist to hold me close, and he purred, “I’m gratified by your swift response, darling.”
I smiled at him.
He studied my smile then lifted his gaze to mine.
“He had other women, yes, as the whole world sadly knows,” he confirmed. “Understandably, we never spoke of it, so my conclusion as to why he did it might be incorrect. However, I think he was trying to make her jealous. Mum, that is. Or, perhaps, make her feel something. Anything.”
Something.
Anything.
“Was she that distant?” I inquired gently.
“I was fourteen when she left. After she did, I would try to recall any kind of mother-son or family moment I’d shared with her, or I’d witnessed her share with my sisters. I couldn’t recall any.”
I could not process that.
I could only process how destroyed I was for him that he experienced it.
And one could safely say, I had trouble doing it.
“Oh, baby,” I whispered, those two words being all I could get out.
“And yes, Dad was very traditional. I didn’t understand it.
Our grandparents weren’t. I don’t know if he was attempting to make us live some storybook life to remind her he was duke, she was duchess, she’d birthed a marquess and three ladies, and to snap into the program of what he’d offered her when he’d offered for her hand.
I don’t know if he was just strange. He had a variety of old-fashioned ideas, hence Prue toughing it out with her bullies. ”
Hmm.
“I know I felt something when he was gone, and not just annoyance that I had to deal with the press frenzy of how he went,” he continued.
“Just…something?” I prodded.
He rolled into me and kept rolling until he was on me, resting some weight in a forearm under my shoulder blade so he could stroke my jaw with his thumb.
“For your book?” he asked.
I didn’t understand the change in topic, so I repeated in my own query, “For my book?”
“We’ll call it a kind of research,” he stated, then explained, “My telling you that isn’t a thing in aristocratic families.
That distance. The unemotionality. That boys are hoped for to continue the line and not much else, and girls are used to form or strengthen alliances, and nothing else.
Perhaps that used to be the way, but it isn’t anymore. ”
I nodded.
Battle kept talking.
“Rally’s an example. He has a big family, they’re very close and loving. I have many friends in the peerage, and all of them are the same. Perhaps not always as close, or some siblings don’t get along, some parents divorce. But familial love is there.”
“And it wasn’t there from your parents?”
He shook his head, but said, “Mum, no. Dad, I think he was so invested in getting her not only to love him, but to see him as the man who loved her and not the title she wanted, that for the most part, he forgot us.” His tone changed to one where it sounded like he was talking to himself.
“Though, I could be making that up to give him excuses.”
“I hate that for you. For all of you,” I stated vehemently.
He came back to me and ran his knuckles along my jaw. “I’m not tremendously thrilled by it either.”
“And this is a sucky part,” I declared. “Not the sucky part. You four not having even decent, much less loving, supportive parents is the sucky part. But a sucky part is that it might be the reason why you’re all the awesome that’s you.”
His lips quirked. “All the awesome that’s me?”
I wasn’t finding it amusing.
“All you are to your sisters. Thoughtful. Observant. Clicked in. Not many dudes are as clicked in as you, Battle.”
He smoothed his free hand down my side. “I’m delighted you think I’m clicked in, darling. But shall we return to the ‘might be’ in your comment?”
“Pardon?”
“You said it ‘might be’ the reason why I’m as completely and utterly awesome as I am.”
I squinted at him. “I don’t recall using the words ‘completely and utterly.’”
“It was subtext.”
That made me roll my eyes.
“I know you’re being serious, sweetheart,” he said, and now his tone was serious too. “And I cannot express how much your compliments mean to me.”
“Well then, I’ll share that the reason I used the words ‘might be’ is that I think you’re so much who you are, you’d be this man anyway. I just think it sucks you were forced to be. Does that make sense?”
“Absolutely.”
“Does it suck for you?”
“Being placed in the position, well before I was fourteen, to look after my sisters in all ways, including emotionally?”
I nodded.
“Not in the slightest,” he answered.
Ugh.
Every day it was becoming clearer and clearer.
He was perfect in every way.
“Oh, all right,” I grumbled. “So the words ‘completely and utterly’ were subtext.”
He burst out laughing.
When it was down to chuckles, he brushed his lips against mine before he said, “It’s my life.
If I could change things, I would change Prue being bullied.
I’d obviously stop Chassie from being assaulted.
I would wish for all three of them to have a mum who was around to give them the things I couldn’t, which would mean Tempie wasn’t forced to become that person for Prue and Chassie after she was forced to find her own way.
But other than that, I have no complaints. ”
I was about to kiss him to share how his statement made me feel (which was ever-increasing levels of fond) when that movement of a bed made only by a cat jumping on it happened.
I looked to the side and gasped.
There was a chubby, thick-short-haired gray cat there with tawny eyes.
“Oh my God,” I whispered excitedly. “Is that Greystoke?”
“One in the same,” Battle replied, reaching a long arm to the cat and further extending a long finger.
Greystoke sniffed it then butted his head against it.
Battle started scratching behind his ears.
“I haven’t met him yet,” I said. “He’s so chonky.”
“He’s around Prue the most, and she has copious cat treats stashed throughout The Downs, so he’s usually the beneficiary of those.”
“Hence why he sticks close to Prue,” I deduced.
“Hence, that,” he replied, his voice shaking with humor.
Greystoke took a chance and came closer to cuddle with us, doing this at my hip.
Which meant I got to start stroking.
Oo, his thick fur was so soft!
“Fuck,” Battle grunted.
“What?” I asked.
“Grey is here, and that means we can’t move until he’s gone. Am I right?”
I bit my lip.
He read that as what it was.
An affirmative to his question.
As such, he griped, “To use your terminology, a sucky part of all that’s completely and utterly wonderful about you, is that you refuse to disturb a content animal.”
“They never stay long.”
“Mm.”
“And I just met him,” I added.
He said nothing.
He also didn’t move, because I was stroking Greystoke, and I didn’t want him to.
White gold.
Clicked in.
My guy.
“You know, I had the weirdest feeling before I turned into the drive at The Downs,” I informed him.
“It was kind of like before you go into a haunted house. You’re scared, but you’re excited.
I don’t know what that shit was about.” Haunted ballroom notwithstanding, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.
“I just know my vibe-o-meter was malfunctioning, because turning into your drive was the best thing I’ve ever done in my whole life. ”
“Vibe-o-meter?”
“You get what I’m saying.”
“I do, and a very not sucky part of what makes you so attractive is that you’re an unabashed loon.”
I grinned proudly. “I am that.”
He looked at my grin for half a beat before he kissed me.
At this point, Greystoke had no choice but to vamoose, because thus commenced round two.
At least I got to meet the wee fur baby and get a little cuddle in.
But I would only think about that after Battle redemonstrated one of the very not sucky parts about him.
His unending creativity in finding ways to give me orgasms.
And to make me feel beautiful, precious and adored while he did it.