Darkest Before Dawn

She held up the last finger. “Now for the smothering, killing, stifling, destroying. I’m not going to give this much of a response because it doesn’t deserve it.”

She leaned over and touched his face, lightly pressing her lips to his.

“The only way you kill any part of me is if you no longer love and want me. If you walk away from me again. That will destroy me. Nothing else.”

He kissed her back, forceful, hot, scorching, like he was starved for her. And God, she was starved for him. For the last months she’d lived without the other half of her soul. Never did she want to endure that again.

Then he slipped off the bed, to his knees, reaching for her, pulling her to stand as he knelt before her. He wrapped his arms around her, burying his face between her breasts. Hot tears slithered over her skin, each one hurting her, like tiny daggers to her heart.

“I’m so sorry, Honor,” he choked out. “I’m so sorry. I went crazy those days, dying a little more every hour you were in his hands. It was all I could think about. Knowing he was torturing you and knowing that you thought I had betrayed you by giving you to him. I can’t sleep at night. Even now. Knowing he’s dead. That ANE is gone. That they can’t hurt you. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat. Every second I think about how badly I hurt you and all the times I let you down. Please forgive me,” he whispered. “Please give me the chance to prove to you that I will never fail you again. I’ll spend my life making sure you don’t get so much as a scratch. I want to be a good man. For you. I want to be a man you can be proud of.”

“Oh, my love,” she whispered. “Don’t you understand? I love the man you are. You can’t go changing on me. I won’t love a man you create thinking it’s what I want and need. I need you.”

She thumbed away the tears on his cheeks, then leaned down to kiss him while her hands framed his face.

“And I’ve already forgiven you. There’s no need to ask it again.”

“You gave it without my ever asking,” he said quietly. “I should have been on my knees begging your forgiveness and so I gave that to you, because that is what you deserve, regardless that your generous heart had already forgiven me.”

When he would have pulled her back to him, she resisted, knowing that at the current angle, he’d have his cheek right over her rounded belly. He glanced up at her, puzzled, a little uncertain.

She smiled and sat back down on the bed, patting the space beside her. “Come. There’s one last thing we have to discuss.”

He eased down beside her and frowned because she’d suddenly gone tense and she knew he’d picked up on it. He slipped his hand around hers, lifting it to rest on his thigh as he laced their fingers together.

“What is it, Honor?”

“First of all, I wasn’t—am not—deceiving you. I’m merely . . . selfish,” she said with a grimace.

“You are the least selfish person I know,” he growled.

She smiled faintly. “It’s just that I had to know . . . I had to know that you wanted me. That you loved me. I didn’t want you to be with me out of obligation. So I didn’t tell you right away. But I’m telling you now.”

His eyes were worried now. Not angry or apprehensive, as though he thought she’d done some horrible thing. He was worried for her, and she loved him all the more for it.

“I’m pregnant,” she said softly. “I’m having your baby, Guy. I’m almost five months pregnant.”

He stared down at her belly in shock and then back up to her face, as if what she was telling him simply didn’t compute.

“I don’t show unless I wear confining clothing. Hence the baggy attire I chose for this trip. Not even the others know. Only my parents and siblings. I had lost so much weight and was so starved that when I got back home, I was literally skin and bones, so the weight I’ve gained with the pregnancy has merely made it appear as though I regained what I’d lost before.”

“Show me,” he said, his voice cracking. “Let me see our child. Please.”

She bunched the hem of her oversized shirt and slowly pulled it upward. Both his hands ever so gently pressed against the mound, his fingers trembling against her skin.

“Are you all right?” he asked anxiously. “You were so hurt and as you said starved. It can’t be healthy for you to be having a baby.”

She smiled, wanting to reassure him. “My OB has me on a strict vitamin regimen as well as an eating schedule that my mother enforces like an army general.”

“Are you happy about it?” he asked, vulnerability creeping into his eyes.

She let him see the full force of her joy as she smiled back. “Oh yes,” she breathed. “The question is, are you?”

“Happy?” he asked hoarsely. “I don’t think happy can aptly describe my utter amazement right now. Oh God, Honor, I don’t deserve you or our child. Do you even know how many enemies I have? Do you understand the danger you’re putting yourself and our child in by wanting a life with me?”

His hands shook even harder, and she laid her palms softly over where his were branded to the swell of her belly.

“God didn’t forget me,” he said in awe, tears glittering brightly in his eyes as they lifted to hers. “I’m not damned. No man without a soul, a man damned for an eternity, could possibly be given two such precious gifts.”