Ramsay blinked down at her, his head cocked in a very doglike gesture of confusion. “I never said—”
Cecelia put her hand to her forehead, feeling feverish and strange. Breathless and a bit drunk. “Everyone always thinks I know what to do. But I don’t! I don’t know what to do.” She didn’t inhale so much as she sobbed breaths into lungs that seemed to refuse to inflate. “I’m so. Lost. So weary.” She hated admitting it. Hated herself for her weakness. Hated that he’d see her as weak. “Absolutely everything is a disaster.” Blood rushed in her ears, and her vision swam. Her knees didn’t seem capable of supporting her weight anymore, and she reached out rather blindly, fearing collapse.
He caught her before she buckled, supporting her weight.
“Don’t leave,” she pleaded, surging forward against him. Burrowing into his chest and clutching at his arms. “Don’t leave me alone. What if someone comes for us in the night?” She did her best to keep her voice down, to make certain Phoebe wouldn’t wake to hear the hysteria bubbling within her. “What if you don’t hear me scream in time?”
His hand landed on the back of her hair and cupped her head to his chest. “Och, lass. I didna ken ye were so frightened.” He whispered this as though the discovery humbled him, then drew her close against his body. Curling over her, around her, he allowed the storm of her tears to break upon him as he sheltered her.
Somehow her spectacles disappeared, and he set them aside before his palm returned to glide up and down her spine in a slow dance as she gave in to her grief.
She cried for her mother. For Henrietta. Phoebe. For the souls who’d been lost in the explosion. For little Katerina Milovic and any girl who was missing, victimized, afraid, or unloved.
She cried for Ramsay. For the boy who survived alone in this cabin, who’d been mistreated. Forgotten. Abandoned.
She wept because people were so unkind. Because they preyed upon one another in ways she couldn’t begin to imagine, and that fact made her feel helpless and afraid. She wanted to reach out and heal the entire world, and yet she couldn’t even keep those in her household safe from faceless enemies.
“Breathe,” Ramsay murmured. “I have ye. Ye’re safe.”
“I know I am,” she gasped through humiliating hiccups. “Because you’re here. Because you saved Phoebe and me, even though you hated me. How can I ever begin to thank you for that? I cannot repay you for bringing us to a place that causes you pain by forcing you to sleep in the dirt! It’s unthinkable. Unconscionable.”
He expelled a long breath full of so many things left unsaid. She heard it leave his lungs through the ear she’d pressed against the warm muscle of his chest.
“I didna mean to sleep, all told. I was going to keep watch,” he muttered. “Although, after what I put ye through, perhaps the dirt is what I deserve.”
“But don’t you see?” She pulled back, craving the sight of him. Wanting him to witness the depth of her gratitude as well as hear it. “I don’t even care that you were cruel. Every time I’ve needed you, you’ve been there, quite literally lifting the burden from my shoulders. You can’t know what that means to me.”
The glaciers that had once been his irises melted into dark pools of azure before he hid them beneath his lowered lids, turning his face away.
“You’ve barely glanced at me all day.” She reached up to cup his cheek, tugging gently at his stubborn jaw.
“Cecelia.” He resisted her pull, the bristle of his evening stubble sharp against the soft flesh of her palm. “Doona make me. Not now.”
“Do I still disgust you?” she challenged. “Because I cannot tell. Sometimes you look at me like you did that night you kissed me. As though I am extraordinary, or perhaps worthy. And sometimes … I see storms in your eyes. Hatred. Wrath and—”
“Nay. God, woman, ye canna think that.” He lifted a hand as if to silence her, but the knuckles that brushed the bruise on her cheek were infinitely tender. “I canna look at ye without wanting to bring the man to life who did this, just so I can have the pleasure of killing him again. Slower this time. That is the wrath ye read in me. A bruise on yer skin is like an open wound on my soul. It hurts me to look.”
Cecelia was so startled by the fervency of his words, contrasted with the reverence of his touch, that she could summon no reply. She stood beneath his gaze, the curves of her body still pressed to the planes of his, and gloried in the sensation his touches provoked within her.
Her hand still shaped to his jaw as his fingers ventured up her cheek to her temple and then threaded in her hair.
Without meaning to, she leaned into his palm, seeking his touch like a cat hungry for affection.
“Christ,” he breathed, turning his head to press his lips against the thin and tender skin on the inside of her wrist. “What are ye doing to me?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Cecelia hadn’t the first idea what she was doing, but her body certainly seemed to. It responded so intuitively to his proximity. Blossomed and ached where he touched her.
Ramsay exerted a gentle pressure against her scalp, drawing her closer.
His head lowered incrementally toward her, eyes glazed with intent.
At first, the kiss was a ghost haunting the space between them. A specter of what might have bloomed before all of the chaos ripped their worlds asunder.
Her eyes affixed on his lips, finding a hint of the divine where malice had once been. A glimpse of the eternal. An echo of forever.
Perhaps he could learn how to forgive.
Her heartbeats stumbled, colliding into one another and bouncing off her ribs. Her nerves still clamored. Anxiety throbbed through her veins with every elevated beat of her heart. She closed her eyes and held her breath, unable to watch.
What if he came to his senses before he kissed her?
She needn’t have worried.
Ramsay’s lips were hot and dry, full and utterly sensual when he pressed them to hers. Tentative and deferential, he brushed light swaths of desire against her mouth, soothing away the fear and replacing it with an equally powerful emotion.
One that would not be ignored.
He skimmed the seam of her lips with his tongue in a warm caress as his hand covered hers on his jaw. He laced their fingers in a motion that sent shivers rocketing through her entire frame like the waves of a sea gale. One crashing over the other with no sign of a break.
She finally released the breath she’d been holding.
He inhaled it, taking it deep into himself.
Was this temptation? Was this the seductive sin the Vicar Teague had warned her about, this inescapable, unrelenting ache? This drive that went deeper than logic or reason ever could. That welled from a part of her so instinctive, so primal, that even language didn’t exist within. From a place that only understood what was unspoken.
The vibration of his moan against her lips demanded entry.
Entry she granted with a sibilant sigh.
Apparently, this was a language she spoke too well. Because at her first sign of submission, she found herself against the door, held captive by a mountain of muscle.
He caught both her hands above her head. His tongue delved into her mouth, not just gaining a taste, but claiming territory in hot, silken slides. He tasted of wine and wickedness, a flavor so incredibly intoxicating it threatened to rob her of what little reason she had left.