Chapter Sixteen
Tess woke, stretched, and let out a satisfied sound. Then she opened her eyes and looked over at Dominic as he lay on his
side, tangled in her sheets, with an arm resting atop her middle.
He slept soundly, peacefully, and looked achingly handsome. His dark hair fell across his forehead and cheek, and the slightest
smile softened the edges of his mouth.
That mouth. Mercy.
They’d spent a dream-like afternoon and evening, and her room had become a haven, where nothing mattered but the way it felt
when they were together.
Being with him had been far more than Tess expected, unlike anything she’d experienced before. She thought she’d understood
how things would be, but what they’d done was as far from what she knew as night was from day.
He’d touched her with passion, yes, but tenderness too. He’d made it feel good to be bold. To let go.
But she’d been wrong. Scratching the itch didn’t resolve anything. She wanted him more now, and not just for a few weeks of
lovemaking. The longer she lay looking at him, the further her mind spun with possibilities. Images of a future with him.
Then the contentment that seemed to saturate every part of her began to ebb.
She laid a hand on her chest where her heart ached sharply.
Though she hadn’t moved an inch, her heart raced as if she’d run across a field, as if a cinch was being pulled tight around her body, stealing her air, ratcheting her panic.
Tess knew the cause. These feelings had assailed her before. A memory would come, or something would remind her of three years
ago, and her body responded as if she was back there. The heartbreak was suddenly fresh.
In the past, deep breaths served to ease the ache in her chest and her racing pulse. She tried that, Dom’s arm lifting slightly
as she filled her lungs with air.
Tears burned, threatening to fall.
She hated that the past still held her in its grip. Would she never be able to know pleasure without paying some price?
Closing her eyes, she breathed deeply again, slowly drawing in a breath and letting it go. Then she turned her head to look
at Dominic again.
The man had shown her nothing but care and brought her to a peak of pleasure she’d never known, and yet her heart felt as
if she was lying beside the man who’d betrayed her.
It wasn’t fair.
She didn’t want to wake him, so she slid out of bed, carefully inching from beneath his hold. Scooping up her clothes, she
dressed quickly, collected her boots, and then headed out Foxdene’s side door that led to the field beyond the garden.
The land only rose and fell with the slightest of elevations, but working her muscles felt good. Rain had left the air feeling
fresh and cool, and she drew in deep lungfuls as she waded through the damp grass.
This is different.
She repeated the words to herself, to her anxious heart.
Dominic had never lied to her. Never promised her anything.
And she wasn’t wrong to hope. What was between them was more than mere attraction. She could read it in his eyes. And yet her heart felt trapped behind a bramble of thorns.
That protective barrier had served her well for years, but now she wanted to pull it down and didn’t know if she could.
When she reached the stones—remnants of an old field wall—where she and Tristan used to sit to watch a sunset or the sunrise,
she settled atop them and pressed a hand to her chest.
Her heart still raced, but less now, more from exertion than panic.
She hugged her knees and rested her chin atop them as she stared down from the small hill at the first golden fingers of dawn
stretching across the horizon.
Regret, which she’d feared, wasn’t any part of what she felt. Indeed, she couldn’t think of a single moment they’d shared
that didn’t bring a smile to her lips.
What weighed on her was the thought of what would come next.
Each time they shared a bit of their past or their bodies came together in a kiss, she tipped a little more. Her heart listing
in his direction as easily as her body seemed to whenever he was near.
If she let this go on—if she went back to the cottage and got into bed with him as everything in her wished to—she’d tip so
far that she’d fall completely.
And some part of her, the part that he’d sparked from that first moment they’d met, wanted to be brave, to race back to him
and allow whatever was between them to bloom.
Yet deep inside, far in the back of her mind, she couldn’t resist imagining how it would end. And how, having fallen so completely,
she’d break.
It had been hard enough to put the pieces of herself together three years ago. She didn’t relish the prospect again.
Logically, she knew there was one clean, simple solution. End this now. Yesterday and last night had been perfect. Why crave
more?
But she did. Heaven help her, she did.
As dawn lit up the sky, she stood to go back to him.
Tess felt no closer to knowing what the future held for the two of them, but she felt one thing deep in her bones. A firmer
certainty than the fear in the back of her mind.
If she ended it now, she’d always wonder. And in that moment, with a gorgeous man sleeping in her bed, such a fate seemed
worse than a broken heart.
Dom smiled as he came awake. Tess’s scent filled his senses and memories rolled through his mind. Then he opened his eyes
and frowned at the empty space beside him.
Sitting up, he noted that the clothes she’d shed yesterday were gone. He listened but could hear no other sounds in the cottage
beyond Tess’s room.
Letting out a sigh, he ran a hand through his hair and then got out of bed.
Did she have regrets? Would she shut him out now?
As he collected and donned his clothing, there wasn’t a single doubt in his mind. Last night had confirmed for him that he
wanted Tess Hawthorne, and not just as a temporary lover. He wanted all of her, a place in her life, however she’d allow it.
He wanted to find her and tell her that, yet even as the thought formed in his head, questions came that he couldn’t yet answer.
Marriage had never been among his plans for his life. At moments, he’d thought that perhaps one day he’d settle into married life, but he’d always envisioned it as something he’d do when he was old and gray and prepared to calcify.
In truth, as much as he wanted a future with Tess, he didn’t know the shape of what he could offer her. He didn’t even live
in his family’s home in London out of a desire to live lightly, without trappings that might keep him in one place too long.
Could he give her the kind of life she deserved?
As doubts swept in to drown all his certainty, a knock sounded on Tess’s bedroom door.
“Tess?” her brother called from the other side. “Are you at home? I saw the cart outside.”
Dom opened the door and watched Tristan’s face transform from shock to confusion to narrow-eyed anger.
“What the hell is happening here?” he demanded. “Where’s Tess?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” He threw a hand toward Dom’s chest. “You’re standing half dressed in my sister’s bedroom, and you don’t
know where she is?”
“She seems to have stepped out.”
Tristan’s frown deepened beneath a fall of blond hair a shade darker than Tess’s. “Did you two have a row? Have you done something
to her?”
Dom crossed his arms defensively as Tristan’s pitch rose. “We did not have a row. We are getting along . . . well.”
Tristan swept his gaze down Dom’s rumpled clothing, stalling at his half-buttoned shirt. “I don’t think I want to know the
details. I just want to know where Tess is.”
“Me too. I have no idea where she went.”
Something in Tristan’s expression seemed to soften at Dom’s tone.
“If she merely needed time to herself to think, I suspect I know where—”
“Where would she go?”
Her brother held up a hand. “If she wants to be on her own, it’s best to let her do it.” Tristan sniffed. “There’s a tip for
you that you’ll want to retain if this . . . between you is to go any further.”
“Thank you.”
“Though it seems to have gone quite far already.” Tess’s twin’s eyes narrowed again. “Of course, I’m not entirely surprised.”
“No, we did discuss the possibility.”
Tristan nodded thoughtfully. “If I were at all an honorable brother, this is the moment when I would ask you what your intentions
are toward my sister.”
“Is that what you’re asking me?” Dom lifted his brow.
“Yes,” Tristan said, squaring his own shoulders.
Dom’s mind stalled on the question, though it was a fair one and precisely the question he would have put to a man he found
in his own sister’s bedroom. Though he wasn’t certain he’d be nearly as restrained as Tristan Hawthorne was managing to be.
Indeed, the man had an odd energy about him today.
“We set rules before this all began,” Dom said, though he knew it wasn’t the answer her brother deserved.
“Rules.”
“Tess insisted upon them.”
Tristan nodded again. “Understandable. She was trying to protect herself, no doubt.”
“Yes, whatever happened before—”
“I told you. A rotter seduced her, promised her things, and then once he’d . . .” Tristan shot Dom a pointed look. “He told
her it had all been a ruse for that very purpose.”
“That’s vile.”
“Agreed.” Tristan took a step closer. “But the question remains as to your intentions.”
“I’ve never met a woman who I wanted a future with until I met Tess.”
“You love her?”
Dom gave Tess’s brother a firm nod, even as a sweat broke out on his body.
“Petrifying, isn’t it?”
Dom brushed a hand across his forehead. “Is it supposed to feel like this?”
“For rogues like us, I suspect it is,” Tristan opined. “You meet an extraordinary woman and suddenly wonder if you could ever
deserve her.”
Dom shifted uncomfortably, shocked at the man’s insight. When he looked up again, Tristan was watching him.
Tess’s brother immediately held his hands up, palms out. “I say that as a man who’s always considered love a snare.”
Dom frowned. “And the lady you went to King’s Lynn with?”