Page 24 of The Dravenhearst Brides

Beloved Son, Dearest Brother—

Child of God who danced in sunbeams

Child of Earth who sleeps amongst clouds

On butterfly wings, be carried in

Be safe, be loved, be found

What we hold in our hearts shall never be lost

And you, dear child, sleep sound

—Tombstone of Elijah Greenbrier

It was the kind of loss that fundamentally changes you. Changes the way your eyes see the world, the way your lungs draw air into your body. The way your very heart beats.

It was the kind of loss that rips through your life without warning, without apology, without sense.

The kind that tears you apart from the inside out, creating tiny fissures everywhere, fault lines.

And that’s where the grief settles, into those thousand tiny cracks throughout your body.

Weighing you down. Everything heavy. Everything aching.

Margot’s legs grieved for Elijah with every step she took; sometimes it was easier to just stay in bed.

Her mouth grieved for Elijah with every bite she chewed; sometimes it was easier to just skip meals.

Her chest grieved for Elijah with every breath; sometimes she wondered if it would be easier if she just stopped breathing altogether.

She slept more.

Ate less.

Breathed less.

Took up less space, less oxygen. Margot let herself fade. For fourteen years, Elijah had been her mirror. She saw herself only through the reflection of his eyes. And when the mirror disappeared, she went with it. Margot was ripped asunder, a soul adrift.

She’d been drowning ever since.

After the confession spilled out into the night air over a horse pasture in the Kaintuck Bluegrass, she looked at the man sitting beside her.

Her eyes wavered, brimming with tears. She refused to blink.

For so many years, she’d hidden herself away.

She hadn’t said the words, hadn’t known how to ask for what she needed…

how to tell her own story. But here it was, out in the open.

Taking up space in the distance between her and Merrick. Set free.

“For so many years, it was impossibly hard,” she whispered, voice breaking, “to look anyone in the eye. To wonder whether, when they looked at me, they wished for him.”

And there it was, the crux of the matter.

The horrible, dirty secret she’d carried in her heart for years.

If she and Elijah were two halves of the same soul, she was undoubtedly the lesser half.

She alone had not been enough for her mother to stay well and alive.

She alone was not enough for her father to trust with his business empire.

No, she had to be coddled. Married off. Protected.

Because she was weak.

Because a son would always be worth more than a daughter.

But Margot was here.

She was here, and he was gone. She was supposed to be living for both of them now, but she was too terrified to live at all. Not when every step forward was a step away from him.

Merrick shifted his weight in the grass. He was clearly uncomfortable and didn’t know what to say. Margot had been here before. The impulse to shrink herself back to a manageable size, a neater package, was instinctive.

“You don’t have to say anything,” she said.

“I want to say something, but no words could ever be adequate.” Understanding was carved into the somber lines of his face, in the arch of his downturned lips, in the frown lines of his forehead.

Tremendous empathy resided in the expanse of his face, but it was the look in his eyes that spoiled everything.

Pity.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Margot whispered, half begging. She ripped out a handful of grass and swatted, throwing it senselessly at him. “The last thing I want is your pity.”

He held quiet.

Margot brought her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around herself. She gazed skyward, desperate to look anywhere but at him. Clouds rolled in overhead, beginning to obscure the moon. A single raindrop landed on her arm.

“What do you want from me then?” Merrick finally asked.

The question struck her dumb, for its answer was as vast as the cloud-shrouded galaxy above them. As unreachable.

“What do I want?” she repeated. Her crazed laughter shattered the night.

“What do I want? Oh, I want a different life, a different past. I want to be sitting in this field with you to stargaze and talk and dream. Not chased here, fleeing my own ghosts. Having to be carried because my own two feet aren’t strong enough to hold me up. ”

“What else?”

“I want to hear a different voice inside my head. Different stories. I want my family to look and see me, not ‘the one who lived.’ I want to change the song that’s been playing on the phonograph for eight straight years.

And I…” She faded, glancing away. “What I really want, more than anything in this world, is to not be afraid. To not be so afraid of who I might be without him, I stay frozen in time. I want to be brave enough to step forward, even if it means stepping forward alone.”

His teeth bit into his lip, and something ripped free in her gut. Something wild with want. Being laid so bare before him…she was wild with the desire to be seen. Just this once.

“And I really,” Margot huffed, “really want you to stop looking at me like I’m a wounded animal.” A second raindrop landed on her bare shoulder. “I’ve had enough of those looks to last a lifetime.”

“I’m not looking at you like that.”

“You are.”

He leveled her with a powerful stare, amber eyes pooling into her own. It was a different stare than she’d ever seen, one that made her toes curl. “How do you want me to look at you?”

She didn’t answer. She turned away, grateful for the darkness. It hid the color in her cheeks. The desire swimming in her eyes.

Merrick scooted closer. He took her chin in his hand and turned it toward him. Rough skin, gentle touch. “How do you want me to look at you, Margot?”

He pinned her with his gaze. She couldn’t have looked away if she tried. Her mouth opened, barely parted. “I just…” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I just want you to look.”

To see me and not turn away.

Several more raindrops fell, one grazing her cheek, dripping like a tear.

Merrick thumbed it away. “Believe me, I’m looking.”

She blinked once. Twice.

And then his lips were on hers. Her response was instinctive and immediate—hunger. It coursed through her with a rippling shudder.

She reached for his shirt, gripping it in her fist to drag him closer.

His lips moved to her neck, beneath her ear.

He nipped the lobe and tugged gently, eliciting a moan from deep in her throat.

The carnality of the sound surprised her.

Her cheeks flooded pink again, a voice in her mind telling her to be quiet and complicit and demure. To be good.

But he did it again, and she surrendered all pretense.

She wasn’t quiet or demure or good. She wanted things that were very bad indeed.

Starting with this hulking, beguiling man.

He was everywhere, all fumbling hands, greedy lips, warm breath.

He wasn’t being gentle, and the realization made her feel strong.

She was so very sick of being treated like a porcelain doll.

The rain fell in earnest now, speckling her hair, her dress, her arms. His fingers tangled roughly in her damp hair. His tongue slipped into her mouth. He leaned close, weight pressing, and she fell back in the grass, dragging him with her.

He tugged at her dress, pulling it down to fully expose her chemise. His lips dropped to her collarbone, vibrating against her as he murmured something unintelligible into her skin.

Her hands moved of their own volition. Moved over broad shoulders, strong arms, muscled chest. Margot couldn’t explore all of him fast enough. She was shocked by her own fearlessness, by her mounting recklessness. Her fingers found his shirt buttons, began to work their way down.

He shrugged out of the shirt, and she pressed her lips against the dark hair on his chest. Her fingers streamed across the ridges of his back, growing wetter and wetter as the rain fell. A rumble of thunder boomed in the distance, and she pulled back, her mind hazy.

We should stop. We should go inside.

“Or we can stay outside and get very, very wet,” he said.

She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud. Her gaze darted upward, wanting to see his face, the look in his eyes.

Liquid gold.

Merrick’s hands reached for her chemise, teasing the straps downward. “Tell me to stop,” he panted. “Tell me to stop, and I will.”

The question was there, right there in his eyes, but it meant nothing to her. Only his unvarnished desire mattered. The wanting inside her was ruinous.

“Don’t stop.”

The slide of silk, slithering down her body, clinging to the moisture coating her skin.

Dragging. The reveal seemed infinite. Long enough for her mind to catalog a thousand tiny doubts.

She almost reached for his hands and told him to stop, but then she saw the expression on his face as he took all of her in. The reverence.

Her doubts were silenced.

“I see you, Margot,” he rumbled, hands digging in to grip her bare hips. “Every inch, I see you. And you are absolutely beautiful.”

Merrick’s fingers slid down her legs, hovering at the band of her thigh-high silk stockings.

He played with the edge, softly sliding his fingers under, then out.

Her leg trembled beneath his touch. Her hand moved down his strong chest, fingers trailing as gently as a whisper. Creeping closer, closer…

When she reached his waistband, she paused. His breath hitched.

That was all it took. She slid lower, taking him completely in her hand. Feeling his fullness strain beneath the fabric of his trousers, a fullness she sensed—distantly—belonged to her. It was both terrifying and thrilling.

He groaned, a strangled, desperate sound. Yielding more of his weight. Pressing into her.

“Margot…” he warned.

She began to work his belt buckle.

“Margot,” he tried again. “We are rapidly reaching a point of no return. If you keep going, I don’t know…I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop.”

She tilted her head, wondering exactly what he meant. What it meant precisely, if they didn’t stop. Where, specifically, would he take her?

His belt was fully undone. Her fingers hovered, trying to decide.

“Margot.” His hands folded over hers, stopping her. “I need to hear you say it. I need to know for sure. It’s important to me.”

“Just a little more,” she panted, looking into his eyes, a little shy. I want to know. I want you to show me. “Please?”

“Just a little?”

He looked so impossibly good wet. Skin glistening, hair slick. A large drop fell from the tip of his nose to her cheek.

“Yes.”

He guided her grip away from his waist. “Then let’s leave my trousers on for now. Let me try something else…”

His hands were back on her, sliding up her leg. Past the stockings. Higher and higher until he was there. Slipping between her thighs.

Her head lolled back in the wet grass, unchecked mews spewing from her lips. His mouth covered hers, swallowing her cries. He smiled against her, his fingers continuing to tease.

“Do you like this?” he murmured between kisses. “Tell me.”

“Merrick?” A breathless question.

“Tell me what you want, love. Just a little more?” His finger slowly plunged inside her.

She exploded into something wholly new, her eyes flying open in surprise. Her gaze swept over his face, but when he started to move—one finger deep inside her, another rubbing gently against her front—her lids slammed shut again.

It was all too much. She was feeling so much, couldn’t possibly handle seeing right now.

No, she wanted only to feel.

To feel his roughened fingers against her, inside her.

To feel his hot breath on her cheek, wet hair brushing her forehead.

To feel the grass at her back, taste the rain on her lips, hear her own panting breaths rumbling in her ears, louder in her mind than the thunder in the distance.

And then there was the pressing warmth of his body, shielding her from the storm overhead, drawing out an altogether different tempest from deep within her. One bigger than anything around them.

An unfamiliar sensation, hot and dizzying, began to build. No longer adrift in the terrifyingly wide world, she was anchored directly to him. Clinging to him. Crying out. Building, crashing, rising. Again and again.

“Merrick,” she gasped. “Merrick!”

He bent down, kissing his way from her neck to her chest. His tongue circled her nipple, took it into his mouth, drawing an arch from her back and a cry from her throat as she surrendered completely.

She shattered beneath him as fast and hot and electric as a bolt of lightning across the sky. The world sharpened around her, then faded.

When her breath returned, Margot wasn’t sure what to say. She trusted neither her voice nor words. She nuzzled into his damp neck, breathing in the smell of leather and bourbon. She wanted to get drunk on it. Drunk on him.

A lifetime of this, she thought faintly. That was what he could give her. What she wanted from him. Desperately.

He collapsed into the grass beside her, exposing her body to the full effect of the rain.

She was pelted with it, drenched within a second.

A shiver overtook her, but it started inside, not out.

Misunderstanding, Merrick rolled back on top of her, taking the rain against his own shoulders again.

She reached up, running her fingers through his dark hair to push it out of his eyes. She wanted to see.

Because the way he was looking at her…

She wasn’t adrift. She wasn’t wounded. She wasn’t half of a missing soul.

No.

Under the piercing clear gaze of his amber eyes, she suspected she was, for the first time in years, whole.