He shoved her away, and she stumbled back, falling onto the bed.
“If you were the last woman alive, I would not touch you.”
The malice in his voice made her want to cringe, but instead she shrugged indifferently. “A pity. I would have enjoyed the size of you between my legs tonight.”
Disgust wrinkled his face and filled her to near choking, though she laughed. She couldn’t let him know the truth. God forbid he learned the truth; the consequences were unimaginable.
“Get in bed and lie close to the wall,” he ordered. “I don’t want your body touching mine.”
Relieved, she immediately obeyed his dictate and scrunched herself as close to the wall as possible.
He got in bed after her and slipped beneath the blanket. Even though he kept to the edge, their bodies remained dangerously close. Any movement, and they would touch.
This was a moment where many women might find tears stinging their eyes, but Carissa hadn’t cried since she was six years old. Her father had taught her not to cry, and she had learned the lesson well.
No, tears wouldn’t do any good here. She would devise a plan of escape and return to the only life she knew. She had been foolish to think she could escape who she was, but she had hoped. Hoping, however, had never gotten her anywhere. She didn’t know why she ever thought it would.
Fate had decided her life many years ago, and she had no choice but to live it that way. And she had to keep her heart stone cold; she couldn’t be as foolish as to ever let herself hope again.
And she could never, ever let Ronan of the clan Sinclare know how very much she loved him.
Chapter 7
Ronan woke with a start, Hope’s desperate cries for help pounding in his head like an endless, resonating bell. The dream haunted him almost every night. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t save her. He was always too late.
He wondered if she cried out to him from the grave, if, when her murder was finally avenged, she would know peace. Then perhaps so would he. He turned slowly in the bed to rest an angry glare on the woman who had caused him so much heartache and grief.
She slept on her back, her arms tight to her sides, her fisted hands rigid on her chest and pressed against one another. She appeared ready to defend herself even in sleep, though one look at her lovely face would have you thinking differently.
Even in sleep, she was simply radiant, her features angelic rather than one spawned of the devil. But then Lucifer was thought to be the handsomest of angels, which made his offspring just as tempting. It was hard for a man to look on Carissa and not want her, she was that desirable. Her hair was the color of rich honey and soft as the finest spun wool, and long lashes of deeper honey framed eyes the color of the bluest summer sky. Full rosy lips and highly structured cheekbones with a hint of a blush rounded out her gorgeous features. And then there was her body, which he had come to know briefly from when he lay across her naked, her thin wool nightshift the only barrier between them. She might be petite, yet she had been sculpted by a master artist. Her perfectly balanced curves and mounds were surely meant to drive a man mad with desire. And you would think one so incomparably beautiful would be one of God’s creations: good, unselfish, and loving.
Not so.
Her body suddenly jerked and her breath caught and for several moments he waited for her to take a breath. He released his own held breath, relieved when she sighed heavily. He wished her death to be at his hands, not something as simple as taking her last breath while in a peaceful slumber. She needed to pay for her crimes, for her sins, and he would see that she did.
Her beauty and tempting body would not prevent him from carrying out justice. He sprang from the bed and hurried into his dry clothes, briefly wondering if he would ever feel worthy of wearing the Sinclare plaid once again. With more important matters to consider, he brushed the never-ending question from his mind though he knew it would linger and continue to torment him.
They would need to get a good start against the approaching storm. The farther he had traveled from the village Black, the worse the weather had grown. The snowfall had turned heavy, and the wind whipped wildly, sending shivers down clear to the bone. Twice he had to stop, once due to poor visibility and the other time due to an unexpected icy rain that had soaked him enough that he worried he’d freeze to death. Gratefully, he had been only a short distance from the cottage. And it had been easy to slip the latch with his dagger and gain entrance.
Lucky for him, the journey had been just as hard on Carissa, and she lay in a deep slumber, unaware of his arrival. It had given him time to shed his wet garments and warm himself in front of the hearth to stop his shivers. Then, with his blood heated and his determination renewed, he had been able to subdue her by surprise.