The Earl of Christmas Past (Goode Girls Romance #5) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,22

her, creating an undeniable legacy of which any man would be proud.

It was almost worth one hundred and fifty years of loneliness to have met her.

She’d brought him back to himself, somehow.

Whatever she saw in his eyes caused her to step in toward him. And, once again, she stumbled.

Catching herself this time, she lifted her skirt to examine the packed earth beneath her.

Whatever she found caused her to gasp.

“Hold on.” Rushing past him—nearly rushing through him had he not moved out of the way in time—she retrieved the lantern from the entry and plucked a bayonet from the wall.

Returning, she shocked him by placing the lantern on the ground, kneeling down in a pool of her skirts, and using the bayonet to scratch and dig into the dirt.

“What the devil are you about?” He hovered over her, worried that she’d finally reached the edge of her sanity.

“This floor has a dip right here about the size of my shoe,” she said around the labor of her digging. “After I tripped this last time, I thought, if Carrie was a clever girl, she might bury her most prized possessions to make certain they weren’t discovered. Even if the Chamber of Sorrows was.”

Something within him ignited. He wished he could grab something and rake at the earth next to her. That he could reach into it and pull whatever might be down there above ground. But the bland weight of weakness still tugged his limbs until they were heavy, and he began to admit to himself that the torpor was calling to him.

Every moment he spent with her cost him, dearly.

But the darkness would have to drag him away. He’d not go willingly. Not while he could bask in her presence for one more moment.

She worked until she was winded, and the helplessness he felt made him want to throw things. To shake his fist at whichever angry god cursed him to such an existence.

Until a hollow sound announced the bayonet had struck something.

Their eyes met for a breathless moment.

Then, she attacked the ground around it with renewed vigor, scraping out a small, square wooden box. She stood, and John could hear Vanessa’s heart beating hard enough for the both of them as she opened the simple container.

Every jewel inside the box glittered gem-bright in the golden glow of the lantern.

But it was the twin rubies he found that suffused him with a lightning bolt of sensation.

“Vanessa. The ring.”

With trembling fingers, she plucked it out and held it up so they could both gawk at its magnificence.

He could feel it pulsing with a magnetism no inanimate object should possess. The lion stared at him from hot ruby eyes.

Claiming him. Calling to him.

He thrust his hand between them, splaying his fingers. “Put it on.”

Her forehead crimped. “What if it doesn’t work?”

“Vanessa.”

She nodded, lowering her hand to slide it onto his finger.

His boots hit the earth with a heavy thud. He had weight. He had mass. The air bit at his cheeks and filled his lungs with a cold incredible breath. His heart threw itself against wide ribs and his muscles corded with strength. Veins pulsed with blood.

With need.

His hand gripped hers. Slim, cold fingers trembled against his flesh. His skin.

Her eyes were wide and watery as she stared at him without blinking.

“John?” she whispered.

He was almost sorry.

Almost sorry that a strangled groan was all the warning she had before he crushed her to him and captured her already open mouth.

Chapter Six

His kiss was a sweet violence. Both a conquest and a claiming.

Vanessa welcomed the assault on her senses as this man, this solid, starving, sexual man clamped her entire body to his and devoured her mouth as if her kiss could restore his very life.

The sensation of his lips—his skin—was more than a tingling suggestion now. He was tactile. Warm. Almost as if fed by lifeblood.

Almost.

She still detected that the feel of his flesh was imperfect. A vibration persisted where the smooth whorls of his fingerprints should be. It was at once more than an ordinary touch, and not enough.

It didn’t matter. She’d take whatever she could get.

He had a scent now, cedar and leather and the faintest trace of gunpowder.

It tantalized her endlessly.

Her hands clutched the lapels of his crimson wool coat, reveling in the coarse fibers abrading her fingertips because it meant he was real. Tangible. She suddenly wanted to explore everything. Everywhere. Every hot, smooth and strong inch of him.

He kissed like a man denied a hundred and fifty years