The Lady Chosen (Bastion Club 1)

That was his problem. He was not at all sure he understood all that had just taken place.

She’d been attacked; he’d arrived in time to rescue her, and they’d come in here. All seemed straightforward to that point.

Then she’d wanted to thank him. He’d seen no reason not to let her.

It was after that that matters had become complicated.

He vaguely recalled thinking that indulging her was a perfectly sensible way of taking her mind off the attack. True enough, but her thanks, rendered in the manner she’d chosen, had both soothed and invoked a darker need of his own, a reaction to the incident, a compulsion to put his mark on her, to make her irrevocably his.

Put like that, it seemed a primitive, somewhat uncivilized response, yet he couldn’t deny that was what had driven him to strip her, to touch her, to know her intimately. He hadn’t understood enough to fight it, hadn’t seen the danger.

He glanced down at Leonora’s dark head, at her hair, tumbled and jumbled, warm against his shoulder.

He hadn’t intended this.

This, he now realized, increasingly so as his brain caught up with the ramifications, with the full extent of what all this now meant to him—this was a major complication in a plan that hadn’t been running all that smoothly to begin with.

He felt his face harden. His lips thinned. If he hadn’t been wary of waking her, he would have sworn.

It didn’t take much thinking to know that now there was only one way forward. No matter what options his strategist’s mind devised, his instinctive, deeply entrenched reaction never wavered.

She was his. Absolutely. In incontrovertible fact.

She was in danger, under threat.

There was only one option left.

Please…don’t leave me.

He hadn’t been able to resist that plea, knew he wouldn’t, even now, were she to make it again. There’d been some need so deep, so vulnerable in her eyes, it had been impossible for him to deny. Despite the upheaval it was going to cause, he couldn’t, didn’t, regret anything.

In reality, nothing had changed, only the relative timing.

What was required was a restructuring of his plan. On a significant scale, admittedly, but he was too much a tactician to waste time grumbling.

Reality seeped slowly into Leonora’s mind. She stirred, sighed, luxuriating in the warmth that surrounded her, enveloped her, engulfed her. Filled her.

Lashes fluttering, she opened her eyes, blinked. Realized what the source of all that comforting warmth was.

A blush—she prayed it was a blush—suffused her. She shifted enough to look up.

Trentham glanced down at her. A frown, rather vague, filled his eyes. “Just lie still.”

Beneath the covers, one large palm closed about her bottom and he shifted her, settled her more comfortably on him. About him.

“You’ll be sore. Just relax and let me think.”

She stared at him, then looked down—at her hand spread on his naked chest. Relax, he said. They were naked, limbs tangled, and he was still inside her. No longer filling her as he had, but still definitely there…

She knew men were generally unaffected by their own nakedness, yet this seemed—

Dragging in a breath, she stopped thinking about it. If she did, if she started letting herself dwell on all she’d learned, all she’d experienced, stunned amazement and wonder would keep her here for hours.

And her aunts were coming to dinner.

She’d dwell on the magic later.

Lifting her head, she looked at Trentham. He was still vaguely frowning. “What are you thin