The Scandal You Started, page 21
His fever had settled sometime during the last forty-eight hours, but there was a lingering weariness in his limbs as he rolled over. He braced himself on one forearm and searched for the switch of the bedside lamp. It clicked on, and he squinted as its bright yellow light blinded him.
Once his eyes adjusted, rather than settling on the jug of water and glass, his gaze flicked to the navy-blue armchair beside his bed. And widened as lips parted in surprise.
Rayna sat sound asleep in the chair, her legs tucked under her on the seat, hands curled in her lap, and her head resting against its velvet, curved back.
In the light, her wavy, rosewood hair glowed with a deep red hue, individual strands shining different shades of red and brown. One set of long lashes cast a shadow against her illuminated skin, and her cheekbone faintly glimmered as if someone had painted her in gold.
But no blanket covered her. She wore nothing but an oversized T-shirt, bunched around the very top of her thighs.
“Sweetheart,” he rasped.
What was she doing sleeping like that?
He was sure she’d insulted him and stomped out of his room hours earlier when he’d commanded her to go rest in her own bed since he was feeling much better. So why on Neves was she back in the chair? It couldn’t have been comfortable, and he couldn’t allow that.
Drawing his hand back from the lamp, Dominic pushed himself further upright before throwing the thin blanket off his legs. He stood from the edge of the mattress and hovered over his beautiful Rayna, an acute, tender ache scratching at his heart.
Gosh, she was so…
Rayna had spent the last five days tending to him, all hours of the day, keeping him fed and offering him a constant supply of liquid and medicine. As much as he’d loved the way she cared for him, being sick and forced to rely on her had become rather frustrating and embarrassing. He was supposed to be the one looking after her, not the other way around. His only comfort was that she hadn’t done it all alone.
Ash, as his POTeM doctor, had come to check on him twice, as had Benedict when he hadn’t been working at the hospital. Winnie had brought over food a few evenings, and Declan had helped Rayna change Dominic’s bedsheets and clean the house. Even Victor and George had popped over, both during the day and in the evening with dinner.
But Rayna had been there constantly throughout it all. She’d wiped him when he’d been covered in sweat and lain with him when he’d been shivering. And while River had taken care of him when she’d been at the museum the past two days, in the evenings she’d fussed over him, snapped at him, and laughed with him all the same—without resting herself.
By now, she ought to have been fatigued. But there she was, sleeping in a chair rather than in the comfort and space of her own bed.
His mouth crooked slightly, and he sighed. “You stubborn little witch.”
Dominic eyed her for a moment, trying to decide how to scoop her up without waking her, but her position made that a slim possibility. Nonetheless, he hooked his left arm around her back and swiftly lifted her, tucking his other arm under her knees.
She woke with a slight jolt, and he stopped moving, cradling her close to his bare chest in the hopes she’d lull back to sleep. But she shifted and tipped her chin, her eyes barely open.
“Dominic?”
“Hush,” he crooned. “Go back to sleep, sweetheart.”
With a tired sigh, she plonked her chin where his neck met his shoulder and relaxed into him. “Did you…did you need something?”
Bloody woods, sleepy Rayna was endearing; she had him grinning like a fool.
“Nothing at all.”
He turned them towards the bed, laid her down on the far edge of his pillow, and tucked her under the blanket. She snuggled into the mattress, searching for a comfortable position, while he filled a glass of water. He drank half, then climbed in beside her. After switching the lamp off, he wrapped her in his arms, tucking her head under his chin.
She let out a soft moan, rubbing her cheek against his hairy chest, and a filthy kind of heat entwined with the adoration already filling his veins. It couldn’t be helped. He was merely a red-blooded man, and she was a delectable woman. She’d never not stir desire within him.
“Rayna.” Her name fell stifled and groaned from his lips.
“Hmm?” she hummed absently.
His shoulders shook with a chuckle. “Nothing.” He placed a kiss to the top of her head. “Rest, my sweet darling.”
“’Kay.”
He laughed again, squeezing her pliant body into his as he buried his face in her hair. Filling his lungs with her warm scent of vanilla and cherries, his entire being gave one hard, painful throb of longing.
Gosh, he’d dreamed of this. Nightly, and without fail. Holding her in his arms, softly stroking her hair, cheeks, arms, and back, falling asleep with her, tired and completely content.
Finally, finally, finally, she was curled up against him, soft and vulnerable, in the cage of his arms where she was safe. Where she belonged. And he…
Her. It has to be her. She’s the one. I want her. Only her. She’s mine.
That’s what the hammer of his heart was booming, even though common sense was trying to reason with him that it was impossible.
Because they were from two different worlds with over 240 years between them. When his four months were up, he would return to his time, and she would stay in hers, and they would never see each other again.
He couldn’t stay with her and abandon his family, nor his role as marquess. Nor could he ask her to leave hers behind and come to the past with him, where the luxury of everything she’d grown up with didn’t exist. Let alone the fact her lack of a title would leave her and his family open to insult and disrespect.
So how could she possibly be his? He knew that, he did, but…
Dominic laid a series of slow, lingering kisses to her hair and sighed.
But…I love her.
How could he live without her when she’d rooted herself so deeply within him? She’d crawled under his skin and sauntered around like she owned him. Albeit unknowingly on her part, but she had. He was hers. More than he’d realised himself.
She’d planted a garden of seeds in the formation of her name within the chambers of his heart. The very idea of pulling her out of his life, leaving hollow patches throughout him, as if she were nothing but a weed, was unbearable. He couldn’t do it. Didn’t want to. Though at present, he had no answer as to how he could keep her.
Had he been another man, he might’ve been able to frown upon the notion of love the way the ton dictated he was supposed to. Love made a man weak, and a weak man wasn’t a man at all. Men didn’t need love. And men certainly weren’t meant to love their wives.
But Dominic had been raised by his father. And Khizar Fredrick Xander Thorne had found that notion daft, considering love and loyalty were promised in the vows of marriage, no matter how much or how little wealth a man possessed.
Dominic’s own mother had passed upon the birth of his brother, Art, but he’d watched his father love Mother Penny without a care for what the ton had to say. He might have found it laughable during his youth that he himself would one day be as besotted as his father had been. But the one thing Dominic searched for when marriage became a part of the equation was love.
He hadn’t found it within the endless number of ballrooms, parks, and theatres he’d been in. But he’d found it with Rayna.
How was he meant to let it go rather than do everything in his power to show her it was possible for them to be together?
There had to be a way. It couldn’t be hopeless, surely.
After all, love was born from the essence of hope, and Dominic held a lot of love for Rayna.
He would hold enough for them both until her heart caught up with his.
Because that was how much he loved her.
Chapter 27
Dominic
Oh, how he loved her. But bloody woods was Rayna infuriating sometimes.
She’d awoken that morning as if she were on a royal mission to exasperate him with her stubborn declarations that he couldn’t leave the farmhouse.
“I am well,” he growled again, trainers on, standing in the sitting room, washed and ready to head to the museum. “And therefore, I am coming with you.”
“I’ll try to be back around the same time Ash gets here, but I’ll message you when I’m leaving,” Rayna said to River and Kelly, who’d arrived to keep him company until she returned.
“’Kay,” Kelly chirped.
“Do not bloody ignore me, woman,” Dominic snapped, his cheeks colouring in irritated embarrassment.
Rayna lifted her attention to him, adjusting the long strap of the bag dangling from her shoulder. “You’re not coming with me, Dominic. Not until Ash has determined you’re well enough. And he’s not going to be here until the evening. So, until then, you’re not allowed to work.”
He gritted his teeth over the urge to pick her up and shake the stubbornness from her.
“It’s not just you,” River added. “The protocol applies to every Study who falls sick.”
“Well, it is ridiculous. If I say I am well, then my word ought to be taken as the truth.”
River gave a pursed-lip shrug. “You have to have a checkup. Just to be on the safe side.”
He glared at the historian, wanting to shake him too for siding with Rayna. As a man, River should have understood that keeping him confined for a fever and sore throat that modern medicine had solved with ease was outrageous. He should have been outraged for Dominic.
“Bye,” Rayna said, heading towards the open door of the sitting room.
“Now wait just a minute.” Dominic followed her out into the corridor and snuck around her. He grabbed the handle of the front door before she could, blocking her exit.
She scowled. “Dominic, you’re going to make me late.”
“I am coming along with you.”
“No, you’re not.”
The vexed line between his brows deepened. But her demeanour remained rigid.
Kelly’s voice filtered through their intense stare-off. “Sorry for interrupting, but River and I are gonna go make some coffee.” She didn’t look sorry. She was grinning from ear to ear like she was watching her favourite theatre production. “So play nice while you work this out, okay?”
Kelly sashayed towards the kitchen, dragging River in tow by the arm.
“Uh, Kelly…” River muttered just before they moved out of sight through the archway.
Dominic lowered his attention back to the maddening woman before him.
Rayna sidestepped towards the door. “Move.”
“This is entirely unnecessary.”
“I know you think that, but if I take you with me, I will get in trouble for not sticking to the correct procedure. Is that really what you want?”
His resolve collapsed beneath his feet, almost bringing him to his knees before her. “No. Never, sweetheart. That is the last thing I want.” He released the handle and shifted towards her. “But I have been cooped up in here for days now. I cannot spend another minute simply resting. It will drive me mad.”
Rayna’s expression softened, and she mulled over her thoughts before sighing. “Okay, fine. You can leave the farmhouse and go to the stables or forest, but you can’t go for a swim. That’s all I can offer you.”
But her offer was inadequate. Because it didn’t include her.
She would still leave, but Dominic couldn’t bring himself to let her.
Agitation at the very thought was gnashing on his muscles. Because while he didn’t want to leave her side, she didn’t seem too bothered about leaving him. In the same way, she hadn’t complained about waking up in his arms, but she hadn’t been eager to stay either. And that had warped the bliss of holding her during the night into a troubling realisation that Rayna hadn’t given him any indication things had changed between them.
What if…what if she…
A gritted sound of frustration escaped his mouth before Dominic grabbed her wrist and stomped past her. She stumbled along behind him with a hiss of his name, but he pulled her into the small library-cum-office on the right of the corridor and shut the door.
Drawing her back against the wood, he placed one palm by her head, then enclosed her in with the other. He bent over her, so their faces were inches apart.
Silence.
The subtle frown on her brows lifted as she watched him. His heart raced as he stared back.
“What?” she muttered, a little clipped yet breathy too.
He searched her eyes. “Did you mean what you said? That you no longer wished to pretend?”
Her shoulders relaxed. “Is that what this is about?”
“I’m beginning to wonder if it were a mere dream.”
She tipped her chin higher, angling her mouth right under his. “It wasn’t. It happened. I meant it.”
That was it. That was all he’d wanted—needed—to hear.
His shuddering sigh of relief was still whispering through his ears when he cupped Rayna’s face in both of his palms and sealed his mouth over hers.
And it was almost painful. Like it’d been centuries since he’d kissed her, causing his body to physically hurt with the sudden reminder of how exquisite her lips felt. But the responsive press of her own transformed the pain into a gratifying heat he wanted to pack his whole existence with. His entire life.
Spurred by the love she awoke within him, a raw groan clambered up his throat, and Dominic weighed over her, bending her back, kissing her harder, deeper.
But it was nowhere near as rushed and desperate as their first kiss. No, they tugged at each other’s lips with dragged-out, purposeful passion. The kind that branded his soul and made his head spin and his hands near tremble. Where she fisted his T-shirt and refused to let him pull away even a centimetre, and he said the words he couldn’t voice with caressing brushes of his thumbs against her cheeks.
Until their tongues tangled, and their gasps became audible, and bloody fucking woods, he knew he had to stop because his loins throbbed, and Kelly and River were just there, but Rayna tasted like home and mint and forever, and she scented of cherries and warmth and a life together, and he couldn’t help craving one more kiss, one more tug, one more moment basking in her caresses and desire and attention…
Please let me have her. Please let her be mine. Let this be forever.
They broke apart at the same time, panting and gulping for air. Each shudder racking his body brushed their swollen lips together. Gradually lifting his heavy lashes, he grazed his mouth against the bridge of her nose, laid a lingering peck to her forehead, then pressed one final deep kiss to her lips before forcing himself to straighten.
Rayna’s hands loosened around his T-shirt, and she sagged towards him. With her face still cupped in his hands, he relished the sparkling headiness in her charcoal eyes as her palms slipped to rest against his upper abdomen.
“Fuck,” she rasped so quietly. “My hands are shaking. What the fuck?”
He huffed a weak laugh and brushed his smiling lips against her nose again. “As are mine.”
“How am I supposed to drive like this?”
“You could stay with me,” he purred and lifted one of her hands to his mouth. He laid a kiss to the centre of her palm, delighting in the fact he could feel her trembling.
“If I stay with you…” She shook her head. “We’re not even gonna end up reaching a bed. And no way are we having sex with other people in the house.”
A big, lusty grin spread across his face. “Of course not. I need hours to make love to you, and it would be rather obvious what we were up to if we went missing for hours.”
Her mouth twitched. “Sure. Hours.” Then she tugged him down over her by his top and purred, “Be a good boy while I’m gone, Dominic.”
A growl rumbled from the depths of his throat into her kiss, but he wasn’t entirely sure it was as a result of finding her taunt insulting. For some absurd reason, sparks of arousal splattered under his skin that humiliated him as much as they excited him.
“Do not mock me, woman,” he grumbled.
She arched her brows, ever the smug seductress, and Dominic’s skin smarted. “Oh, I’m not mocking you. I’m just letting you know only good boys get rewarded with sex.”
Bloody woods, what kind of spell was she casting on him?
He hadn’t ever considered himself to be a particularly rough lover, but in that moment, his head was spinning, chest rumbling, hands aching with the urge to ruin her. To tease her as she was teasing him, and imprint her body so deeply and thoroughly with the memory of him. Of his hands. His mouth. His teeth. His cock.
His pleasure, painting her womb. Painting her skin.
It should have scared him how rough he wanted to be with her. But her goading had bewitched him into nothing but a puppet being controlled by the restless beast of his desire. He didn’t have the will to fight it. Rather, he wanted to loosen his control further.
“I will have my reward,” he growled. “But I will be taking it however I wish.”
He lifted her palm to his lips and nipped at her skin, pinning her sultry, catlike gaze under the heated promise of his own. Then he slowly, reluctantly released her.
“You may go. But come home to me quickly, sweetheart.”
Chapter 28
Rayna
Dominic:
I do not like this.
Being apart from you this long is entirely wrong.
Rayna:
Dominic…it’s 10am
I’ve been gone less than 2 hours
Rayna knew Dominic had every intention of stripping her naked and having his way with her when she went home that afternoon. It wouldn’t happen immediately, but there was nothing in all of Neves that was going to stop it from happening tonight.
