The Wicked Heir (Spare Heirs #3)(75)

Seeming to read his thoughts—which was a bit concerning, considering the pattern they took where she was concerned—she tugged on his fingers and smiled up at him. “Come. Sit with me.”

Every gentleman in town knew Fallon wasn’t someone who took orders from others well. Fallon was always the one in control. Isabelle, however, didn’t see things that way. Even now she was wiggling back to rest against the headboard and patting the empty spot at her side. With a grin over the fact that this thin-framed, blond, and doe-eyed lady had that sort of sway over him, he climbed up to sit beside her as she had decreed he must.

Somewhere downstairs his men sat about lacking his direction. Tasks would not be accomplished. Things that required his attention were waiting for him, lest without his mark of approval, the Spare Heirs came to a screeching halt. Yet he couldn’t make himself get up from the bed where he sat beside Isabelle.

“What did you want to do with your life when you were a child?” she asked as she leaned her head against his shoulder. “You have no title. You must have had some idea, some dream for your future.”

“I wanted to be the pirate that I am, of course,” he answered as he laced his fingers with hers. “I’m pleased that worked out for me.”

She elbowed him in the ribs for his cheek. “I’m asking a serious question, and you’re teasing me.”

“Very well.” Fallon hadn’t thought of his childhood dreams since, well, since he’d been a child. His life had been set on a path years ago, and he hadn’t looked back since. He was head of the Spare Heirs Society, and he was living his dream. Or so he’d thought until he met Isabelle. Between her talk of dreams and her heartfelt smiles, she’d forced him to stop and look about for the first time. He was always left with a sense of loss when she wasn’t near.

He traced the delicate lines of the backs of her fingers as he held her hand in his. “I recall wanting to be a sheep farmer for a time, overseeing my flock, caring for their needs by day and relaxing in the comfort of my cottage at night.”

“I assume your dreams of sheep farming were dashed at some point, since we are not sitting in your cottage in the country but your home in London.”

He smiled at the thought of having Isabelle to himself with no threats or distractions, settled in a cottage surrounded by sheep. Perhaps in another life, they could have been married. They would live out their days together in a peaceful pastoral existence. He would bring her wildflowers from the field every day, and they would sit together by the fire each night.

“Were no farms available for sale when you came of age?” she asked as she curled further into his side, resting her cheek against his arm.

“By the time I was of age, I’d set my sights upon overseeing something a bit larger.”

“Cows?”

He leaned his head back against the wood of his bed and stared up at the canopy above his head. “Have you ever wanted to change the way things are? To find a place within the chaos people cause and put it into order? To make room for those who have no purpose and are left out in the cold?”

“No one should be left out in the cold. I don’t enjoy the chill of winter at all. Mother always got angry with me when she would see me sitting too close to the fire. The house I lived in until Father inherited was rather drafty. But there was always a fire burning in the kitchen for dinner that night. The winters in that house were harsh, but not when I was there on top of a mountain of blankets and so close to the embers. I was quite warm, waiting for the thaw of spring.”

“And imagining yourself in the book you were reading?” he added, filling in the gaps of her story.

“The worlds held within those pages were better worlds than the one in which I lived.”

“Reality awaits me downstairs, and I find I prefer the world here, chatting with you. Yet we live where we must.” For the first time, he truly understood her desire for a few selfish moments to call her own.

She shifted to look up at him. “Even hardworking pirates require a break from time to time.”

He lifted one hand to her cheek. Her skin was soft beneath his palm. She looked at him, and he was lost, trapped there in her eyes. “People depend on me. I have to take care of them, answer their questions, see to their needs.”

“Like your sheep?”

“Something like that.” His gaze dipped to her lips.

“And who takes care of the sheep farmer?”

“I have you,” he murmured. He didn’t truly have her, but he couldn’t think about the end of things just now.

“And before I came here?” She whispered the question.

“I never realized until I met you that I might need to be cared for as well.”

He kissed her before she could respond. It was a slow and tender kiss meant to savor every touch of her full lips against his, embracing everything sweet and good about her. But then she kissed him back, and all thoughts of an innocent embrace were banished. He released her hand, shifted to his side, and tugged her down onto the bed beneath him fast enough that she drew in a surprised breath.

Deepening their kiss, he skated his hand down her side, over the soft curve of her breast, the dip of her waist, down to her rounded hip. He shifted further over her, dragging his hip up over the apex of her thighs. It was a bold move, but he’d lost control of what was happening between them, and he wasn’t about to fight to regain it. Instead he took more, tasting her while grinding his hip against her. She made a beautifully needy little sound against his lips and slid her hands up his back to press every one of her gentle curves against his body. His hand roamed over her arse as he held her close. Tension built in her, and every flinch and shimmy of her body beneath his reverberated through his hands as he held her. Trailing his mouth down her neck, he continued to move against her body and tugged the sleeve off her shoulder with his teeth.