Page 66 of Marin’s Promise

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Marin spoke freely under Bran’s encouragement, without the emotion pinching painfully at her throat. “Leila had been up through most of the night, and the other girls were abed with illness. I tried to appeal to my father to rise once more and he…he began to sob.” She fisted her hand at the memory. “To see so great a man crumble beneath his heartache, to know I was doing all in my power, and for it to still not be enough…”

Her eyes went warm and she knew she was losing the fight against her tears. “It was more than I could bear. My heart was shattered, and I had nothing left to give.” She sniffled and fixed her gaze on the floor. “After I left my father's room, I went outside where it was cool and quiet. I meant only to go for a walk, but as soon as I left the castle grounds, I started to run.” She closed her eyes and could feel the cold air on her hot cheeks again, the incredible liberation. “It felt so exhilarating, like my body was finally alive. By the time I stopped, it was dark.”

She blinked her eyes open and kept her gaze averted, too ashamed of her next words to look at him. “I didn't care. I didn't want to go back. Everyone would need me, pull at me, drain me of what precious little I had left.”

It had been on that lone winter night, with fat snowflakes drifting around her like the fluff of wool bits on sheering day, that she had finally given in to the pain of her mother's loss. Her heart had cracked open and she had curled herself around its intensity, letting it suck the sobs from her throat and spill them out into the frosted air. She did not say as much to Bran. Such a private moment need not be shared, especially when she had confessed so much already.

“They found me later, laying in the snow.” Marin relaxed her clenched hand and looked down at the creased lines of her palm. “They said I was near death. I didn't notice, not when my entire being had become so hollow and numb.” She shrugged as if it were nothing. But it wasn't nothing. It'd been the single darkest day of her entire existence. When she’d failed.

Worse.

When she'd given up.

“Ye told everyone ye'd been taken,” Bran said.

She nodded. “The truth was far too painful to say aloud. I couldn't tell everyone I had been…” Her voice caught. “That I'd been such a coward.”

“Marin.” His voice was a soothing purr and he finally released her shoulders, cupping her face now instead. “Ye werena a coward. Ye were a lass who was given the weight of the world. Ye took on more than any lass should have to, and the proof of yer efforts is apparent today in everything ye do. I noticed it even the first day.”

She looked up and found him staring at her with heart-breaking sincerity.

“Everyone needs someone to need,” he said, using her own words. “And ye dinna have anyone.”

A hot tear spilled down her cheek. His thumb followed its path and wiped it away.

At that moment, her husband understood her perhaps far better than anyone else in the whole of her life ever had. It crashed down on her and left her eyes welling. Not trusting herself to speak, she pursed her lips to staunch the ache in her throat and nodded.

He pulled her to him, those strong arms of his securing her in an embrace of compassion and protection that left her heart nearly crying out in gratitude.

He pressed a kiss to her brow. “Let me be the one ye can need, aye?” he murmured against her hair.

She scrunched her eyes tightly against the scratchy fabric of his reiver's doublet to keep the tears at bay, and instead breathed in the spicy, sandalwood scent of him, of her husband. A man who not only understood her but gave her something she had been too long missing in her life. Comfort. Strength.

She wanted to stay there for a lifetime, cradled in his arms, secured to the reassuring solidness of his body. Not alone, but with a true partner who would guard her back the way he had during the battle when they'd reclaimed her sisters.

Marin pushed her face into Bran's doublet, wanting to be closer still. Her breath exhaled against the wool and spread heat against her cheeks and nose. His hand ran in slow circles over her back. Though the caress was meant to be one of soothing, she could not help the languid pulse beginning to thrum between her thighs any more than she could still her memories from the night before.

The powerful stroke of his body into hers, the straining groans as he reined in his lust to be gentle for her benefit. The way he'd licked his fingers…

She tilted her face upward, eager to be claimed by him once more, so the hurt of her past might burn away in the flames of passion. Bran’s palm slid up to cup the base of her neck as his mouth lowered to hers. Her need had been unspoken, but he had answered the call. He’d been there for her as she’d known he would be.

Her sorrow was the tinder to their lust, and it ignited them both with a white-hot intensity neither could deny. Their hands moved over one another's bodies, their mouths panting and breathlessly kissing.

Bran's deft fingers found the peak of her breast, which he teased as his lips moved down her throat. He tugged at the top of her gown.

She wanted this, and yet a voice of piety nipped through the pleasure.

Marin gasped and folded her arms over her chest to stop him. “The sun is up.”

He gathered up her long skirt in eager handfuls. “Aye, and I'll be better able to see all of yer beauty.”

His fingertips skimmed over the backs of her thighs and up to the base of her bottom. Her body hummed in response and her sex grew damp with need. He kissed her and drew his tongue over her lower lip.

“It's a sin to do this with the sun up,” she protested between kisses. “And on a Friday for that matter.”

He pulled back and stared at her, his brown eyes dark and shining with want of her. “If we go by the church's rules, it willna be until Monday evening when we might have one another again.” His fingertips curled around her bottom, so his fingertips were wonderfully close to her sex. He lifted a brow and swept a single finger between her legs.