Griffin Stone:Duke Of Decadence

She quickly opened her eyes, slowly turning her head to the left as she looked beside her, her breath catching in her throat as she saw that Griffin lay next to her, one of his arms curved about her waist, a leg thrown over the top of both of hers.

As if he were protecting her, even in his sleep.

He lay above the covers rather than under them, Bea discovered on closer inspection, the darkness of his hair more tousled than ever as his head lay on the pillows beside her own, his harshly chiselled features appearing much softer in sleep.

Bea’s fingers itched to trace those finely arched brows. The sharply etched cheeks and the length of his aristocratic nose. As for those chiselled lips...

They looked so much softer when Griffin’s mouth was not set in the habitually grim and determined shape it bore when he was awake. Lips so soft and inviting, in fact, that Bea’s temptation to taste them became too much for her, her lids fluttering closed as she began to move her face closer towards his.

‘What are you doing?’

Bea froze with her own lips just inches away from Griffin’s, guilty colouring warming her cheeks as she looked up at him; she had been so intent on kissing the softness of his lips, she had failed to notice that Griffin had raised his own lids and was now looking at her with stormy grey eyes.

Angry eyes?

She moistened her own parted lips before answering him. ‘I was...merely taken aback at finding you here in bed beside me.’ She turned the explanation into a challenge, having no intention of owning up to the yearning she had known to kiss him, to taste the soft temptation of his lips.

Lips that were once again set in that grim, uncompromising line as he sat up in the bed before swinging his legs to the floor and standing up.

‘I apologise,’ he rasped gruffly as he looked down at her between narrowed lids, his back stiff and unyielding, shoulders tensed. He had removed his boots, and unbuttoned his waistcoat, but otherwise was still as fully dressed as he had been the night before. ‘I meant only to hold you for several minutes after your upset, and that blasted chair is so uncomfortable.’ He scowled at the offending piece of furniture. ‘I must have drifted off to sleep myself once you were settled.’

Only one part of that explanation held any significance for Bea. ‘After my upset?’ Her face paled at the thought she might have had another nightmare. One that might possibly have revealed even more of the events of her captivity.

‘You did not wake, just became restless and disturbed, and muttered a little in your sleep.’ Griffin frowned as he recalled how he had been woken from his own fitful dozing in the chair in the early hours of the morning to see Bea thrashing restlessly in the bed, her words incomprehensible to him as she muttered and protested and cried out in her sleep.

Except for...

He looked down at her searchingly. ‘Who is Michael?’

Bea returned his gaze blankly, her face unnaturally pale.

‘Michael?’ she repeated uncertainly.

‘Michael,’ Griffin confirmed abruptly. ‘You called out for him in your sleep.’

‘I did?’ Her expression remained uncomprehending.

He nodded. ‘You kept repeating his name, and then you said, “Michael must be so alone, so very alone!” and then you began to cry.’

Griffin could still remember the clenching of his gut as Bea had called out for the other man in her sleep, and how she had shed tears because she could not be with him.

He had no memory of having fallen asleep on the bed beside her after he had sought to comfort her, but he did recall the weight of her obvious love for the other man as weighing heavily on his chest.

Because he had enjoyed kissing her?

Because he wanted to kiss her again?

Because he was growing fond of Bea himself?

Griffin briskly dismissed such thoughts as nonsense. He merely felt responsible for Bea, and was concerned as to what had happened to her and why. Saddened for her, too, because she seemed to be so alone in the world.

Except she obviously was not as alone as he had thought she was. Because she was obviously concerned for—loved?—a man named Michael.

Did this Michael love her in return?

Of course he did; how could any man not fall in love with Bea if she chose to give her love to him?

Then where was this Michael now?

Why was he not the one here to comfort Bea when she was so lost and in pain? And why was he not ripping the country apart in his efforts to find her? To rescue her?

As Griffin was sure he would have done, in the same circumstances!

An obvious answer to those questions was that perhaps the other man was dead.

That the reason this Michael was not searching for Bea was because the people who had taken her might possibly have killed her lover during that abduction? It might even be that it was the shock of that death that was responsible for her amnesia, rather than the blow she had received to the head, or the horror of her abduction.