This Haunted Heart

Chapter 15

Rynn Mavis

T he next week brought lots of rain. I loved watching it storm from my big cozy window seat, a book in my hands and a warm blanket over my lap. Sometimes Lochlan joined me with tea and coffee and cakes.

We didn’t talk much, just watched from my window as the sky bathed the earth.

When the rains finally stopped, we returned to our walking ritual. Two days later, after we concluded our morning routine, I set off looking for where Lochlan was hiding my savings—or so I told myself. Eventually, I wound up in the attic and could no longer pretend that my cash was what interested me most.

I wasn’t certain I even wanted my savings anymore. Dreams of retirement and a new life had lost their glimmer the moment I learned who Finley truly was.

I had to know more about her , the woman Lochlan had loved and lost. When I tried to ask him questions during our walks, he laughed at me and quipped about my jealousy. Curiosity burned through me each time he evaded the inquiry. I needed something more. A picture. A name. Had she given him children? Had she been educated? Had they traveled? What had she been like? What had their life together been like?

Why’d she leave him before she died?

How had she died?

She’d gotten to live the life I hadn’t, and I was damn near obsessed with learning more about what I’d missed. It was self-torture. In this I was a masochist, chasing my own demise. I knew it, but it didn’t make it any easier to stop myself.

My wandering brought me down to the first floor, just past the foyer where the main stairs divided around the locked central room, the one I’d spotted the first time I’d been shown the house.

Lochlan joined me there. He leaned against the banister, observing my progress with amusement.

“Why is this door locked, too?” I tried unsuccessfully to peek through the keyhole in the large set of double doors. “Are there scary ghosts in there as well?”

A secret smile lit up his face. “No scary ones. Granted, there are ghosts everywhere.”

“Then can I go in?”

He shrugged his shoulders, pushing off the wall. “You can certainly try,” he said, lumbering down the hall toward the drawing room.

That sounded an awful lot like a challenge. A challenge I immediately accepted. I went at the lock with a kitchen knife and a hat pin, but the tumblers were too advanced and my efforts were in vain. I tried every trick in my arsenal, but I didn’t have the right tools.

I went on a hunt to find better equipment, but my search took me to a dark set of steps that led into a cellar or cold room of some kind, not far from the kitchen. I fetched a lantern so I could have a better look. The floors and walls were made of stone. The air cooled as I descended the stairs.

My heart leapt up into my throat when I reached the bottom.

Two cells sat side by side with rolling doors sealed shut by fat metal locks. The bars stretched from floor to ceiling. Cobwebs nestled in the corners. Time seemed to stop as I stood there, jaw slack, staring at that small prison. The rush of blood was loud in my ears.

Footsteps on the stairs pulled me out of my stupor.

“What are you doing down here?” Lochlan asked, hefting a large candle to light his way.

Hands shaking, I pointed at the prison. “What in the nine circles of hell is that?”

“Ah.” Lochlan rubbed at his stubble and had the decency to look sheepish. “When I bought this property, there was a smaller manor already on it. I built up from there. It had belonged to a warden, and this was where he kept prisoners waiting on a marshal to come and claim them.”

“Why is it still here?” I demanded, voice strained. His explanation did nothing to calm the prickle of fear growing in my chest or the unease churning in my belly. The smell of rust and mold thickened in my nose.

He met my imploring gaze with a sigh. “It was just an oversight at first. Then there was a time when I thought I wanted to see you behind bars,” he confessed .

“My God, Loch! But it’s much too dark down here!”

He lit the gas sconce over his shoulder with the candle, and the stone hall illuminated dully. The cells looked even shabbier in the ochre glow. This was a house that wanted to be lived in, but down here was different. Down here there was nothing but sullen quiet and the salty scent of iron that reminded me too much of tears.

“I would never leave you in the dark, Rynn,” he said, “but at one time my heart desired only revenge on the villain who’d wronged me, and I wanted to put you in a prison—a proper one.”

“How can you say that?” I glared at him. “How could you even think it?”

He stood stonily, letting candlewax drip over his fingers. “It’s not such a leap to make. The last twenty years have been a torment no circle in hell could ever match.”

“The last twenty years have been a torment for me, too,” I fired back. “I wasn’t dogged by spirits the way you are, but the ghost of you never let me rest. The ghost of the terrible thing I’d done haunts me still.”

He went quiet, his lips pressed into a thin line. “You earned those ghosts the same way I earned mine.”

“How many times did I beg you to run away with me?” The words trembled leaving my lips. “How many times did you insist that we stay, that we’d never make it on our own?”

“I feared what would happen to us. Clearly, I was wrong to be afraid. You behave as though you lived the life you always wanted, one of reckless freedom and—”

“Is that what you think?” My sneer was full of scorn. “That my life has been wonderful without you? Would you have me list out my woes instead? If I told you how cold and empty and frightening the years without you have been, would that assuage you even a little? What if I told you how lonely I’ve been, how lost? How often I’ve been uncertain I’d see tomorrow? How I’ve wished and prayed, begging and pleading with God or the Fates or whoever out there is listening that I could go back to that night and make you leave with me!”

“I’m not trying to start a battle with you over who has suffered more,” he said, his tone gentling. “I meant only to explain why my mind went to this prison. You stole from me. You set me up for this.” He pointed at his scars.

“You stole from me ,” I fired back. “You drugged me. Tricked me. Forced me here!”

Lochlan stiffened. His nostrils flared and his eyes darkened. “I did, didn’t I? Why don’t you give me back what you took first, since you know damn well that ring meant a great deal to me, and I’ll give you back what I stole, since it means so much to you.”

My fingers tightened around the lantern handle, metal digging into my skin. “I can’t do that.”

“Ah, I see,” he said coldly. “You hocked it as soon as you could.”

“I didn’t hock it,” I ground out. It was with great restraint that I resisted kicking him in the shins for thinking so poorly of me, no matter how I deserved it. “Asking me to marry you meant the world to me. That ring meant the world to me, too.”

“I still remember how you took from everyone after the slightest irritation,” he said, pressing on like he wasn’t hearing me at all. “But you never stole from me. I used to think it meant something.”

“It did!”

“But then you went and took the only possession I cared about. The only proof I had that I’d once had a father who loved me—who could stand the sight of me. My only belonging that was truly mine and not—”

“I was young and foolish!” I fired back. “It shouldn’t have happened, but I fail to see how holding on to your anger for twenty years fixes anything at all! I certainly don’t see how stuffing me in there, even just in your mind, would change anything! It wouldn’t get you your ring back! It won’t heal your scars or chase the ghosts away! It won’t return our lost years together!”

He shook candle wax off his fingers, then squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I wish you’d stop saying you were ‘young’ like it changes anything.”

“Well, it should change something!” I snapped, and my words echoed off the damp stones. “That’s not an excuse you can use now! You’re a grown man!”

“If you weren’t going to marry me, then you had no right to take it,” he growled.

“I know!”

“You could have turned me down!”

“I didn’t want to turn you down!” I roared. “I wanted to wear your ring on my finger every day for the rest of my life, but I knew it wasn’t mine.”

“Then why’d you steal it?” he shouted.

“Because I couldn’t stand the thought of any other woman having it!” I shouted back, gesturing so passionately I nearly sent the lantern’s glass chimney toppling. “And yes, I know how dreadful that makes me. I know I’m the serpent here, but I’m not alone in that, you fucking pirate! Neither of us are innocent.”

“What’d you do with it?” he rumbled .

Tired of this conversation, I attempted to shove past him. He pulled me to a halt, his large hand swallowing up my shoulder. It was flustering how big he was. I’d stood a chance when we were young but not now.

“Where is it, Rynn? I know it wasn’t in your safe. If it was truly something meaningful to you, then what’d you do with it?”

“I buried it.”

He scoffed, and the sound shot through me like an arrow. He could have slapped me, and that would have hurt less. “A likely story. Nearly impossible to prove, too.”

I shook his hand off. “I’m not listening to this. If you’re not even going to believe me anyway . . .”

“I need to know,” he said quietly. His sad eyes darkened by shadows pleaded with me. “What’d you do with the ring?”

I bit my lip to keep it from trembling. My throat burned, and it took a full minute for me to recover before I could answer him. “I wrapped it up in the beautiful letters you used to write me, and I buried it at the covered bridge in Light Lily. That’s why I can’t stand to go there. Being near it again, being back in that place where I behaved so wickedly . . . I just can’t . . .”

He stared at me for a long time, like a math equation had appeared on my forehead and he was trying to puzzle it out. “Why there?”

“That’s how far I got before I knew I would never be able to look at any of it again. Not without breaking my heart all over. It felt like an anvil in my pocket while I was running away. I had to get rid of all of it.”

“You had to get rid of the thing I prized the very most? The only piece of my blood family I had then?” His tawny eyes went glassy. “You could have sent it back to me. You have no idea how much pain you would have spared me over the years if you’d done me that small courtesy.”

“Leave it alone, Loch,” I begged, feeling like he’d kicked me in the stomach. “My heart was broken when you wouldn’t run away with me, when you chose to be a good son over protecting us. Then you went and stole everything from me too, including my freedom, before you bothered to tell me who you were!”

He exhaled sharply, and the candle flame guttered before righting again. “If I gave you back your freedom, what would you do with it?”

The loaded questioned weighed on me so heavily I felt like I was being flattened into the ground. “I don’t even know anymore.”

I wanted to make right all of the horrible things I’d done to him, but I was growing more and more worried that such a thing wasn’t possible. Whatever remained of him, I would always love him. But what if I couldn’t ever get him back? Not fully. What if I couldn’t save him from the pain I’d caused?

I had another question of my own, but I was frightened of the answer. More stubborn than scared, I dared to ask anyway. “Does any part of you still want to see me in that cell?”

“Yes,” he said, swift and sure and without a moment’s hesitation.

My heart dropped, my spirits with it. I lowered the lantern until the light shined across the stone floor, igniting the polish of his boots. “Say what you want about what I did, but by your own logic, you belong in that cell right next to me.”

“I’m already there, Rynn,” he said somberly, then he turned on his heels and trudged back up the stairs, candlelight flickering.

* * *

That night, I dreamt about iron cells and that horrid house in the mire with the steep gables and the lattices full of winding ivy. I dreamt about Lochlan.

I hadn’t known the proper way to keep wounds clean back then. Washing wasn’t done as thoroughly as it was later in my life. I was only twelve, and that foul baron had taken a switch to Lochlan’s back.

“ A good thrashing builds character .” That had been the baron’s reasoning. He opened up his son’s back, then sent him to work with the pigs.

“I don’t feel good, Rynn,” Lochlan told me days later, nearly delirious with fever.

I’d heard Cook whispering with the maid. If he didn’t pull through, he’d be dead by the week’s end.

I sang him to sleep so he wouldn’t fret while I was gone. I was terrified of the fading light outside, but I was even more afraid of losing Lochlan. I took a lantern that was nearly too big for me to carry and went in search of leeches. Thankfully, they were plentiful in the swamps. I put them on his wounds, let them get fat sucking the pus and poison out of his torn skin.

“ You’d better not die, Loch,” I whispered to the sleeping boy I loved more than life. “ You’d just better not. If that horrid baron killed you, I’m going to kill him back. I’ll poison his soup.”

Lochlan had stirred then as I’d hoped he would, and my young heart jolted. “Don’t kill my pa ,” he said drowsily.

“You just better not die then, hadn’t you? Don’t you leave me here all alone,” I said.

He promised he wouldn’t, and he kept that promise. Loch always kept his word. I wasn’t so good at that, though.

* * *

The next week crawled by. I had nightmares most nights, dreams fed by more than my dark past. The stress of wondering how things would end between Lochlan and I, the anxiety of trying to figure out what I wanted from life now that I had him back, kept me restless. But Lochlan always came to pull me out of the worst of them. Sometimes I woke up in the hallway with him beside me, guiding me back into my bedroom.

What should I do now? Did I even want to escape Nightingale House anymore? What I truly craved was a clear path toward fixing things, a solution that would repair what I’d broken, but what if that didn’t exist?

And if it didn’t exist, shouldn’t I try to leave here again?

I no longer cared about retiring. One glimpse at Lochlan’s horrible scars and I knew I didn’t deserve such tranquility.

“Does it ever get easier to live here?” I asked him. I’d woken up in his bed with no memory of how I’d gotten there.

It was disorienting, but his nearness steadied me. We lay facing each other, sharing the same pillow.

“It does,” he promised drowsily, eyes shut. “It’s never perfect, but it gets easier.”

I wanted to believe him, but I wasn’t convinced. Within those walls, it felt like I’d never be cheerful again. Not completely. I’d always think of my past. I’d always know what I’d done. Guilt was the monster riding around on my back, reminding me it was there with its sharp talons every moment I dared to distract myself .

Exhausted by a bad dream of that horrid house in the mire, I just didn’t go back to sleep. Lochlan tried to coax me into it, but I refused to listen. I needed a break from our history. I found something to read instead.

After dinner the following evening, I returned to my room in a sleep-deprived fog. The scent of roses and talcum powder hung in the air. The combination reminded me of the old maid who’d once served Lochlan’s mother. Her name was Gertrude. I’d thought of her often while I spent time in my bedroom. I saw her in the crisp way my clothing was folded, in the smell of sorrel salt on the linens, and in the neat manner in which my boxes of books had been stacked.

I wondered if it was Gertrude who haunted this space, who kept refilling the vase on the fireplace mantel with beautiful roses. She had loved flowers. Collecting bouquets from the gardens had been her favorite chore.

Seated at the vanity, I worked a wooden comb through my curls, and I felt a breeze at my back that couldn’t be a breeze. The windows were shut. Something touched me, like the thinnest veil brushing over my back.

“Gertrude?” I whispered. “Is that you?”

The vanity mirror tipped forward an inch, and I jumped in my seat. The room went cold, and the glass fogged up. That horrid thump like a heavy heartbeat followed, and I grit my teeth against the tightening sensation in my chest.

“Why do you stay here, Gertrude?” I asked somberly. All her life she’d served that horrible baron. Surely, she didn’t want to spend her eternity doing more of the same. “Wouldn’t you rather go on? Be with your own family? Have peace and rest?”

The thumping stopped. A shadowy figure appeared in the reflective glass. I turned to find the shade hovering near the corner of my bed. I squinted, trying to make sense of the darkness. The subtle lines in the shadows made a shape I couldn’t comprehend. They swirled like smoke.

“Gertrude?” I muttered.

The shadow charged at me. An icy weight, a force unlike any I’d ever felt before, gripped my wrist in a band as solid and heavy as an iron shackle.

“Stop!” I begged. I tried to pull away and couldn’t. My arms and legs went inert on the seat cushion. “Please stop!” I shouted as shadows bathed me, blocking out the precious light.

The room went cold enough to turn my breath into mist. My legs came back to me then, numb and tingling. I lurched to my feet, leaping away from the darkness. Cradling my injured wrist to my chest, I scrambled for the door.

In the hall, I stepped in a puddle that soaked through my stockings. Wet footprints led off in the direction of the lavatory. Another figure stood there shading the corridor.

I ran from the shadows, screaming. Tripping over my own feet, I caught myself on the railing at the stairs. The skin at my wrist was red and puffy where the spirit had grabbed me. A knocking sound echoed when I hit the bottom of the staircase, an incessant thump coming from that black mystery door full of locks.

My next scream caught in my throat. The thuds resounded, urgent fists striking the wood. I ran for the kitchen, sprinting as fast as my legs would carry me from the voices at my back and the heavy footsteps that pursued me.

I made it out onto the grass, when the shadows caught up to me. Strong arms encircled my waist and spun me about, back toward the house. I fought and kicked and cursed.

“Let me go! By God, you let me go!” I turned on the figure and struck out at it rapidly, fingers curled like claws.

“Rynn! Rynn it’s me!” the figure said.

It was a while before I realized my nails were digging into fabric and flesh, not an ethereal spirit.

Lost, I blinked up at Lochlan.

“I . . . the ghosts . . . Gertrude . . .” Words failed me. “They were everywhere!”

Dressed in a dark housecoat, Lochlan wrapped an arm around my shoulder and pressed me against his side. I accepted his comfort for a moment, then he tried to guide me back toward the house, and I dug my heels in.

“Absolutely not,” I groaned. “I’m not going back in there!”

“You can’t stay out here, hellcat. It’ll be full dark soon.”

“Oh yes I can!” Every instinct in my body was screaming at me to run. Get away! Flee and never stop running.

I kicked and carried on, but he dragged me inside anyway, the bastard.

Lochlan hefted me up the back stairs, then wrestled me into my room. I put up one hell of a fight, even managed to pull away once, but he won in the end. He picked me up off my feet and tossed me onto the bed. He used his strength to pin me to the mattress on my stomach. Angry, violent heat turned me molten. I bucked and cursed at him, but he sat on me anyway.

“I hate it when you do that,” I hissed, cheek pressed to the bed linens.

“Oh, I know you do,” he said drolly. “But you still have that same spitfire temper you had as a girl, and I don’t want to have the rest of my face scratched off. So I’ll take your wrath for the sake of my remaining skin that isn’t already scarred. ”

The reminder of his scars triggered my guilt, but even that monster felt dull and distant, too far away to reach me fully. My rage was like a heavy, prickly blanket that made me hot and irritable and dulled everything else.

“If you don’t want me to scratch you more, then get off !” I clawed at the bedding beneath me.

I continued to fight the cushions, trying to reach him until I exhausted myself. As the desire for violence leaked from my body, the pressure of his weight changed from something aggravating and daunting to something solid and settling. He put a hand on the back of my neck and squeezed, and the pressure was perfect.

He kneaded the tense muscles at my neck until they loosened. Then the guilt monster returned in full force. Its weight was an anvil, pressing me from all sides.

“I can’t stay here anymore,” I moaned. The molten heat inside of me cooled, and my chin trembled. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. We can’t. I want us to go!”

“Yes, you can, hellcat,” he said sadly, brushing fingers through my curls, moving the tresses out of my face. He rubbed my shoulders with his big hands, and something in my chest gave way a little. “Just give it a minute. You’ll feel better again soon.”

His gentle tone eased the fight from my body.

Lochlan climbed off me to gather supplies from my dresser. He used thick woolen stockings to secure my hands, and I was too spent to battle him further. Another set was used to tie my ankles to the bedpost.

“You’re safe now. Stay put,” he said, then he left me.

I listened for that haunting thump the ghosts made when they were near, but I felt nothing in the room with me. Just the monster on my back.

When he returned, I was hopeful that he’d let me go like he usually did. I wanted to stew in peace. Perched at the foot of the bed, he rolled out a leather pouch that contained a grooming kit, ignoring how I scowled at him. It didn’t look like he intended to untie me at all.

“Is this still necessary?” I demanded, holding up my bound hands.

Lochlan’s tawny eyes narrowed to dagger points. His face was so full of red marks, he looked like he’d lost a fight with an angry bobcat.

“Yes,” he drawled, “it’s necessary.”

He removed a pewter nail file from the kit. Taking my hand in his, he turned it over, pressing his thumb into my palm gently until I opened my hand to him. With care, he worked the course metal gently across my nails one at a time, rubbing the oval ends down to just below the pads of my fingers.

I grumbled at him as he worked, but he continued to ignore me. The mark Gertrude had left on my wrist was starting to fade, but the sting of it lingered.

Inspecting the strange injury, he ran his thumb over what remained of it. “This shouldn’t leave a burn. It’s already starting to disappear.”

“Gertrude attacked me,” I said. “I didn’t mean to upset her . . . She’d surprised me. I was just trying to make sense of what I was looking at.”

“They don’t like it when the living stare through them,” he reminded me, removing the lid on a jar of clear balm that smelled like herbs. He rubbed the mixture into the irritated skin of my wrist just under the knotted stocking. “I don’t think they like anything that reminds them they’re different now. But don’t fret. Grabbing you hurts them as much as it hurts you. It’s a rare angry spirit that would dare it.”

I remembered the strange marks on his body, the blotchy burns. “They hurt you sometimes,” I said solemnly.

“Not anymore. I know how to handle them now, and I know not to stare,” he said. “Now they’re an annoyance. Not a threat. Like house mice, most of the time.”

“I don’t like that they hurt you.” I ground my teeth. It was one thing if I scratched him, but no one else had better. “They’re lucky they’re dead.”

Lochlan chuckled. “You’d like to avenge me, eh?”

“I would,” I grumbled. “They’d best keep their hands to themselves from now on, if touching me hurts them, too. Let that be a warning to any ghost listening. If you grab Loch, I’ll touch you all over!”

A laugh rumbled out of his chest. I didn’t feel Gertrude’s presence in the room at all. Her talc scent was gone. The vase was empty of flowers.

“She took the roses,” I said.

Lochlan finished filing down my thumbnail, then he glanced over his shoulder at the fireplace. “What roses . . . ? Ah yes. I used to see them around the house sometimes as well.”

I jerked my hand out of his, repressing a shiver. “What do you mean sometimes ? Don’t say it like that.”

“How am I supposed to say it?” He took my hand back, prying open my fingers and resuming his work.

“Goodness’ sake. Flowers are either there or they’re not!”

“Well, in this house, they’re both,” he said ominously.

Gooseflesh broke out across my skin.

Lochlan left briefly to fetch a fingerbowl full of warm water. After he was satisfied that my nails were filed down to a harmless length, properly shaped, and picked clean, he washed my hands in the soapy water. Then he used an ivory tool from his kit to carefully push back my cuticles. With a block, he buffed my nails to a high shine and finished it all off by rubbing almond oil into my skin.

“I was just trying to help you, you know,” he said gently, eyes averted. “You were screaming.”

Guilt stirred in my belly. The monster on my back dug in its cruel talons a little deeper. “I realize that now . . . I’m sorry I scratched you all up. I didn’t know you were you. I thought you were a ghost.”

“And then when you did realize I was me, what was all that about?” he pried.

I used my shoulder to rub the bottom of my chin. My skin had gone itchy. “I panicked and felt like I needed to flee, but you wouldn’t let me. I’m done with that now though. You can untie me.”

He didn’t untie me.

Strands of walnut hair fell across his lashes while he gave each one of my fingers his undivided attention. If my wrists hadn’t been tied together, I would have pushed those glossy strands behind his ears so I could study him better.

I searched for more signs of the young man I once knew. His beard was gone, strong jaw cleanshaven. Muscles filled out his waistcoat. He had charming crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, and his skin was a ruddier gold down his nose and across his cheeks where the sun had touched him.

“You look so different now,” I said. “I still have to remind myself that Finley and Lochlan aren’t two completely different people.”

Lips pursed, he rubbed more almond oil into the calluses of my right palm, pressing with his thumbs in a way that made muscles low in my belly clench. “I suppose they are different people in a way.”

“I don’t want that to be true,” I said solemnly.

“Why not?” Studying my hands, a furrow deepened between his brows.

“It would break my heart if you weren’t my Lochlan anymore,” I said quietly. “I don’t want you to be so different that he’s all gone.”

“Hm.” He let my hands go, and they dropped into my lap, suddenly heavy.

If he was gone, that was my fault. I’d done this to him. Though it hadn’t been my intention, I’d put those scars on his body. I’d made him kill his pa. I’d brought on the ghosts that haunted his heart. I’d put the sadness in him.

But I couldn’t believe all was lost. Lochlan was in there still. I saw him sometimes. He was in his smile. I heard him in his laugh, felt him in his gentleness, found him when his gilded brown eyes went soft. He was hiding somewhere just behind all that melancholy and darkness. I’d give anything to reach deep enough inside him so I could pull him back out. Every dollar of my life’s savings. Every precious book. Every stitch of clothing. Every drop of blood in my veins, every gasp in my lungs. Every beat of my heart. I’d trade it all for him.

“I’m sorry,” I told him again, this time with great feeling. I meant my words from the bottom of my heart. It wasn’t just the scratches I was sorry for. He knew what I meant—I could see it in his eyes, the subtle shift from Finley the pirate back to Lochlan again. “I’ll never stop being sorry.”

Whatever remained of Lochlan, I’d find it and cherish it. A smile. A laugh. A look. Those were my tokens .

Eventually, he untied my hands and ankles. I opened the jar he had used to treat my injury and sniffed the herbs inside. He let me rub the balm into the worst of his scratch marks, smearing it across his sun-warmed skin with the pad of my thumb.

He stared into my eyes as I did so, like he was trying to read something in them.

“Goodnight, Rynn,” he said when I’d finished.

I screwed the lid back onto the jar and returned it to him. “Sweet dreams.”

He packed the supplies back into the kit, then tucked it under his arm. He made it as far as the door before I stopped him.

“Loch?” I didn’t want him to go. Not yet. I hated seeing the back of him.

He turned to look at me, the flecks of bronze in his striking eyes catching in the lantern light. “What is it?”

I swallowed hard. “Will you please stay with me tonight?”

“Stay . . . to sleep?” he asked cautiously. He was quick to comfort me when I had bad dreams, but he hadn’t tried to be with me, hadn’t tried to kiss me or touch me. Not since I learned who he really was.

“Not to sleep.”

His brow wrinkled and then softened again as the depth of my request settled over him. “Sweetheart,” he cooed, “that’s such a bad idea.”

“I know, I know,” I groaned at the ceiling, anticipating his reluctance. I’d wronged him deeply, and he didn’t trust me. But I wanted him to. “Will you please do it anyway? It’s only that I miss my Loch dreadfully. Don’t go.”

He stood there, shifting his weight, chewing on his cheek. Then his gaze crawled over me and his pupils expanded. “How am I supposed to say no to you? Ever? Have you seen you? Do you have any concept what you look like right now?”

My tremoring lips managed a small smile. “You’re not supposed to say no to me.”

He set down his kit and supplies on the dresser, then he padded over to my side of the bed. “I know how you like it when I treat you roughly, but your Loch would want to do things very differently.”

A knot of emotion tightened my throat. “I love that about him.”

“He isn’t capable of fucking you just for fun. He’d want to make love to you properly.”

My chin dipped. “I know,” I whispered. “That’s what I want, too.”

His hands came up to cup both sides of my face, capturing my gaze with his. “Do you mean that, Rynn?”

I covered his fingers with mine, hoping he felt my earnestness in the touch. “Of course I do.”

“No tricks?”

“No tricks,” I vowed.

He undressed down to his drawers. I was already in my underthings, so I waited, leaning my weight back against the pillows, enjoying the view. Then Lochlan tossed aside the heavy blankets and crawled under the sheet.

I laughed when he pulled the bedding up over his head. “What are you doing?”

In answer, he caught me around the ankles. I yelped in surprise when he dragged me under. With the linen tented above us, he covered my body with his. I felt his mirth reverberating through my chest .

“I want you all to myself,” he explained. “But is it too dark under here?”

I shook my head. “It’s perfect.”

Gaslight turned the white sheets an amber color, and his weight on top of me made me feel even braver than usual. I reached over his shoulder to stroke the linen, remembering how we’d hidden like this when we were young to muffle the sounds of our laughter.

Then he kissed me, and his kisses felt like renewal, like a hard rain after a long drought. His lips were hot and giving. His tongue teased mine. He rubbed his growing erection against the cradle of my thighs. I lifted my hips to meet his careful thrusts over the thin clothing that separated us. Soon we were both panting.

“Keep looking at me,” he rasped as he shucked his underclothes.

I felt captured by him; I couldn’t turn away from him even if I wanted to. Pushing up the hem of my chemise, he entered me slowly, stretching me inch by inch. Overcome by the intensity of his attention and that delicious feeling of fullness, my gaze slid shut.

“Rynn, show me your eyes,” he purred.

My lashes fluttered back open. A whimper slipped past my lips when he was fully seated. The intimacy of his gaze holding mine had muscles in my belly quivering. The pulse in my thighs jumped.

Slow and deep, he made love to me. He smelled like the almond lotion he’d rubbed tenderly into my skin. His hair was silk between my fingers. I wrapped my legs around his waist and enjoyed the rock of our bodies as his hips met mine.

“Can you come for me, sweetheart?” he asked .

I laced my arms around his neck and tugged him down so I could kiss him. His stubble tickled my chin.

“I don’t think I can tonight, but I don’t want to stop,” I said against his lips, then I peppered his jaw in small kisses. He tipped his head back, and I loved on his throat and the curve of his shoulder, holding him to me. I stroked my hands over his chest and down his arms. My fingers dug into the muscles of his back, brushing over his scars.

With one of his big hands, he cupped my side and helped me find a rhythm I liked best. I ground against him until my hips were bucking with a mind of their own. My release felt far away. I was too emotional, too close to tears for a climax, but I enjoyed every instant of having him inside me. He felt so good. So familiar and warm. He felt like exactly what I needed.

His pace grew more urgent. “Rynn,” he warned me.

“Spend on my stomach,” I told him.

Lochlan pulled out of me and found his release with a gasp and a passionate grimace. It was an image that I would hold in memory behind lock and key. Forever I’d cherish the closeness of that moment under the amber sheets, bodies entwined, his heart in his eyes, no sadness to be seen.

He used a corner of linen to wipe clean my belly and between my legs. With his thumb, he dried a tear on my cheek I hadn’t realized had slipped free. He offered to fill me with his fingers, but I was content. I’d gotten exactly what I wanted, and now I just needed to be close to him.

We climbed out from under the bedding to lounge amongst the pillows. Tucked against his side, we spent most of the night swapping silly stories and fond memories. I fell asleep with nothing in my heart but laughter.