Page 85 of The Scandal You Started
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 thetondictated 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 thetonhad 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 waslove.
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.”
