Chapter 12 #4
I don’t want to leave you. Ever.”
Roark hugged her close and ran a hand through
her hair. “I know, love,” he whispered in her ear, ridiculously
close to tears himself. “I know.”
She lifted her head and met his gaze. “Come
with me,” she said, her eyes pleading with him. “Please.”
Aware of the others in the room, none of whom
were even pretending not to watch and listen, Roark took her face
in his hands. “I wish I could,” he told her. “I want to, you know I
do.”
“But you won’t.”
“No,” he said, “I won’t.” He touched his
forehead to hers. “I love you, Ali girl, so verra much. But I
cannot. I will not leave my family and so many others to suffer the
consequences of my actions.”
She sniffed and nodded her forehead against
his and laid her palm on his cheek. “You wouldn’t be the man I love
if you did.” She rolled her forehead against his. “Which leaves us
where we’ve been since the day we met.”
Roark kissed her forehead and stared into
eyes as bright and green and dewy as new grass after a spring rain.
“I wouldn’t trade a single moment of our time together for all the
moments to come, my lady owl.”
“Nor would I, sir stag,” she whispered, her
cheeks rising. “I will treasure them dearly until I have no more
moments left in this life.”
A loud sniff and a cough brought Roark’s head
up. Six pairs of eyes watched them intently as Lady Siusan swiped
at her cheeks and Agnes dabbed at hers with her sleeve. Owen
cleared his throat while Gavin coughed and snorted, and Niels and
Grant looked at Roark with expressions of pity and envy.
Roark took a shaky breath in and blew it out.
“Now you know how it is between Princess Alina and me.”
Owen coughed and cleared his throat. “I would
say so,” he said with a low chuckle. “However…”
“However,” Roark finished for him. “We are
determined nobody outside of this room will.” It wouldn’t change
the gist of their story if anybody did, but it would certainly
complicate things.
“Aye, well, we’ll see how that goes,” Owen
said good-naturedly enough. “Well then, unless anybody else has any
questions or declarations to make? No?” He stood and offered his
wife his arm. “We shall retire for the night and see you all in the
morning.”
Roark would have preferred to stay in the
room alone with Alina, but Niels stood at the door while everyone
else filed out, and by the look on his face, he was waiting for
them to leave. Roark offered Alina his arm and escorted her past
the taciturn greybeard and the few remaining people in the common
room and up the stairs.
“I’m going to miss you tonight,” he told her
as they hovered outside her door, putting off the inevitable.
“I only seem able to sleep with you by my
side or wrapped around me,” she said with a shy and seductive
smile. “Maybe you could come to my room later?”
“It’s probably not the smartest thing to do
our first night here,” he said.
“Probably not,” she agreed.
“It would be our first time together in a
real bed.”
Alina grinned, more seductive than shy,
pecked him on the cheek and opened her door, peeking out at him
before shutting it. “I won’t throw my bolt.”
Roark went to his room, undressed, and
flopped onto his big, soft, lonely bed, where he tossed and turned
so much he had to get up to untangle the bed linens from around his
legs.
Once up, he gave up trying to sleep and paced
around the room several times before taking the spyglass and
looking out the window. He focused on the face of the waning moon
as it rose over the tree line of chestnuts bordering the eastern
edge of the keep’s yard, yet all he could see was a pair of spring
green eyes, heavy-lidded and dark with passion, staring dreamily
into his.
He tried to focus on the trees when a dark
shadow flew across his sight. He followed it to a fence post, where
an owl lit and perched, twisting and turning its head this way and
that, searching for prey. The owl went still, and Roark followed
the direction of its gaze to where an eight-point stag stood at the
tree’s edge, its head erect and ears twitching.
“Damnation.”
Roark set the spyglass on the bed, pulled on
a pair of breeches and a tunic, cracked open his door, peered
around the quiet, empty hallway, and padded barefoot over to
Alina’s door. He considered knocking, and then pushed open the
unlocked door. He stepped in and glanced at the bed, which was
mussed and empty. There was movement at the open window and Roark
held his arms out. Alina flew into them. “Damn, Alina,” he rasped,
burying his nose in her hair, inhaling the sweet perfume of cherry
blossoms. “What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to make love,” she said, kissing
and nipping her way up his throat to his jaw. “We’re going to make
love and love each other as much and as often as we can until we
can’t anymore.”
Roark hooked his finger under her chin and
lifted her gaze to his. “I will never not love you, my lady
owl.”
Her eyes glistened. “I know, sir stag,” she
said, smiling through her welling tears. “Somehow I’ve always
known. Now kiss me. Kiss me and make love to me and take me to our
own special world.”