Tallchief for Keeps Read Online Free Page B

his face, steadying his shifting emotions. Alek gently placed his hand on her head again. When she did not push him away, he stroked her hair lightly down to her shoulder.
    The silent sobs racking her body shot up his arm, straight to his heart.
    There was nothing he could do but lie beside her.
    Alek held very still, allowing his tears to flow down his cheeks. When she didn’t draw away, Alekstroked her hair, drew the tartan plaid around her and whispered her name. He laid his arm gently across her back, so as not to frighten her. He wanted her close to comfort her, and yet for his own need, as well. They’d created a baby between them, and he wanted to linger in the thought before burying it. “Elspeth…shh.”
    She turned her face to him, a blur of black eyebrows and lashes and shimmering eyes. “You’re crying.”
    The tip of her nose almost touched his. Her breath swept across his lips. “You’d better go. The snow has begun.”
    He fell into gray eyes shimmering with tears and cursed himself as he whispered, “How do you know?”
    “Listen to the wind….” she whispered unevenly, and instead he heard his heart beating slowly, cautiously.
    “I’m not going anywhere.” Alek’s lips touched hers once, lightly. “I’m sorry for that night.” Was he? That night had given him hope that the world was still pure.
    Tears shimmered in her eyes, and her look was disbelieving. He kissed her again to soften the past,a kiss much like those he gave his sisters when they ran to him with scraped knees. Then Alek forgot everything but the taste of Elspeth’s lips. He licked a tear from them and she stiffened, drawing away.
    “How dare you!”
    Alek traced the black hair crossing her damp cheek with his fingertip.
    He watched a single swallow move down her elegant throat. He kissed her again, softly. “The child would have been my first.”
    Her lids closed,, but he wouldn’t allow the dismissal. He slowly brushed his lips across hers, finding one corner of her mouth and then passing to the other. He remembered the clean smell of her, the scent of wind brushing through the heather and then, when she lay trembling and warm, the intimate scent of a lover. He remembered how sweetly she had given herself to him, as though she would not touch another lover in her lifetime.
    Alek damned his tears and the emotion welling up in him. Without a care for his plans to make Elspethpay, Alek buried his face in her throat and clung to her.
    Elspeth held very still in his arms and then, with a sob, she wrapped her arms around him, holding tightly. She began crying again, and this time he rocked her against him. She cried until exhaustion allowed no more and the fire burned low. Alek tucked his chin over her head and drew the shawl over her carefully. Tonight they mourned a child.
    Alek watched Elspeth sleep, drained by her emotions. While the firelight flickered on her too pale face and gleamed upon her black hair, Alek’s mind moved through his discovery that there was no child.
    For months, he’d built his life around a plan for revenge, to hurt Elspeth and to claim his child.
    He could not claim the child, but he wasn’t ready to leave Elspeth alone—not just yet. Not until he’d untangled the twists and examined them, and sorted through his emotions, laying them to rest. He knew he would not rest until his feelings were resolved, like digging out ends and pieces and shaping them into acomposite story…making sense of the whole and how he felt.
    He wondered if he could ever rest…Elspeth had tormented him since that night in Scotland.
    The stick he’d been holding snapped in his fist. Unsettled after his wife’s death, he’d taken Elspeth’s virginity and placed his child within her womb.
    He’d hurt her that night, walking away from her. But he wanted no more emotions then, to haunt his mind, his heart.
    Elspeth had faced pregnancy alone—she should have found him…it wasn’t his fault that he didn’t