He nodded. ‘I bought this place because it allowed me to do both.’
Lotte looked around them, seeing the place with new eyes. Sympathetic eyes. Touched, even. ‘You came here to heal…’ she whispered.
‘And to be near you,’ he finished, then jerked a chin at the opposite horizon from the cabin. ‘Twenty-three miles that way was your boarding school. That first year, I checked on you twice a week every semester, not because you were in danger. Just because… I thought that was what she would’ve wanted.’ His mouth twisted. ‘I was forced to make a sizeable donation to the headmaster for the privilege since it wasn’t strictly permitted.’
She gasped as something heavy and intensely soul-shaking moved through her. Lotte felt like she couldn’t breathe through the force of it. Through this new lens he was focusing on a subject she’d believed she’d known—and loathed—for years.
To learn the depths of his guardianship… ‘Valenti…’
His nostrils flared, probably in rejection of the shaken awe in her voice. She didn’t much care. She’d revealed so very much of her emotions to him these endless and exposing days. What was one more?
Especially when thatone morewas a revelation that set all her beliefs, challenges and accusations on their head?
He hadn’t entirely forgotten her like she’d alleged. He’d had the chance to go anywhere in the world to heal. Chosen to perform his guardianship from afar from the onset, an easy feat with a man of his wealth and stature. And while he’d done that later, when duty and family had no doubt reclaimed him, he’d chosen this place with her in mind. A decision that couldn’t havebeen easy, with the very earth and sky reminders of the ordeal he’d just been through.
And yet he’d done it.
The pure, almost sacrosanct emotion amplified, consuming her, changing her from the inside out. It awed and terrified in equal measure. And because she had no outlet for it other than through the man directly responsible for it, she spun in the water, bracing her knees on either side of his thighs as she cupped his magnificent jaw in her hands. As she looked into eyes shadowed with memories and ghosts she yearned to help him free but might never succeed.
The thought threatened to rip sobs from her very soul, so she hurried to speak, to distract her heart from the weighty reasons why easing Valenti Domene’s pain was so imperative for her. Why this man who’d let her believe she was an afterthought should be her first thought.
But maybe she now, after these trying and revealing days spent under his roof, had some inkling why he’d been avoiding her. Maybe it wasn’t because he didn’t care. Maybe it was because like everything in his grand life, guilt had assumed unreasonable proportions. If that was the case, wasn’t it right that she do her part to alleviate it?
‘You are—’
‘No. Lotte…’ It was part gruff warning, part perplexed.
‘Shh,’ she whispered. ‘Let me speak,’ she insisted. Then, taking her risk with the heart pounding its way to exposure on her very sleeve, she leaned in and pressed her mouth against his. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered against his mouth. ‘Thank you.’ A kiss to the corner of his mouth made him stiffen. ‘Takk fyrir.’
‘Lotte.’ A gravel sighing of her name, right before his hands tightened on her waist. On her next pass over his lips, he captured her in a firm lunge. A frantic swipe of his tongue, and upon granting entry, a feverish kiss that set her whole bodyalight. But just as quickly, he pulled back, silver eyes searching hers. ‘You shouldn’t be thanking me,’ he rejected roughly. ‘You should be condemning me for the most grievous failing—’
She stopped him with the simple act of sealing her lips to his once more, only stopping when a layer of tension left his body. ‘You’ve done enough self-condemning, I think.’
His lips thinned and he remained silent, but the hard, implacable look in his eyes said her words had made little, perhaps no, impact at all. He held firm to the conviction that he could’ve saved Helga.
Lotte’s heart sank a little, but she took solace in him not pushing her away as he would’ve a handful of days ago. Took solace in reminding herself that even drip-fed water could crack stone…eventually.
She would…couldbe that balm…
And that perhaps like her sister, she would be better off seizing her chance, instead of waiting around for it to fall in her lap.
That empowering thought in her mind, she kissed him once more. Bold. Open-mouthed. Relentless. And when they needed to come up for air, she strung kisses from his mouth to his hard jaw, then to his ear. And like he’d done with her before, she paused and said what she needed to. ‘Until now, this place is associated with a deeply harrowing experience. Let me give you different reasons to remember it by?’
He stiffened for a moment, but she kept on peppering kisses, his warm skin as addictive as the need to offer reprieve from the weight he carried.
‘I do not need—’
‘I beg to differ,’ she interjected. ‘I’d go as far as to say it’s essential.’
Searingly aware of the hard bulge pressed between her thighs, Lotte rolled her hips, gloried in the hiss that shot from his lips.Then she went one better. She reached up with one hand, tugged the strings of her bikini free and felt it fall away from her breasts.
His hands clamped hard on her hips, holding her in place against his thickening erection. ‘Dios mío, me vuelves loco, preciosa.’
Those were the last words they exchanged for a long time. Long after they’d driven each other to soul-shaking climax once, then again, they were gifted with the most sublime aurora. Purples, blues and greens curtained the sky above their heads, drawing a curiously tearful lump to her throat.
Lotte, aware that she was letting the moments get far too close to her heart, attempted to pull herself together, only to gasp again when she looked down to find Valenti’s intense gaze unabashedly fixed on her, his nostrils flaring wide.
‘You’re beautiful.’
