Page 5 of Edge of the Wild

That something – someone – it seemed, had come to her.

She hurried across the room to unlock the door and found Malcolm leaned negligently against the frame, arms folded. He’d changed into clean shirt and trousers, hair curling damp and freshly-washed on his shoulders. He lifted his brows. “You didn’t stay long at dinner.”

Amelia grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him inside her room.

“Shit,” he chuckled, stumbling. He managed to right himself, heel the door shut, and reach back to lock it. “Gods, you’re–”

She stood up on her toes, flung her arms around his neck, and silenced him with a kiss.

Shock held him still a moment, but this between them, this heat born of knowledge and affection, was long-familiar; his hands found her waist, and he kissed her back, mouth slanting hot over hers, tongue pressing for entry – one she welcomed. He smelled like soap, and sun-bleached linen, and still, under that, horses and hay. Likehome.

When he pulled back – their foreheads resting together so they could both catch their breath – he petted over her ribs and said, “Was L’Espoir even worse than usual tonight?”

“Evenworse: Mother wants me to marry him.”

His head lifted with a jerk; his hands stilled.

“Can you believe that?” She felt hysteria building, a hard knot of it at the base of her throat. “Can you believe she would even suggest such a thing?”

His expression closed off. He wet his lips, and said, carefully, “I actually can, yeah.”

The knot in her throat became a spiked ball, sharply painful. “What?” When she pushed him, he released her and stepped back. “Youwhat?”

“Lia, it makes sense–”

“No! No, it makes no sense, because I can’t stand that damnable fop!”

“Lia–”

“Why would you defend this?” She threw up her hands, whirled, and stormed away, unable to look at his expression of quiet resign. He was her best friend – he was supposed to agree withher, damn it. She stood in front of the window, hands on her hips, pulse pounding, trying to catch her breath. She felt as if she’d been sprinting.

Behind her. Malcolm sighed. His booted footfalls padded across the rug, and she heard the faint shakiness of his next inhale; felt the warmth of the exhale on the back of her neck. She was trembling – with so many emotions – but she didn’t try to bat him away when he slowly, deliberately wrapped both arms around her waist and snugged up against her back.

Angry as she was, she leaned back against him. Moments like these were too rare and precious to waste.

And, if she was being honest, she wasn’t angry withhim. It was a fleeting, fruitless sort of anger, anyway: the kind that lived as a low, simmering coal fire in her belly, but which boiled up at moments, when she was reminded that what she wanted – who she wanted – was something she could never have. The roar of fury faded, now; her shaking eased, as his warmth bled into her, but there was no stemming the prickling heat in her eyes.

Malcolm folded his hands together over her stomach, and nosed her hair aside, lips ghosting across the sensitive skin below her ear. “If it isn’t Lord Reginald,” he said, very quietly, very heavily, “it will be someone else. Maybe someone worse. A fop is better than an animal.”

She closed her eyes against the sting of tears. “It wouldn’t matter if it was the bloody king of Aquitainia,” she said through gritted teeth. “I don’t want to marry anyone.”Unless it’s you, she didn’t say, because she’d said it too many times before, and having him remind her, sadly, that that was impossible always left her fuming.

“Sweetheart,” he murmured. When she didn’t respond – half-choked on useless emotions – he turned her gently around and took her face in hands that were rough from hard work, but soft in the way they touched her. His thumbs swept the dampness from the corners of her eyes. “Look at me.” It was a plea.

When she opened her eyes, the look on his face devastated her.

“Wherever you go,” he said, “whether it’s Hope Hall, or Nede, or Aeretoll, or across the Western Sea, I’ll go with you. Whether it’s Reginald L’Espoir, or the king of the Inglewood outlaws–”

She snorted, and he grinned, fleetingly, before he grew serious again.

“–I know you must marry for Drakewell. It’s your duty. But we can still be together, you and me.”

“In secret?”

“As we have been.”

Her next breath hurt. “You would have me cuckold my husband.”

“Husband in name only. It would be a strategic alliance, and not a love match.”

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