Page 59 of Savage Blooms (Unearthly Delights #1)

“Please don’t do this,” he said, and now he was begging, all intentions to stand up for himself as a man forgotten.

“I know you don’t want to marry him. You always told me you would rather go live with the birds in the trees and eat nothing but nuts and berries than be sold off to some minor aristocrat.

That’s exactly what’s happening here! I don’t know why you can’t see that—”

“You aren’t a girl, Robbie,” she snapped so ferociously that he recoiled. “You don’t know what it’s like to be in my position. I have to marry and I have to have babies. Otherwise our family will be destroyed. How I feel about that doesn’t matter.”

“Then marry me,” he said, panic making him rash. He scrubbed a hand over his face, over his stubbled jaw and overheated throat. “Have babies with me, if that’s what you want.”

“This is exactly what I was afraid of. You’re too attached to me, Robbie. I had hoped if you saw me with someone else you would let me go and—”

“I can take care of you, Belle, as your brother or as your husband, or as both if that’s what you want. Marry me, and I swear to God you’ll never be bored. I promise I’ll—”

“Oh, please don’t,” she said, tears gathering in earnest in her eyes now. “I’ve already said yes to him, Robbie. I have a real future with him. There is no future for you and I. Our parents would kill us both.”

“I don’t care about them,” he declared, pulling her in closer. Robert latticed their fingers together even as he pressed his body against hers, just like they had when they were little and making a pact. “I only care about what you want. Tell me what you want, Arabella. That’s all I’m asking.”

“I want you to let me go,” she said, her voice a self-betraying whisper.

She had always been a bad liar.

Robert wordlessly hooked his hands under his sister’s thighs and scooped her up, sitting her in the reading nook built into the windowsill. The trio of stained-glass hares gazed down at them from above with dead marble eyes, their linked ears illuminated by distant lightning.

“Tell me to go then,” Robert said, hands braced on either side of her hips, lips inches away from the kiss they had been denying themselves for years. “Make me believe you don’t want me and I’ll go. Come on, send me away. Say it like you mean it.”

Arabella glared at him as though she hated him more than anyone else in the world, and Robert just stood there, letting her hate him. He refused to touch her, but he also refused to draw away. No matter how this played out, it would be Arabella’s decision what happened next.

Then, all at once, she made a frustrated noise and surged forward to crush her mouth against his.

Robert cradled her face in his hands, her skin smooth as porcelain and twice as cool, and he kissed her back.

They wrestled for dominance for a moment, like this was just another expression of sibling rivalry, but then at Robert’s gentle urging, Arabella slowed down.

Her breathing deepened as he kissed her deep and soft, reverent as a priest. She gripped his wrists in her trembling hands, letting him take his time with her and treat her as gently as he had wanted to since they were both teenagers.

Robert pulled her in tighter, ignoring the distant murmur of their parents’ voices downstairs.

She was warmer now, a hot flush spreading across her skin as he pushed the silk up over her thighs and around her hips.

He dug his fingers into her flesh, just hard enough to leave a half-moon indent with his short nails.

“I can’t,” she gasped, breaking the kiss.

Robert released her as though he had been burned, tugging his sister’s dress back down over her legs.

“I’m sorry,” he began, the apology a deeply rooted childhood impulse. “I don’t want to hurt you, I—”

“I can’t be with you,” she said, decisive as she scrubbed stray tears off her face. “Please don’t kiss me again.”

“Belle—” he said, voice broken into pieces. She shrank away from him and slipped down from the windowsill.

“I think it’s best if you and I don’t talk much for a while,” she said, hurrying off into the dark. “At least until the wedding is over.”

Robert was left alone on the landing, his sister’s tears drying on his cheeks and a hot yearning in his blood and sickening shame heavy as a stone in his stomach.

He felt like he was being torn to pieces, like part of him was already sitting at that wedding and part of him was ten years old chasing after the sound of his big sister’s laughter and part of him was eternally standing on this landing, reliving the kiss he would never be able to recover from.

His parents’ voices grew downstairs, punctuated by the ringing of champagne glasses and the sound of laughter.

They were already celebrating. They had pawned off their daughter and now Robert would be left alone with them.

The disregarded son who had only been adopted as an entertaining diversion for their beloved offspring.

No matter how much they said they loved him, Robert saw it clearly, the difference in the ways they looked at him and looked at Arabella.

He hated Craigmar, hated its dreary old paintings of people who looked nothing like him and its drafty corridors and its hallways that led nowhere.

He hated his parents for bringing him out here and he hated his sister for being exactly what she was: a half-feral creature more in love with the land outside their window than she would ever be with him.

He was too human for this place, too fallible and needy.

He would never be good enough, either for his parents or for Arabella.

Making up his mind with the brutal finality of someone who had been considering the unthinkable for months, Robert strode into his room and yanked the black leather duffel out from under his bed.

He had travelled with it only a few times, since he typically only travelled with Arabella and she was rarely permitted to leave Craigmar, but now he stuffed it full of clothes torn from his dresser.

There was no rhyme or reason to any of this, and he was crying through most of it, but within ten minutes he had most of his toiletries and his identifying documents and his best pen stuffed into the bag, along with stationery and stamps, a pair of trainers, and his dog-eared copy of Gulliver’s Travels.

He plucked up Tammany the teddy before deciding it was better to travel as light as possible, with no reminder of his family with him.

He settled Tam into the pillows of his bed and then flipped the lights off and crept into the hallway.

Maybe the bear would be better appreciated by another child, better suited to this place.

He might be Arabella’s brother, but he wasn’t a Kirkfoyle. Not in any of the ways that mattered.

Robert hustled quietly down the stairs and let himself out the kitchen door, far away from where his parents were chatting in the parlor.

Arabella was somewhere in the house, probably crying her eyes out and waiting for him to come apologize, but he wouldn’t be apologizing.

There was nothing else to say. This place was rotting him from the inside out, making him a slave to unnatural desires, and the best thing he could do for any of them was to leave.

Robert strode out into the night just as a cold rain began to fall. He turned his coat up against the wind.

It was a rocky walk to Wyke, but from there he could warm up in the Hound and Grouse and hitch a ride into the nearest large city. From there, he could go anywhere in Scotland, or in Britain, or in the world.

He had always wanted to travel, unmoored from Craigmar’s dark, demanding magic and the disapproving glances of his parents. Perhaps now, at the other end of the world, he would find a happiness previously thought impossible.