“Never mind,” I say quickly. “It’s none of my business.”
The storm cleared as quickly as it came, smoothed out into nonchalance so pure it couldn’t be real. “No, it’s okay. Fair question.”
“Hey.” I put a hand on his arm. “I’m serious. We can play something else. The quiet game. That’s a good one. I play it sometimes with Ky, but fair warning, I’m pretty good at it. He always loses. Possibly because he doesn’t understand the rules.”
Plus there’s less chance of me putting my foot in my mouth that way.
The corner of his mouth kicks up. “My father did the same thing I did. Only with less hesitation about killing if someone got in the way. Here’s the truly ridiculous part, I actually felt like a pretty decent guy, that I only ran drugs instead of people, that I mostly paid the girls I took with me and made them come when we had sex. Yeah, I’m a great fucking guy.”
My stomach clenches. He has so much remorse inside him, it’s impossible for me to hate him. Or maybe it’s because I grew up on the same streets as he did. I know that he actually was a great guy by those standards. And then he made himself even better.
“I’m sorry.” Sorry I brought it up. Sorry I had brought all this back for him with my middle-of-the-night escape from the city.
He continues as if he didn’t hear her. “The people of Provence. They didn’t trust me at first, which was smart of them. And then after a while, they did trust me. Bridget, she’s always trying to set me up. She says it’s time for me to stop punishing myself, but that’s the thing. I have moved on. This is what it looks like, steady, quiet.”
Bleak. And lonely. And heartbreaking. “I think it’s for you to decide. What you want, what makes you happy.”
“What makes you happy, Jessica?”
Unaccountably, this. Sitting in the dark with a kind stranger, spilling secrets I don’t evne want to remember. The warmth of his arm under my hand, the solidness of his body beside mine.
He sounded a bit lost when he asked the question, looked a bit forlorn there in the shadows, and that seemed all wrong. I don’t know how to console him, but I can give him my company. He doesn’t have to be lonely tonight. And I don’t either.
I pat his shoulder. “Come on.”
He stares blankly but allows me to tug him down on the cot. I lay at his side, my arm slung over his chest to keep me from rolling backwards. Heat lingers in her body, leftover desire, but our touch is pure comfort.
“I’m afraid,” I whisper in the dark.
“Go to sleep, beautiful. I’ll watch over you.”
The determination in his voice is proof enough that we’ll be safe. If only for these few precious hours in a jail in the middle of nowhere—safe. A precious gift. Relief from a curse placed a long time ago.
Now I know what intimacy would be like, deeper than physical. Our worry, our sadness wells together, and we hold one another, adrift. There’s no cure for shame or for grief but time, nothing to do but wait, and for tonight we would float together.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The prince knelt beside her and awakened her with a kiss. And the enchantment was broken.
Finn
I emerge from sleep, but only barely.
Faint orange light dances through the shadows, as if I’m underwater, at the bottom of an ocean. I feel sluggish but also warm and cocooned and I don’t want to wake up, because it will end this. I don’t even know what this is, only that it’s fleeting.
Managing to crack one eye open, I check that the baby is asleep.
Then I close my eyes and focus on my other senses.
A sweet feminine smell manages to somehow be sleepy and sexy at the same time. How long has it been since I’ve had a woman beside me? So long, too long since I felt the cushiony softness against his own hardness, and fuck, I’m rock hard.
I don’t feel worried though, not this time. Just relieved.
Relieved to feel like a man again, a man fully alive, one who gets morning wood and uses it with the soft, sleepy woman next to him. She makes little snuffling noises of almost-awake as I shift her in my arms, as I position my body above hers.
And then—thank you, Jesus—she pulls me down closer, harder, touching me everywhere. I push my knee between hers in question; she parts hers in answer.
I hitch between her legs, so damned comfortable I could spend forever, just there, the aching ridge of my cock against the heat of her sex, my body cradled within hers. She moans, surprise cutting that sound short when I bend my head and put my lips to her neck. So soft, so sweet. She bucks against me, jerkily, as if she can’t help it, as if he dragged her half-willing into the madness I’m living in, where everything was heat and sex and the blessed feel of skin on skin, and I don’t have to think, didn’t have to mourn or pretend.
