Page 6 of Edge of the Wild

She shook her head within the careful cradle of his hands – strong, familiar, working man’s hands, expert on bow or hunting knife or reins. “Strategic or not, I would have to consummate it. I would have to produce heirs.”

Pain flickered through his gaze.

“Could you live with that?” she pressed, knowing it was cruel. “Could you stand knowing that I got up from his bed, wiped his sweat off my body–”

“Lia.”

“–and then came to you? In yourservant’s quarters?”

“Lia.”

“How am I supposed to spread my legs for someone I hate? Am I to think of you, while he’s inside me? Pretend it’s your child I’m carrying?”

He gazed at her with horror, with helplessness, and she felt wretched for having said those things – because they were the truth, and because they hurt them both. All the ride home from Inglewood, she’d imagined this moment, the two of them in her room, and it had been heated and vigorous andfun, and then she’d walked into the dining room and reality had come crashing back.

“What are we going to do?” she whispered.

He took a sharp breath. “If you were less loyal to your family, I would ask you to run away with me. We could join the outlaws. But” – a wry smile – “I wouldn’t love you so bloody much if you were the sort of woman who ran away.”

They leaned in together, this time, and the kiss tasted of impending loss; after the first press, like desperation.

His hands slid down her throat, her shoulders; his fingers found the ties of her jerkin and tugged them loose expertly, deft with long practice.

She pushed up his shirt in turn, pressed her hands to bare, warm skin, and felt the leap of muscle in reaction; scratched her nails through the trail of dark hair between his navel and his waistband.

Her jerkin gapped, and slithered down around her hips; he slipped his hands inside the loose laces of her shirt and cupped her breasts, pressed firmly on her nipples in the way he knew she liked.

They’d been lovers since they were both fifteen; Amelia had been a virgin, and Malcolm might as well have been, having only inexpertly tumbled a prostitute. It had been in a horse stall, the straw poking and scratching them, their hearts pounding and nerves ratcheted high. It had been crossing two kinds of line: that of their respective ranks, and, even more frightening for Amelia, the line of friendship.

It had only brought them closer, though. Added a new steel thread through their already-inseparable bond. They’d learned one another: scars, and birthmarks, and ticklish places; learned each other’s sighs, and moans, and cues to press harder, faster, more desperately to heighten the pleasure.

Amelia loved him madly, and had never wanted another.

Tonight, they left their clothes puddled on the rug, and he carried her to her high, canopied bed. Laid her down and stretched out over her; stroked her until she was slippery and clawing at his back; and then he was filling her, pinning her wrists and kissing her neck and showering her with love words while his hips worked his cock deep, deep inside her.

She cried out when she came – half ecstasy, half despair – and he quieted her with a kiss, one he had to end with a gasp as he sought his own end with a few last, strong thrusts.

They slumped, tangled, limbs sliding, sweat on sweat.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured against his throat. “I don’t mean to be so vicious.”

“You aren’t.” He pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead. “It’s the world that’s vicious.”

True enough.

Malcolm had always possessed the skill of being able to sleep deeply anywhere. When he began to snore into her hair, Amelia slid from beneath his arm, tugged on a dressed gown, and went out into the hallway on silent, slippered feet. There was a balcony between the family wing and the guest wing of the house, and that was where she headed. The door creaked, faintly, when she opened it, and cold, crisp winter air blew straight through the silk of her gown. She shivered, belted it tighter, but was glad of the sharpness against her face, the still-cooling sweat on her neck. Most of the ladies of Aquitainia kept indoors as much as possible, only venturing out beneath the shade of parasols on the warmest of summer days, and even then, only in the garden. If they traveled for any distance, it was via carriage; if they went riding, it was only on fine, sunny afternoons, on carefully-tended bridle paths.

They’d never galloped through the forest with a knife on their hip, the sound of pursuit hot behind them. They’d never sat round a fire, chafing their hands together; never worn men’s clothes and ate meat straight off the bone with anyone beneath their station.

Amelia liked the cold because it reminded her that she was alive – that she was a flesh and blood woman, and not just an object to be passed around and acquired and kept on a shelf until an heir might be produced.

Drake Hold’s lawn stretched before her, gently-sloping, frosted, moon-silvered, gleaming like gems beneath a clear sky. How long would it drowse beneath the moon like this? Marked only by the faint curls of chimney smoke, and the distant lowing of cattle? How long until the Sels came?

Down at the other end of the balcony, a throat cleared.

She wasn’t alone.

“After that impressive show of storming out earlier,” Lord Reginald drawled, “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon, my lady.”

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