Reckless (Age of Conquest #5) - Tamara Leigh Page 0,58
offer—that this man who had risked so much to save her would be strengthened by the certainty he was not alone and was loved, that hope which must seem to spill through his fingers would pour into him, that a way would be made for him here on earth so he would remain a long while, and that she would help rather than hinder.
Nicola did not know how long they remained thus, only that never would she forget the minutes she wished were hours for how right it felt to hold him though he did not hold her—and how good it felt that the irresponsible one might mend some of her wrongs.
It was Vitalis who ended it, though not abruptly. It took some minutes for him to fully quiet, and in the still that followed, she sensed he struggled to bring himself back to this place and reconcile who he was with what he had become. How well he succeeded, she could not know, but he breathed deep and drew away from the woman he had allowed to peer into his darkness, a woman he had never wanted and would never want.
As I want him, she thought as he set his back against the rock wall, leaving her arms empty and no place for her hands other than her lap as she sank onto her heels. So this is love, she thought as his lids narrowed on her as if to hide what was in those brown depths.
Though she longed to glimpse kindred feeling there, more likely she would find regret—even self-hatred—for revealing how much a man of the sword could hurt. If not that, then perhaps he merely did her a kindness in concealing his loathing for she who was the cause of emotions that shamed him.
Regardless, I love him, she firmed that in her mind, and I wish I did not since that which proved possible for my brothers is far more impossible for me.
Silence stretched, and though she wanted to fill it with apologies for the death and desecration of Zedekiah and her part in it, just as she had been tempted to do whilst holding him, now as then she sensed it would be a mistake.
The broadening of his shoulders and loosing of the bloodied hand he clasped portended the words he spoke as he gained his feet. “If your mantle is clean, we must go.” It was said gruffly, perhaps as much out of dislike for her as a throat strained by raging, the sounds of which she had not heard until she neared the boulder upon which he had left his possessions.
She had wanted to go to him then but, determined to keep her woman’s counsel, heeded the warning it was best he be alone in answering a long-suppressed need. Thus, not until he turned silent had she entered. And been shocked and heartbroken when she saw what came after the bellowing.
“Nicola!” he said sharply, and again he shocked, this time with the offer to help her stand.
When she looked past the hand he extended that was not the bloodied one in need of tending, she saw he had reclaimed the sword she had stepped past and the belt from which it hung dragged on the waist of a tunic so wet it left no muscle to the imagination.
Avoiding his gaze, she set a hand in his and was more grateful for his aid when her cloth-covered feet slipped on wet rock. Vitalis steadied her and handed her out onto the boulder beyond the veil.
When he came alongside and she glanced up, she expected the red of his eyes and some swelling, but not a scraped brow likely the result of a lesser encounter with the rock than that suffered by his hand.
He donned his boots and mantle, and before they set off, removed from the pack a pair of boots he must have purchased at market. “Put these on.”
Her heart ached over the consideration shown her. The boots were worn and a bit small, likely fashioned for a boy too soon grown out of them, but the soles were intact and thick enough to protect her from biting rocks.
“I thank you,” she said and no more until they reached the camp. After draping her mantle over a tree’s lower limb to dry, she approached Vitalis. “Allow me to tend your hand.”
She sensed he wanted to refuse her, but after stiffly opening and closing his fingers, he removed his mantle and settled on the