She glanced back at him, looking shocked, and though he suspected he should assure her he hadn't meant to do that, he couldn't seem to manage a word. Her declaration of love coupled with all that naked rosy skin had rendered him witless.
Growling low in his throat, he scooped her into his arms and planted his mouth firmly over hers.
She was stiff at first, but in a few moments she was kissing him back passionately.
"You didn't have to rip my dress," she said plaintively when he let her breathe. "I love this one. Nellie worked on it for days."
"I'm sorry, lass," he said somberly. " 'Twas an accident, lass. Sometimes I forget my strength. I mean to be gentle but it doesn't come out that way. Can you forgive me?"
She sighed, but nodded and kissed him again, locking her arms behind his neck as he carried her toward the door of their bedchamber.
"You have, without a doubt, Chloe, the most lovely behind I've ever seen," he purred, shifting her in his arms to splay his big palm over the twin curves of it.
"Oh!" She squirmed in his arms. "I tell you I love you and that's what you say?"
He silenced her with another kiss, and kicked open the bedchamber door.
"And I'd love you even if you didn't," he said softly.
She melted in his arms.
"And I think that no man has ever been told he was loved in such a memorable fashion, and I shall always treasure the memory."
She smiled beatifically. "Really? You don't think I'm the biggest geek in the world?"
He tossed her to the bed and slipped a dirk from his boot. "I think," he said silkily, as he gripped the bodice of her ruined gown in his hand and slit it down the front, laying the gown neatly in two halves, "that you are perfect exactly as you are and I wouldn't change one thing about you."
He tossed the torn dress from the bed and tugged his shirt over his head.
She watched him with wide eyes, then laughed. "Nell is really going to wonder what happened to my dress."
"I'm fair certain Nellie will never ask," he said huskily, as he stretched his body atop hers. "I've seen a gown or two of hers in the rag heap."
"Really?" Chloe blinked, pondering Silvan in a new light. He was a handsome man, and it was from his genes that Dageus and Drustan had come. Behind his scholarly mien, she suddenly realized, Silvan MacKeltar probably concealed a lot of things.
"Aye. Truly."
"You have too many clothes on," Chloe complained breathlessly a few moments later.
He offered her his dirk to cut them off, but she took one look at those snug leather trews and decided there was no way she was letting a sharp blade get near what she knew was inside them.
So she borrowed another of his delicious tactics and undressed him mostly with her mouth.
Chloe was deliriously content. Curled with her backside to Dageus's front, his strong arms wrapped around her, she was blissfully sated.
He loved her. He'd not only told her, he'd shown her with his body. It was there in the way he stroked her cheek or brushed her curls from her eyes. It was there in his long, slow kisses. It was there in the way he held her in the aftermath.
With that resolved, she was impatient to lay all her concerns to rest. With such love between them, she knew they could face anything together.
She squirmed in his embrace, slipping around in his arms to face him. He smiled at her, one of those lazy, melting smiles he gave so rarely, and kissed her.
Sighing with pleasure, and before he could distract her again, she drew her head back, breaking the kiss. "Dageus, I'm ready to know about the curse now. Tell me what it is, and tell me what you're looking for."
He kissed her again, lazily, sucking her lower lip.
"Please," she persisted. "I need to know."
He smiled faintly, then sighed. "I ken it. I've wanted to tell you, but it seemed you needed a bit more time."
"I did. So many things happened so quickly, that I felt like I needed to catch my breath or something. But I'm ready now," she assured him.
He stared at her a long moment, his eyes narrowed. "Lass," he said softly, "if you tried to leave me, I fear I wouldn't let you. I fear I would do whatever I had to do, no matter how ruthless, to keep you."
"I consider myself warned," she said pertly. "Trust me, I'm not going anywhere. Now tell me."
He held her gaze a bit longer, silently assessing her. Then, capturing her hands in his, he twined their fingers together and began.
"So let me get this straight," a wide-eyed Chloe clarified some time later, "you used the stones to go back in time and—oh! That's what that quote in the Midhe Codex meant about the man who takes the bridge that cheats death! The bridge is the Ban Drochaid, 'the white bridge,' because you can take it backward in time and undo a person's death. That quote was about you."