Chapter 39 The Posting Inn #2
“Lavender,” he said suddenly. “You still smell of it.”
Leena remembered how much the perfumed oil she’d worn had irritated him in the past. “I’m sorry—”
“No, don’t be,” he said, tilting his jaw so that his face was burrowed closer into her neck. “I had never before known that I could crave a smell.”
Leena’s eyes snapped away from the bandages and toward him.
The maddening part was that she knew exactly what he meant. His scent as he had carried her into the cave—sandalwood and fresh linen—had embedded itself into her waking hours, disturbed her rest. The wanting of him was ceaseless—a constant cacophony, impossible to silence.
Leena slowly pulled away once all the bandages were off and his torso was bare. The black spidery veins creeping from the wound site had lengthened. The cut was now clearly infected, the edges gaping and weepy, the skin angry and inflamed.
Wordlessly, she reached for the alcohol bottle.
“This will hurt,” she warned, before spilling the entire contents onto the wound. He gasped, eyes widening briefly, before he slumped back, unconscious.
That was easier for Leena. She was inevitably going to hurt him as she cleaned the wound, scrubbing the infection from the edges, and she didn’t want him to remember the pain of it in the way Rami remembered his amputation.
Once that horrid task was finished, she applied the black poultice the innkeeper’s wife had brought, its vinegary smell stinging her nose, then wound the gauze around it.
That proved to be difficult under the heavy weight of his body, but she managed to keep the wrappings as tight and as sterile as she could before dressing him in the new shirt the innkeeper’s wife had provided.
As Bram slept, Leena reached into his coat to ensure that the red diary had not fallen out, sighing in relief when she felt the firm outline of the cover. Tugging it out quickly, wondering why this particular book had garnered so much dangerous attention, Leena flipped through the pages.
Bram had said that most of the pages were blank, but they were not.
Elegantly scrawled writing crowded every page, from margin to margin, the entries marked in the darkest of ink.
Had Bram been so distracted by thoughts of the duel that he’d not properly investigated the contents of the diary?
Surely one of these passages must be the reason why Hargreaves was hunting them.
Before Leena managed to delve further into this, Bram woke up again.
He had descended further into fever, incoherent questions tumbling from his mouth. He rose from the bed several times, restlessly grabbing for his pistol, forcing Leena to hide it within the pocket of her own skirt.
“Where’s the Duke?” he demanded, looking at her without recognition.
“There is no Duke. It’s just me,” she said, trying to coax him back into bed.
He blinked at her. “They’ll all die. I’ll make sure of it.”
“It’s all right, Bram—”
He made a sound of frustration, as if she was being deliberately obtuse. “The Fray line will end with me, do you understand? I will end their line.”
His voice had risen in volume, and Leena glanced toward the door, afraid that the innkeeper might have heard the noise and come to investigate.
She tried to settle him, but she could see from his eyes that he was disoriented, his consciousness filtering through realities. He grasped for the pistol hidden in her pocket, and to calm him Leena placed a hand against his cheek, the short stubble scratching her skin.
Instantly, his entire body stilled, as if in both dread and anticipation.
Then, a deep shudder ran through him and he clasped his own hand around hers, tilting his jaw sideways to kiss the center of her palm.
The gesture was so uncharacteristically tender that it could only be the act of a delirious man—an insensible mind.
Leena could not deny that a growing part of her wished that it was deliberate, that this could be the flame that burned away all that stood between them—the contract, the title, the difference in their bloodlines.
It felt to Leena that everything up until this point had been an interlude—starting in the cave, igniting since then, catching fire now.
But she drew away shakily, trying to smile through the pangs of her own foolish heart so as not to distress him further. “You must rest—”
Bram’s fingers tightened over her wrist, ignoring her. His brows furrowed. “Damn the demons and damn their visions of you. This time, I am going to finish it.”
In one powerful movement, he pulled her toward him, crushing her body against his, taking her mouth with ferocity. He swallowed her gasp, and she could feel the rapid beats of his heart against her own chest.
It was a hard kiss, his lips bruising against hers, speaking to her of yearning, of suffering. Leena distantly felt his fingers intertwining themselves with her hair, then moving to command her face to turn just so, to open to him.
She clenched his shirt to anchor herself, her lungs incapable of drawing in enough air to keep her heart pumping in a steady rhythm. She could not form any coherent thoughts while his hands caressed her face, her hair, her neck.
But his next words almost undid her resolve.
“Not enough,” he murmured against her jaw, his kiss suddenly turning gentle, trailing across her cheek to below her earlobe where her pulse thrummed, lingering there for a single incinerating moment, then back to the ache of her lips.
In that kiss, Leena could taste all the lingering looks he’d ever given her, all the rare smiles, all the frustration—all for her.
Against her better judgment, she felt herself meeting Bram with the same intensity—it was always going to be this way.
For a blazing moment, Leena could not think of the consequences as she threw her arms around his neck, balancing herself on her tiptoes, kissing him back unreservedly.
When he felt her response, whatever reserve he held over himself cracked. His embrace turned to iron, the kiss a searing possession.
She wanted to stay beside him…against him…with him…
She wanted—
No.
A spark of electricity coursed through her, and she gasped from the pain of it, jerking away. The motion was so powerful it almost caused her to fall back, and in a second the pain was gone. But it was enough to bring Leena back to her senses.
This was not the Bram in the cave, almost kissing her, then turning away. This was an insensate Bram, half intoxicated with fever and poison. Leena could never comprehend the number of choices that had been taken away from him throughout his life.
If he kissed her now, she wanted it to be something he had chosen.
She felt unsteady on her feet, as if the floorboards were shifting around her, and she grabbed the bedpost to keep upright.
Bram, too, looked stunned, a high color staining his cheeks.
His breathing was ragged, and he dragged an unsteady hand through his hair.
“The demons know the exact ways to drive a mind to insanity.” His voice was hoarse as he reached out to trace her lips with his thumb, his eyes losing focus as he followed the movement.
Leena’s hand tightened on the post. “By far, you are the softest insanity—”
Then he staggered suddenly, his fist clenching against his wound, his face contorted in fresh waves of pain. Leena had never seen him like this, his shoulders trembling in agony.
“Bram,” she cried, reaching for him, but the moment her fingers touched his brow, another jolt of electricity transferred from his skin to hers. She yelped, rearing back, and instinctively brought her throbbing fingers to her lips.
His gaze was withdrawn, as if he was being pulled inward by something that Leena could not see. Then he slumped sideways onto the bed, succumbing to unconsciousness.
When Leena touched his forehead, it was scorching.
The poison was eating him alive.