CHAPTER 2
EDWARD
Damn if the word didn’t grate on him.
“I don’t think of you at all, Edward.”
He hadn’t heard his name on her lips in recent memory.
It had always been ‘proper boy’, ‘little gentleman’, ‘jackass’.
Whichever name had struck her fancy in the moment.
Edward had received the endearments the way a dog would retrieve a bone.
Such was her power over him. During the years he’d been buried in his studies, he’d convinced himself it had been a childhood fancy.
The feelings he felt whenever she’d been near were not real.
They were something he’d outgrow, like pranks, and his aversion to broccoli.
But when he’d first seen her being hurt by the large brute, the only feeling he could summon was burning rage.
Even now, knowing her skin was bruising at the neck, the way she had trembled into his side, so unlike the spitfire girl that haunted him at the most inconvenient times—
It took every amount of morality and integrity drilled into him by his parents not to pummel the man into the ground.
Then she’d regained hold of herself and she’d been…
glorious! Her dark red hair looked like fire in the setting sunlight, like a phoenix rising, come to burn him.
He’d happily perish for one touch. Her dark brown eyes had looked into his distastefully, but Edward was no longer a boy and he also recognized desire there, though he knew she’d deny that to her last breath.
Which would arrive far quicker than she realized if he didn’t come up with a solution to her problem.
She was far too stubborn to accept money from him should he offer, but he’d take her displeasure before he saw her life stolen, or worse.
Tossing and turning about in his bed, Edward finally relented and realized he’d find no sleep that night.
Instead, he peered out of his bedroom window, a direct view to the edges of the dark wood.
Some called it the demon woods, some didn’t dare call it anything at all, lest it haunt their dreams. It was a place where no flowers grew, where no magical plants thrived, where all manner of beasts lived and the plants that did grow were deadly.
Many had tried to tame the wood, to conquer it, and every person that did was never seen again.
But that wasn’t the only view from Edward’s window; he also found himself peering into the window of Leanna’s father’s study, which now seemed to be a library of sorts, one lit by many candles as a waif-like figure paced back and forth.
Edward couldn’t resist. He leaned down, opening the window until he was out onto the small gated-in ledge, picked up one of his slippers, and tossed it as hard as he could at the glass. With a crooked grin on his face, feeling more amusement than he had in the last decade, the window slammed open.
And Edward stopped smiling.
With a furious expression, the balcony doors to the library swung open and there stood Leanna.
No longer in her brown dress but a silky blue nightgown that pooled like a waterfall over her curves, her long hair falling well past her hips, her breasts hugging the top, enough to entice a saint into falling.
He had to force his mouth not to open, thankful she couldn’t know how his heart pounded at the sight of her.
“Hello Leanna,” Edward said, mustering a jovial carelessness, even though he felt a fire building beneath his skin, wanting to rake his hands through her locks, dragging her body closer until she was pressed to him, feeling every glorious curve hugging the fabric.
“Hello Edward.” Again, his name. Did she know the effect it had on him? The way it tantalized on her full lips, the way she whispered it in the space between them, the way a lover would in his ear as he stripped her and kissed down her body until she screamed.
The woman’s life had been threatened a mere few hours beforehand; he needed to regain some semblance of moral character before it all burned up in the heat of her eyes on him.
“I’ve been thinking of your predicament,” he said, gently this time, knowing this was not a laughing matter. “How we can pay back the creditor.”
“How I can pay back the creditor, you mean?” Leanna said, folding her arms under her breasts, pushing them up in a way that forced him to grip the window-ledge. “This isn’t your problem proper boy, no need to play savior.”
“Leanna, let us drop our childish squabbles for a mere moment so that we can discuss this like adults,” he said, trying boldly for honesty.
“We drove each other to madness as children but you must know I and my family have always had a fondness for you. You challenged me as no one else ever has, you made me feel alive and interesting. We were friends of a sort, weren’t we? ”
If he imagined his friends naked. And underneath him.
Leanna’s brow furrowed in an endearing, familiar way. “I suppose in a sense, we were. But then you left.”
He had. His mother and father had shared with him a bitter secret, one he couldn’t live with.
The boy he was then couldn’t imagine facing Leanna again after such a secret came to light.
He’d been sent off to a school his father had been pushing him toward and never looked back. Except in the moments he missed her.
Which was all of them.
“And you missed me terribly?” he said, leaning against the railing with a playful grin, hoping to provoke her temper; she’d always had such a lovely display of passion.
“I did.”
He almost fell off the railing.
“You… did?” he asked, astonished, resisting the urge to check his hearing.
“You were the only person in my life who looked at me as an equal rather than a burden, and you didn’t even say goodbye.
” There was none of her beautiful righteous anger.
Sincerity and hurt marred her beautiful face.
“But it was just as well. You reminded me not to trust anyone but myself. I thank you for that, if nothing else.”
“Leanna—”
“Do not trouble yourself over my situation. It’s my burden to bear and I will sort it out as I do everything. By myself. Goodnight, Edward.”
On that final parting blow, the terrace doors to her library shut tightly behind her with a crack in the air.
Along with Edward’s heart.