Sibyl leaned across the parking brake and breathed in the scent of him—sweat and blood, yes, and fast-food onion and sweet chocolate from a shake, but so very real. Real enough to keep all manner of boogeyman, real and imagined, far away.
Dipping her head even closer, Sibyl pressed her lips to his scraggly cheek and kissed him.
Real warmth. Real scent. Real whiskers against her lips.
Real man.
She drew back, eyes wide, and tasted salt. She watched him wrinkle his nose, and clear his throat, and open his eyes—which slanted to her side of the car.
She stared and said nothing, her heart racing and her mind…not.
He frowned as if confused, then blinked the expression away and grinned sleepily at her. “Hey. You got us here in one piece, huh?”
She nodded.
“Hope I didn’t snore.” At that, he hauled himself—with a louder, pained groan at his injuries—out of the car. He
had
snored, just a little. See:
once-broken nose
. But Sibyl hadn’t minded.
Real.
“You’re staying here tonight.” He made it like an order, so she immediately considered arguing. But the light-rails had stopped running hours ago. She would have to borrow Mitch’s car or call a cab to get back to the West End, where she didn’t want to be anyway, and she didn’t have the money to hire—
Oh. Actually, she had over a thousand dollars in her boots. Was Trace that tired, or did he really trust her that much?
She scrambled after him, kind of wishing he didn’t trust her like this.
God knew she’d stopped being trustworthy a lifetime ago. When he insisted on her taking his bed, promising to sleep on the sofa, and staggered off to the shower across the hall, Sibyl used that opportunity to look through the drawers of the one antique dresser in his room, deliberately avoiding the medieval short sword laying dramatically on top of it. Sure, she didn’t find anything more damning than a pack of condoms, nor more useful than an old white T-shirt to sleep in—which hung on her like a tent until she knotted part of it at her waist. Sure, she finished by tucking his winnings under his socks. But that didn’t ameliorate the fact that she was still spying on him—the guy who valued honesty so much. That didn’t mean that, had she found something to use against his father or the Comitatus, she wouldn’t have leapt on it, even if she’d had to steal Mitch’s car to secret her find away.
Her relief didn’t make her any more trustworthy, anymore than Marquess of Queensbury rules made boxing less dangerous than NHB fighting.
Crawling into Trace’s bed, surrounded by the smell of him, Sibyl couldn’t possibly sleep. She listened to the shower across the hall. She imagined Trace in there, washing all that blood and sweat off his warrior’s body. Why hadn’t it bothered her more?
Because it’s his.
The horror she’d felt when she’d thought him hurt or dead, the odd ache in her chest when he’d all but dared her to be disgusted by him. She didn’t need experience she didn’t have, or the IQ she did, to face what this had become. She only needed a little courage.
She was falling in love with Trace Beaudry. Trace Beaudry-LaSalle…no. That just confused things too much. Just let him be Trace.
Despite her best efforts. Despite excellent reasons not to. Despite the fact that it couldn’t possibly end well—not that anything did, for her. The lie had become truth. She was falling in love with Trace.
The weight of keeping that from herself eased off her slim shoulders. The futility of fighting it brought its own kind of relief, of stillness. Sibyl snuggled deeper into his bed, breathed his safe, male scent off his pillows and imagined him in the shower, naked, with curiosity instead of fear—
Then she jolted awake, sitting straight up at the sight of him filling the doorway.
The door must have woken her.
As her eyes adjusted to the faint hall light framing him against the dark room, she saw that he wore nothing but a towel, slung low on his hips. And…oh! Even with most of him in shadows, Trace was stunning. Broad shoulders eased into an equally broad chest, masculine and hairy. The chest—and the hair—tapered down his abs into narrow hips….
And then the towel. Stupid towel.
Sibyl would have had to lean forward to pick up this line past his equally furry, tree-trunk thighs to check out his knees and calves, but she couldn’t move.
“Sorry,” rasped Trace. “Forgot—need clothes for downstairs.”
Better than forgetting she was in his bed, she guessed. She watched him shuffle to his dresser, stiff and sore. Practically dead on his feet. And she thought she was tired?
How bad a beating had he taken tonight, anyway? In the shadows, she had little hope of making out his bruises. But he gave her his bed and planned to take the stairs down to the sofa, anyway.
Chivalry—the real kind, the honorable kind—wasn’t dead.
“Stay here,” she said quickly, before she could chicken out.
Trace paused mid-shuffle and looked dumbly at her. Then he shook his head. “You get the bed.”
Idiot.
But she wouldn’t say that, wasn’t sure she wholly believed it. Instead, she threw back the covers, showing some leg. “With me. Stay here.”
His brow furrowed as he seemed to search for reasons he knew he should object. But sleepy people were easily led, one reason sleep-deprivation made such a good torture technique. Like the kind Comitatus conquerors were once so fond of.
Shut up.
“Now,” Sibyl insisted firmly. To her surprise, with a shrug of defeat, Trace turned and sank stiffly onto the bed. She grasped a handful of fitted sheet to keep from rolling into him as the mattress tipped. “Good. Now lie down.”
He obeyed, though with a less-than-docile snort. “If you’re thinking to molest me, you’re gonna have to do all the work. Not that I’m not…you know…”
She smiled at him, an unfamiliar warmth spreading through her, and offered the appropriate quote. “‘The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak'?”
“Yeah.” He yawned. “That. ’Cept, not
weak.
”
“Spent?” she suggested, stretching the covers back over them both and snuggling back down. Now the bed
really
smelled like him. Damp, and clean, and warm, and
here.
And she was falling in love. As much as she was capable which, luckily, probably wasn’t much.
“No promises about tomorrow, either.” Even as she wondered whether that meant yes or no to having her wicked way with him, he added, “But if you aren’t, you know, serious? Go downstairs now.” He yawned again. “Or wake up first.”
“You’re not a saint,” she agreed happily, wiggling closer to his curved, bitable shoulder. “Not even like William of Gellone.”
Even now, she hoped that sword of his came from one of the other French heroes, and not Charlemagne. Not the conqueror.
“Damned right…” But the last of his sentence faded away, followed by a slow, deep breath.
Listening to his breathing—even more soothing than the shower—she tentatively slid a hand over his upper arm, then onto the arch of his chest. She’d been right. Furry. She spread her fingers into the surprising softness and warmth.
His breathing stuttered, then continued.
She slid one slim leg over his, her knee grazing his damp towel. He probably shouldn’t sleep in that. She had no idea how to get it off him without waking him again. Oh, well.
Tucking her nose and forehead against his upper arm, Sibyl relaxed back into sleep.
With Trace.
Trace woke suddenly, tense and alert. What…?
He tried to sit up, but at least seven different parts of his body screamed at him not to move, so he lay still again. The sun hadn’t risen yet. So what had disturbed him?
Uh-oh.
Someone lay in bed with him. Someone soft, and small and female. Someone who smelled like books, and autumn, and—oh.
He relaxed, remembering. Not some nameless one-night stand.
Sibyl.
Then his battered body started to revive at the thought.
Sibyl?
And what had woken him?
Then he heard it again, and recognized it from his slowly waking memory.
A whimper.
“No,” she whispered, curling farther into herself. Since she was hugging his arm like a teddy bear, and had a naked leg on top of his, she couldn’t achieve full fetal position.
“No.”
That had to be one hell of a nightmare. “Hey,” he whispered, his voice hoarse from last night’s near strangling. “Hey, Sib.”
She bolted upright, eyes wide. “What?”
“Shhh. Don’t wake Greta.”
She stiffened, maybe as surprised to wake with him as he was with her. He could see her in the gray pre-dawn, her long hair mussed, a tent-size T-shirt—his?—dangerously close to sliding off her shoulder. To his relief, she lay back down and wove her arms around his upper arm again. “Sorry.”
“’S’all right.”
She tried to slide her smooth, bare leg over his again—and her bare knee brushed evidence of just how all right he was. “Oh.”
Damn. How long had it been since he’d woken at full flag?
“Sorry,” he muttered, forcing a few stiff muscles to move enough to study her startled face. Musta lost the towel.
Virgin,
he reminded himself grimly. No way could he ask her to take the reins on this one—assuming she was even interested—and he really wasn’t in any shape to act on this himself. He wasn’t sure he could even drag himself to the bathroom to take care of things solo—and he sure as hell wasn’t going to tend to himself with her right beside him.
To his relief, she looked startled but not disgusted. In fact, she bit her lower lip, then shyly asked, “May I touch?”
He doubted this could end well, but even he didn’t have the strength to hold back the “Hell, yeah,” that leapt out of him. “I’m naked and in bed with you. Permission’s kind of…”
“Implied?” But he didn’t agree with her because she’d just slid her hand down his front, as if savoring the feel of him, until her fingers glided up his erection. “Oh!”
Don’t come yet. Don’t come yet. You’re not fifteen. Think about, uh…
“You haven’t even made it to third base?” he managed to grunt as her soft fingers explored the length and width of him.
“No,” she whispered, and he heard a surprising smile in her words as she experimented with one finger, then with her whole hand.
“So, not even—” he grit his teeth at the heaven of her palm encircling him. She bit her lip again. Worried? Disgusted? No, to judge by the refreshing sparkle in her eyes, this anatomy lesson fascinated her. Now she began to slowly stroke him.
Oh,
crap. He was so gonna screw this up.
“Is this third base?”
“God, yes.”
“Then no.”
Somehow, he managed to capture her wrist, even as his baser instincts cursed the sudden nobility. “Look, Sib, I’ve got bruised ribs, a bad knee and God knows what else going on. You’re on your way to making me feel ten kinds of wonderful, but I’m not in any shape to repay you tonight, so I’ll probably just fall asleep afterward like some ass. You want better than that.”
She sat up, despite his hold on her wrist. Her body pushed even more of the covers off them, and he caught a glimpse of her panties under the bunched edge of his shirt. How could someone he’d once considered merely cute have such shapely legs?
“I don’t want better than that,” she told him solemnly.
Way to make a guy feel special. He was going to tell her that she should—but then she simply said, “I want you.”
At that, no amount of nobility or pain could have stopped him. Staring at her in amazement, he let go of her wrist. But instead of recapturing his erection with her hand, Sibyl cocked her head—then bent at the waist, her hair sweeping his abs like a curtain, and tasted him.
Trace nearly bucked off the bed, but he could barely tell the difference between hurt and heaven. He had one hell of a good clue.
Heaven came with Sibyl.
Sibyl had never felt so tightly drawn, so powerful. She explored Trace’s amazing body with her hands, with her tongue, kissing and tasting and returning, again and again, to the most obvious proof of his masculinity. Her mind powered down and instinct took over. He moved under her and bit back groans, or moans—she couldn’t quite tell the difference. Finally, he wrapped his hand around her head and held her there, so she guessed he must be getting impatient. So she practiced taking him deeply into her mouth, the way some girls bragged about. He almost didn’t fit, no matter how wide she opened. So why wasn’t she frightened of him penetrating her in even more intimate ways?
Because he won’t hurt you.
Somehow, over the last days, she’d accepted that. Unclenching from her hair, he slid his hand down her cotton-covered back and into her panties, from behind. His callused palm cupping her butt felt amazing. When his fingers probed between her legs, she stiffened, lost track of the rhythm she’d begun to find—and he immediately retreated.
He won’t hurt you.
But was that necessarily a good thing? Would it rob her of the completion, the satisfaction, that her body needed with increasing vehemence?
Trace began to buck under her, his teeth gritted, his noises muffled and guttural. Before she knew what had happened, he’d grasped her clumsily with both hands, one on an elbow, one behind her back, and dragged her bodily upward while he arched off the bed, biting back sounds that wanted to be shouts. She felt something warm—ejaculate, she supposed—splatter against her hip, but then he was kissing her between gasps, clearly more than pleased.
“I did it right?” she whispered. His laughter—and a few curses that somehow came out approvingly—joined the kisses and the gasps.
Now was when he would go to sleep like he’d warned her. She knew better than to mind, despite the way her foot kept dragging up and down his leg to feel the friction of his hair and the hardness of his muscles, despite the throbbing deep inside her that seemed to be begging for more, more. Not his fingers, not yet. Those had startled her. But…
“Take off your panties,” Trace growled, apparently having forgotten his disabilities.