Page 92 of The Forsaken

The spirited beauty slept with the same wild energy she lived her life. She flung her graceful arms and supple limbs all over the bed and over him. She pivoted until her toes nearly touched the headboard. Her restless body stretched as if even in rest, she could not be contained.

Unlike the bright of day, when her bell-like voice and laugh rang clear, at rest her ramblings came so breathy and low he had to lean in to hear her; as they did now. “…bow…for…”

Kerr stroked the delicate expanse of her back… “What was that you said, love? Bow…fur?”

Little creases popped up on her brow. She whisper-sighed several more times and flipped onto her back.

Kerr played the same game he had since he first heard her incoherent rambling in her sleep. He would never grow tired of it. He could never grow tired of any of her bewitching quirks.

“…for…bow…”

“I have it. You are saying bower and forest.” Kerr kissed those delicate frown lines. “Shame on me. With your love of the heath, that should have been my first guess.” Kerr placed his lips next to her ear. “I will have to spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”

In her soft slumber, a quiet sigh brushed the stillness.

Kerr touched the tiny uptilt of her nose. “Do you like the sound of that, love?”

A peaceful smile caressed her mouth.

The rest of his life…

Dropping a hand over the flat of his stomach, he directed his gaze at the canopy overhead. Someone had attached strings to the oak spindles and hung small pictures from them. In his mind, he saw Andromena stretched on tiptoes, alone in the pride of her work. The shadowing and detail revealed hints of the artist the little girl would become—and she had. Kerr wanted to climb back in time and shower her tender ears with the adulation she deserved.

His eyes snagged on a sketch Andromena had done of her cousin Captain McQuoid’s vessel.

He hadn’t ever thought about ‘the rest of his life’. Why should he, when his future haunted his mind?

Lads grew up. They inherited. They became their fathers.

For those reasons, Kerr hadn’t wanted to confront the future, and successfully avoided doing just that.

After university, he joined the navy. When war ended, there were more opportunities seaside. The ocean became his home, and the other lost souls, without families or ties to land, became his family.

He’d continued sailing—as if he could distance himself from a doomed fate. A fate that wasn’t even an absolute certainty.

Fear kept him away.

All the lost years with his mother and Greyhold’s father—a good man, who’d treated Kerr as his own. And Kerr’s father.

Kerr spent his life hating, fearing, and feeling embarrassed by his father. Fear was justifiable; any child experiencing those violent outbursts would shrink—and he had. Any man facing the same fate as the late viscount would have done the same. But there was no room for Kerr’s other emotions: shame, annoyance, and disgust.

“…Your father was sick. The sick deserve compassion….”

A vice squeezed tight around his heart.

Andromena stretched her slender arms, high above her head. “Mmm.”

“You were right about that, too, love,” he said thickly. He once thought himself worldly and wise, but this woman knew better, quietly exposing his ignorance and opening his eyes to what genuinely mattered.

The late viscount had deserved compassion.

If it hadn’t been for Andromena, Kerr would have never made that discovery. She had given him a future, and the greatest gift; she would share it with him.

A plaintive whimpering sent a shiver through him.

Andromena whipped her head toward him. “Mm. Noo.”

“Shh.” Kerr gently drew her slender frame against his side. His body responded as it did whenever she was near, but desire was second in this moment. She was first. “What are nightmares, love?” I’ll vanquish them and your foes.