Chapter 26
Dominic
Dominic stirred awake with a heavy exhale, blinking tiredly into the darkness shrouding his bedroom. He swallowed around the slight rawness in his throat, not nearly as bad as it had been the past few days, but he required water to soothe it.
His fever had settled sometime during the last forty-eight hours, but there was a lingering weariness in his limbs as he rolled over. He braced himself on one forearm and searched for the switch of the bedside lamp. It clicked on, and he squinted as its bright yellow light blinded him.
Once his eyes adjusted, rather than settling on the jug of water and glass, his gaze flicked to the navy-blue armchair beside his bed. And widened as lips parted in surprise.
Rayna sat sound asleep in the chair, her legs tucked under her on the seat, hands curled in her lap, and her head resting against its velvet, curved back.
In the light, her wavy, rosewood hair glowed with a deep red hue, individual strands shining different shades of red and brown. One set of long lashes cast a shadow against her illuminated skin, and her cheekbone faintly glimmered as if someone had painted her in gold.
But no blanket covered her. She wore nothing but an oversized T-shirt, bunched around the very top of her thighs.
“Sweetheart,” he rasped.
What was she doing sleeping like that?
He was sure she’d insulted him and stomped out of his room hours earlier when he’d commanded her to go rest in her own bed since he was feeling much better. So why on Neves was she back in the chair? It couldn’t have been comfortable, and he couldn’t allow that.
Drawing his hand back from the lamp, Dominic pushed himself further upright before throwing the thin blanket off his legs. He stood from the edge of the mattress and hovered over his beautiful Rayna, an acute, tender ache scratching at his heart.
Gosh, she was so…
Rayna had spent the last five days tending to him, all hours of the day, keeping him fed and offering him a constant supply of liquid and medicine.
As much as he’d loved the way she cared for him, being sick and forced to rely on her had become rather frustrating and embarrassing.
He was supposed to be the one looking after her, not the other way around.
His only comfort was that she hadn’t done it all alone.
Ash, as his POTeM doctor, had come to check on him twice, as had Benedict when he hadn’t been working at the hospital.
Winnie had brought over food a few evenings, and Declan had helped Rayna change Dominic’s bedsheets and clean the house.
Even Victor and George had popped over, both during the day and in the evening with dinner.
But Rayna had been there constantly throughout it all.
She’d wiped him when he’d been covered in sweat and lain with him when he’d been shivering.
And while River had taken care of him when she’d been at the museum the past two days, in the evenings she’d fussed over him, snapped at him, and laughed with him all the same—without resting herself.
By now, she ought to have been fatigued. But there she was, sleeping in a chair rather than in the comfort and space of her own bed.
His mouth crooked slightly, and he sighed. “You stubborn little witch.”
Dominic eyed her for a moment, trying to decide how to scoop her up without waking her, but her position made that a slim possibility. Nonetheless, he hooked his left arm around her back and swiftly lifted her, tucking his other arm under her knees.
She woke with a slight jolt, and he stopped moving, cradling her close to his bare chest in the hopes she’d lull back to sleep. But she shifted and tipped her chin, her eyes barely open.
“Dominic?”
“Hush,” he crooned. “Go back to sleep, sweetheart.”
With a tired sigh, she plonked her chin where his neck met his shoulder and relaxed into him. “Did you…did you need something?”
Bloody woods, sleepy Rayna was endearing; she had him grinning like a fool.
“Nothing at all.”
He turned them towards the bed, laid her down on the far edge of his pillow, and tucked her under the blanket.
She snuggled into the mattress, searching for a comfortable position, while he filled a glass of water.
He drank half, then climbed in beside her.
After switching the lamp off, he wrapped her in his arms, tucking her head under his chin.
She let out a soft moan, rubbing her cheek against his hairy chest, and a filthy kind of heat entwined with the adoration already filling his veins. It couldn’t be helped. He was merely a red-blooded man, and she was a delectable woman. She’d never not stir desire within him.
“Rayna.” Her name fell stifled and groaned from his lips.
“Hmm?” she hummed absently.
His shoulders shook with a chuckle. “Nothing.” He placed a kiss to the top of her head. “Rest, my sweet darling.”
“’Kay.”
He laughed again, squeezing her pliant body into his as he buried his face in her hair. Filling his lungs with her warm scent of vanilla and cherries, his entire being gave one hard, painful throb of longing.
Gosh, he’d dreamed of this. Nightly, and without fail. Holding her in his arms, softly stroking her hair, cheeks, arms, and back, falling asleep with her, tired and completely content.
Finally, finally, finally, she was curled up against him, soft and vulnerable, in the cage of his arms where she was safe. Where she belonged. And he…
Her. It has to be her. She’s the one. I want her. Only her. She’s mine.
That’s what the hammer of his heart was booming, even though common sense was trying to reason with him that it was impossible.
Because they were from two different worlds with over 240 years between them. When his four months were up, he would return to his time, and she would stay in hers, and they would never see each other again.
He couldn’t stay with her and abandon his family, nor his role as marquess.
Nor could he ask her to leave hers behind and come to the past with him, where the luxury of everything she’d grown up with didn’t exist. Let alone the fact her lack of a title would leave her and his family open to insult and disrespect.
So how could she possibly be his? He knew that, he did, but…
Dominic laid a series of slow, lingering kisses to her hair and sighed.
But…I love her.
How could he live without her when she’d rooted herself so deeply within him? She’d crawled under his skin and sauntered around like she owned him. Albeit unknowingly on her part, but she had. He was hers. More than he’d realised himself.
She’d planted a garden of seeds in the formation of her name within the chambers of his heart.
The very idea of pulling her out of his life, leaving hollow patches throughout him, as if she were nothing but a weed, was unbearable.
He couldn’t do it. Didn’t want to. Though at present, he had no answer as to how he could keep her.
Had he been another man, he might’ve been able to frown upon the notion of love the way the ton dictated he was supposed to. Love made a man weak, and a weak man wasn’t a man at all. Men didn’t need love. And men certainly weren’t meant to love their wives.
But Dominic had been raised by his father. And Khizar Fredrick Xander Thorne had found that notion daft, considering love and loyalty were promised in the vows of marriage, no matter how much or how little wealth a man possessed.
Dominic’s own mother had passed upon the birth of his brother, Art, but he’d watched his father love Mother Penny without a care for what the ton had to say.
He might have found it laughable during his youth that he himself would one day be as besotted as his father had been.
But the one thing Dominic searched for when marriage became a part of the equation was love.
He hadn’t found it within the endless number of ballrooms, parks, and theatres he’d been in. But he’d found it with Rayna.
How was he meant to let it go rather than do everything in his power to show her it was possible for them to be together?
There had to be a way. It couldn’t be hopeless, surely.
After all, love was born from the essence of hope, and Dominic held a lot of love for Rayna.
He would hold enough for them both until her heart caught up with his.
Because that was how much he loved her.