Chapter 13
“There is something I wish to speak with you about,” Kayden said later, when they were walking together in the field behind the garden.
Mya turned to look at him, eyebrows raised. “Yes?”
“I will not say that it excused my behavior toward you, but I would appreciate it if you would not press me on the matter of my family. It’s a delicate subject for me.”
“I hardly pushed,” Mya protested. “All I did was ask you the kind of question that anyone might ask, and then ask you why you did not answer it when you brushed me off. Had you said that you simply did not wish to speak of them, instead of going immediately on the defensive, it might have ended differently.”
Kayden took a deep breath in and let it out on a rush. “Mya. Please. I’m not accusing you of anything, or yelling at you. I am only asking that you consider my feelings on the matter.”
“You are accusing me, though,” Mya pointed out, stopping in her tracks and turning completely to look at him. “I’m happy to leave matters of your family to the side, though I do admit that I wonder what you will not say to me, but I hardly acted outside the bounds of propriety.”
They began walking again. Kayden said nothing.
He was staring straight ahead of them, jaw tight.
The warm summer wind rustled in the bushes, filling the air with the faint sighing of leaves.
Otherwise, there was only silence. It weighed heavily on Mya's shoulders.
This was not the way she had intended their post-apology conversation to go.
“Kayden?” she ventured.
“Yes?” he asked without looking down at her.
“Are you going to refrain from speaking to me at all now? Have I offended you that badly?”
“You have not offended me.”
“It’s obvious that I have,” Mya protested. “You’ll not even turn to face me. I told you that I would not bring up your family. What more do you wish me to say?”
“Perhaps, considering that I was gracious enough to offer you an apology for the manner in which I behaved, you would be willing to offer me the same courtesy.”
Mya pulled her hand from his arm. “An apology?
For what heinous crime have I committed, exactly?
How was I to know that you did not speak of your family?
I wasn't even told until after you insulted me that you preferred to keep the matter quiet! And frankly,” she added, “if the matter of your family is a difficult one, I of all people would understand. I cannot even remember having met mine.”
She stalked past him and deeper into the field, toward the shade of a tree that stood near its center. Behind her, she heard the grass hissing against fabric as Kayden followed.
“Mya!” He called after her. “Mya!”
She spun around to face him. “What?”
“If you want to discuss this, discuss it with me, instead of running away.”
“I’m not running away,” Mya snapped. “I’m putting some space between us so that I have a moment to think without you breathing down my neck.”
She turned away once more and continued onward through the vegetation, pulling her skirts up so they would not snag on it.
When she reached the wide trunk of the tree, she leaned back against it, staring up at the cloudy sky through the leaves.
She had half expected that Kayden would have gone, returning home rather than continue to deal with her, but when she turned her eyes back to ground level, he was there, standing just outside of arm's reach.
“How can I be breathing down your neck, when I am nowhere near you?” he asked.
“Is it that much of a problem for you? Truly? That I asked about your family at all? In any capacity?”
Kayden sighed. “I admit that much of my anger was based in the thought that you had done it deliberately. And now you act as though I’ve delivered you some great slight, when all I have done is ask you to acknowledge my own feelings about what happened. I have emotions too, Mya.”
“Saint Peter in heaven.” Mya laughed disbelievingly, shaking her head.
“If you truly wish me to stay so far away from your personal business, perhaps romance is not something we should be engaging in.” She turned her face away from him so that he would not see her blinking back the prickling sting of tears.
“Do you even desire such a thing with me?”
In a moment, he was at her side, near enough that she could feel the warmth of his body against her own.
One of his big hands curled around her chin, turning her back toward him and lifting her face so that their eyes met.
“Of course I desire you,” he said, voice dropping low in a way that made Mya's heart beat crazily in her chest. “I have wanted you since the moment we ran into each other in that market.” He smiled.
“I would say sooner, but I am afraid of what it would say about me that I desired an unconscious, bloody woman with an arrow in her shoulder.”
“Something hideous, undoubtedly,” Mya answered.
Kayden growled, leaning in over her to kiss her, hard and deep. Mya stumbled back a step and came up against the trunk of the tree, one of her arms wrapping around Kayden's shoulders to hold herself up. His hand stroked up her thigh, dragging her skirt with it.
“Are you sure we should be doing this here?” Mya asked when they broke apart, already breathless.
“Who's going to see us?” Kayden asked. “Lottie and Ella know we're out here.
They're not going to come looking for us, trust me. Both of them are well aware of what they might find if they choose to come out here. And I am quite sure neither of them has any interest in seeing it.” He kissed her again, a brief brush of lips.
“The land adjoining is mine, and I am already here.
We have the field to ourselves, and I have no interest in waiting long enough to get you inside.
Besides, we're less likely to get caught out here. Not so many members of the staff running around.”
“Dammit,” Mya said. “Shut up.”
His laughter vibrated against her skin, and he retaliated by biting down on her shoulder through the fabric of the dress she was still wearing, a bruising pressure just the right side of pain.
Mya's fingers curled against his shoulder.
Her other hand was pressed palm first to the trunk of the tree, feeling the rough bark against her skin.
“There is no possible way I'm attempting to get all of this nonsense off you,” Kayden panted, lifting his head to kiss her jaw and the curve of her ear. “If it's ruined, I'll buy you another.”
“Another what?”
“Another whatever. An entirely new wardrobe. I could not care less what the expense is if it means I don't have to waste any time fiddling with all the catches and fasteners and endless layers they insist on strapping you into.”
He caught her around the backs of her thighs and lifted her, her body braced between his and the tree that was definitely going to ruin the back of her gown.
Mya wrapped her legs around his hips. Kayden didn't even bother taking anything she was wearing off, just pushed her skirts up around her hips and slid his fingers into the opening of her drawers, stroking her.
“So ready for me already, my darling,” he groaned. “Fuck.”
In the next moment, he had his hand back around her thigh and he was pushing up into her, gravity dragging her down until she could not take him any deeper.
Her arms wrapped around his shoulders, and he buried his face against the valley between her breasts as his hips rocked against her own.
Mya, unable to let her head fall back against the tree, curved down over him, using his shoulders as leverage.
There wasn't much she could do except take it at the pace he gave, gasping with the delicious friction of him filling her to the hilt.
The breathless sounds they made mingled with the rustle of the leaves above and the succus of the wind in the grass below.
Overhead, the clouds split at last, and the warm rays of the summer sun spilled down over them, painting Kayden's dark hair with flashes of gold and bronze.
Mya felt the friction of the bark against the fabric of her dress, a constant steady vibration running up and down her spine, in perfect counterpoint to the rhythm of Kayden's thrusts.
“Perfect,” he panted as he moved. “Mya, you are so utterly perfect.”
“Don't talk,” she gasped. “Just—” Her cry of pleasure cut off the words. “Just take me.”
It seemed that Kayden was more than happy to oblige.
They rose toward the peak of ecstasy together, the rushed gasps for breath tangling together with the sounds of Kayden's groans and Mya's shuddering moans.
She felt her body drawing tight, felt the tension in his shoulders wound taut as a strung bow.
One more thrust, one more roll of his hips against her, and both of them were falling over the edge, jumbled syllables of each other's names on their tongues.
Kayden's knees gave out, and he slid them both slowly down to kneel in the grass, her skirts tumbled around them. Mya let her head fall back against the tree, eyes rolled upward, and tried to remember what it was to breathe as her racing heart slowed its frantic beat.
“I...” He trailed off, like he didn't know what to say, his voice muffled by her body. He still had his face between her breasts, breathing in the scent of her as he recovered.
Mya reached down and trailed her fingers through his hair. She didn't have words either. Silence settled over them, but it was not awkward. They were both warmly content, basking in the afterglow of pleasure. Mya had forgotten their fight entirely, as it seemed Kayden had.
She wasn’t even sure she remembered how to be angry, after that. The thought made her smile. She was going to have to be careful around him, or she was never going to be able to stay mad. Spectacular sex was a relationship hazard.
“You are dangerous,” she said.
“Mmm.”
He didn’t even lift his head. Apparently he was in the process of falling asleep right there on the grass. Mya chuckled softly. It seemed some things were a guarantee after all.