Page 37

Silence fell, heavy and dark, and she couldn’t breathe. Was she dead? Perhaps she’d be yet another spirit haunting Ashveil, joining the weeping bride and the ghostly chambermaid, doomed to remain in the same fractured existence⁠—

“Christ, Bridget, are you hurt?” The weight lifted, at least partially, and Valebrook’s face appeared above her. His lips were parted, brows drawn tight and hair dusted with debris. He ran one wide palm down her cheek, cupped her jaw. “Speak to me.”

She tried to speak, but the impact had punched the air from her lungs, and she wheezed, coughed, her eyes watering. Beyond his broad shoulders, half of the ceiling had disintegrated, the plaster and support timbers snapped and broken like children’s toys. The floating dust parted enough to expose the undersides of the floorboards from the second story, but the section directly above them at least seemed secure. The wall to the outside, however, was annoyingly intact.

She released a low moan and pressed her hands to her eyes. “I’m not hurt.”

“Thank God,” he mumbled, scrubbing a hand down his face. He remained poised over her, one arm braced beside her head.

“We’re still trapped in here.”

“I’m not worried about that now.” His stormy eyes searched her, as though an injury might have escaped his inspection. “You need to stop finding new ways to get yourself killed.”

Adrenaline had only just stopped coursing through her veins. She was trembling, needy. She wanted him to touch her face again. “You’re exaggerating. I was in no danger of death.”

“You were. And if you died here, I’d have one more angry ghost to contend with.”

She managed a weak laugh. “Awfully conceited of you to think I’d haunt you.”

“You already haunt me.”

Her lips parted in a soundless gasp. She waited for him to fire off a sharp rejoinder, to call her a liar and a thief, to tear her apart with his barbs and suspicion. But he touched her, reverently stroking the back of his fingers down her cheek, pausing to press his thumb to the corner of her mouth.

“I can’t stop thinking about you.” The words emerged uneven and weighted. “Touching you.” His gaze drifted over her face, paused at her lips. “Tasting you. And the more I try to stop thinking about you, the worse it gets. This need possessing me.”

Everything in her body was pulsing, desperate and aching, and she couldn’t stop herself from raking her fingers down his bare chest. “You’re… you’re confused.”

“Don’t tell me what to think, especially about you.”

He didn’t mean it. Fatigue and fear were powerful drugs, and she’d put him through more excitement than he’d likely seen in years. The moment they found a way out of the manor, he would be gone. If she were fortunate and he didn’t expose her fraud to Parliament, she would go on with her life, exactly as she had been.

One night of pleasure would be sufficient for her, something to cling to when she was so lonely she could scream. The memory of a man who cared for her enough to stay by her side, if only for a short while.

She lifted her chin. “Will you stop talking and kiss me?”

CHAPTER 19

He kissed her like he hated her, all urgency and command.

He kissed her like he was terrified of letting her get away.

Her mouth opened beneath his insistent, hurried kisses, the persistent slide of his tongue on hers. The calluses on his roughened hands caught on the fine linen of her nightdress as he caressed her sides, gripped her thigh.

“I thought you were hurt,” he growled against her mouth, then kissed her again. “Fuck, I hated it.”

She dug her fingers into the silk of his hair, guiding his mouth to her neck. He followed gladly, the scratch of the whiskers on his chin making every nerve sing. “You’re overreacting,” she breathed.

“You’re impossible.”

She couldn’t answer him, not when the intensity of his expression, the need in his eyes, left her breathless. He looked wild, his cheeks flushed and chest heaving. Nothing like the unprepossessing man from the tavern, the taciturn and skeptical earl who’d invaded her manor. This man was desperate, hungry for her, and she didn’t know what to make of it, what to think.

Perhaps it was best if she stopped thinking for once.

He settled his weight atop her, solid and comforting even as she squirmed beneath him. His mouth continued down her neck, over the delicate skin of her chest. He paused at the flimsy lace decorating the neckline of her nightdress.

The black pools of his pupils had devoured the stormy gray irises. “Do you truly want this? You won’t run away from me and call me the devil, will you?”

Her cheeks heated. “I told you to go to hell, and I absolutely did not run⁠—”