Page 25 of My Hellion, My Heart
“Please, Henry, look at me.”
He cracked open his eyelids to blaring sunshine and a pained, beautiful face hovering above his. Silence thundered in his ears.Was he dead?An angel such as she did not belong in his world. Such beauty would not suffer to be surrounded by such filth. Henry struggled to breathe as reality returned in fractured swatches, dissolving the nightmare that had gripped him. His angel remained, staring at him, her hat gone, and he remembered who she was. Where he was. The road. A tree branch falling. “Irina.”
“Oh thank God,” she gasped, her hands cradling his cheeks.
“Branch,” he ground out, the back of his head blaring with pain. Like waking after one of the night terrors he used to have almost every night, the memories of that foul French prison cell throbbed with stark clarity. His stomach was tight, his heart racing.
“I know, I saw it just as you dove for me,” she said, her thumbs still gently caressing his cheeks and jaw. “You saved my head, but I’m worried about yours. You took the brunt of the fall.”
“I’m fine,” he said, trying to sit up. Irina leaned on his chest and pushed him back down onto the ground.
“You are not,” she insisted. “You were shouting. You were in pain.”
“I’m in pain now, with those pointy elbows of yours in my ribs,” he grumbled. She ignored him.
“What happened? Henry?”
His name like that, so soft and concerned on her lips, with her hands stroking his jaw…a wall fissured inside of him.
“A memory,” he whispered, closing his eyes again. “Nothing more.”
One of her thumbs swept closer to his lower lip. “A memory of what happened to you in France?” she asked with caution.
He stiffened under her hands. “What do you know of that?”
He did not discuss it. With anyone. The only people who knew about his time as a prisoner were his mother, Rose, War Office officials, and the Prince Regent himself. He was certain of rumors and whispers, too, but nothing true or substantial.
“Only that it haunts you,” she answered. Irina’s thumb touched the curve of his bottom lip. Her eyes bored into his, the balm of her compassion like a salve on his ragged emotions. Inexplicably, his breathing slowed and calmed.
His heart, too, had lessened its gallop, and the pulsing images of the prison had slipped into the closed-up room in his mind where he preferred they stay. Usually they persisted for hours, and he was forced to run or call for a woman to distract him. But they were gone now, swept away by only the gentle press of Irina’s fingers and her sweet concern.
Irina levered her hands to her side and adjusted her position over him so that her breasts lay flat against his chest instead of her elbows. Her dark curls spilled over her shoulders, and Henry had the indescribable urge to bury his face in them. She was staring at him now, a look of unhidden yearning in those magnetic eyes, and the space between them shifted into something charged.
Her chest rose and fell above his in shallow pants. With a soft inhalation, Irina drew a bare fingertip across the parted seam of his lips. The dull throb in his skull was replaced by a throb in another region of his body. She’d removed her riding gloves, he realized, and he could taste the salt on her skin. Henry wanted to suck that teasing finger into his mouth and then replace it with her tongue. Hell, he wanted her to straddle where he ached, right here in the middle of the post road, and grind herself against him, finding her pleasure even through the friction of their breeches. He wanted it with a kind of need he hadn’t felt in a long time.
Reason returned with the sound of the carriage nearing the blind curve of the bend.
“I should attempt to get up before my mother sees us and has heart failure,” he said softly, and with a groan of effort, pushed her body gently from his ribs and sat up.
Irina kneeled beside him, dirt smudging her breeches and riding coat. She tried to secure the tangled mess of her hair, and Henry wanted to tell her to leave it. She looked like a beautiful and wild forest sprite. He said nothing, however, watching as she pinned the heavy mass in place. He had no claim on her hair…or any part of her, for that matter.
A few paces away, a massive branch lay in the center of the road. It had splintered in places, the wood having been old and dry. Just beyond that, their horses waited, luckily also unharmed.
“Thank you,” Irina said as the loud rattling of carriage tack came up behind them. Billings wouldn’t have seen what had happened even from his driver’s perch given the sharp curve, which meant the countess would also be none the wiser. Henry was grateful for small mercies. He did not want her unduly worried, and apart from a bruised shoulder and head, he was fine. He got to his feet, his back smarting with pain from the fall and extended his hand to help Irina stand, as well. “For saving my life. Again,” she finished.
Henry held onto her fingers, reveling in the difference in size from his own. His hand dwarfed hers, and he was struck with the urge to do it all again. To protect and to keep her safe. He didn’t make a reply but released her hand as the door to the barouche opened and his mother called out.
“What in the name of the king is going on out here? Henry? Irina, dear, are you injured?”
“No,” they both replied quickly, to set his mother at ease. They grinned at one another, though only briefly.
“A fallen branch,” Henry explained, choosing to leave out the rest as Billings hopped down to help clear it from the road.
“Thank goodness,” she replied, a bit too dryly. “What a mess that branch made. We are lucky it did not fall right on top of us. Come now, we should be off.”
Henry went for the horses. “Will you ride in the barouche now?” he asked Irina. She took her horse’s reins and climbed into the saddle. He shook his head and grimaced at the spear of pain. “Fine. Have it your way, princess. But no more racing.”
After a few minutes, she turned to him with an impish look. “I have it on good authority that I was in the lead when that branch fell.”
