“That we’d be free,” I said, pressing my lips to his.

His mouth were fire hot, aggressive, powerful, his tongue moving into my mouth and filling me with taste and touch. He gripped my hips and pulled them flush against him, and I pulled my mouth away from his, gasping for breath. He moaned, lips reaching for mine again.

“Rob,” I breathed, panting.

He gave me a kiss-drunk nod.

“Take my dress off,” I asked him. Smiling and dropping a teasing kiss on his mouth, I whispered, “Please.”

Holding me tight, he twisted me around in his arms, trying to untie the knot in my laces Mistress Morgan had tied. With an impatient growl, he yanked and the thing tore. I gasped, but with one hand he pulled my shoulder close to him, kissing my neck as he undid the whole bodice until it gave way, and he tugged the blue kirtle off over my head.

It tore out some flowers with it, and he seized on this new task, dragging his fingers through my hair and plucking out one after the other.

His fingers drew the string of the knot holding my underdress together at my neck until it gave, sweeping my hair over my shoulder. For long seconds, he didn’t touch me, and I knew my back, scarred as it were, were exposed before him.

He took a breath and dragged his lips along the long scar Gisbourne had given me. I shivered.

He found another by my spine, and pressed his lips there.

He kissed every mark. He stood, pressing his head into my hair. “I hate that I can’t protect you from the pain you’ve already faced, Scar.”

I turned. “You do,” I told him. “You make it go away.”

He kissed me, pressing me tight, and bunches of new sensations flared and sparked in me with only the thin barrier left between my body and his. I started tugging at his tunic and he let me drag it up over his head, and I pulled the shirt beneath with it.

His chest were bare beneath it, and I felt like my body must be running on something other than air. I couldn’t catch my breath, couldn’t remember to try, and still I were moving, alive, more alive than ever before. I put my hands on his chest, knowing I weren’t the only one with scars.

“Turn around,” I told him.

He didn’t move, looking at me, nervous and mournful, and I took a breath, moving around him.

His back, once punctured and pierced with metal spikes, were a mess. Some were neat circles, but most were craggy dips and ragged tears of healing and infection and pain.

Tears sprang to my eyes, and I ran my hands over his shoulders. He turned, looking at me, shaking his head. “No, my love,” he whispered. A tear fell and he wiped it away, kissing my mouth.

He broke away, touching my cheek.

“I’ll never regret those scars,” he told me, pressing our foreheads together. “I’ll always remember that as the day I knew you loved me.”

He kissed me again, and I wrapped my arms around him.

He pulled the longer kirtle and the plain underdress up together, and my legs felt the rush of cold. I shivered, and he stopped. “Scar?” he asked, his chest heaving against mine. Waiting. He nudged my nose with his own.

“Please don’t stop,” I told him.

Stepping back, Rob pulled the dresses all the way off and pulled me against him, so quick he hadn’t even dropped the balled-up cloth and it were pressed like a pillow to my back. He kissed me, and shy and slow, my hands trembling, I pushed the rest of his clothes off him.

And then we were skin to skin, heat to heat, breath to breath.

He pulled me down gentle to the pallet, and he showed me the mysteries of my body that I’d never understood, and it felt like my world came apart and rebuilt again slow, brick by brick, to form a whole new life. And lying there with him by the fire, his body curled around mine and our fingers and legs twined together, I realized what he’d meant, all those months ago.

Nuzzling against his head, I whispered to him, “This is freedom, Rob.”

Using our twined hands to tuck our arms close around my body, he murmured into my hair, “You were always my freedom, Scar.”

Chapter 25

I woke up in his arms, the fire cold beside us. I tugged the furs higher, not wanting to move from him yet. My chest were pressed into his, and I could only feel one heartbeat. I didn’t know if his body matched mine or mine matched his, but somehow, in the night, they’d fallen into one beat.

One soul. Two bodies.

Married.

“Married,” I whispered out loud, my head on his shoulder.

“That did happen, didn’t it?” he said, his chest rumbling beneath me. I could hear the smile in his voice without looking up.

I grinned and kissed the bit of skin nearest to my mouth. “Yes, husband. It did.” I raised my head. “Oh—not just husband. Your Grace.”

He looked at me, his brows tightening together. “I’m the earl now.”

I nodded, and he brushed my hair back. “Is that a good thing?”

He sighed, and I rested on his chest again. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I was meant to have that title, Scar.”

“Of course you were.”

“I don’t think it was a coincidence that I’d done all those horrible things in the Holy Land and came back to find that I wasn’t responsible for anyone anymore. It felt like justice, and I’ve spent so much time trying to atone . . .” He shook his head. “I never thought I’d be in the position to get any of that back, Scar.”

Tucking my head lower, I didn’t dare look up at him when I asked this question. “And now?” I asked. I held my breath.