Page 94 of The Boxing Baroness

“Are you asleep?” she asked when he didn’t respond.

“No.”

“Are you worried about what will happen?”

Sin didn’t need to ask her what she meant. “I am not unworried,” he admitted. “Wandering deeper into a country about to be at war is not one of my wiser decisions.”

“How can one man turn the entire world upside down? Bonaparte must possess unparalleled appeal to the French people.”

“He must,” Sin agreed. Although he, as an Englishman, failed to see the attraction.

“If he makes his way to Paris—as seems to be his goal—he will wrest control of France from a king. I know France has beheaded one king, already—but that was the will of many. For one man to topple a king is inconceivable, isn’t it?”

“Inconceivable but—unfortunately—not unheard of. I would not be surprised if France were not headed for civil strife yet again, as well as war.”

They sat in silence for so long that he thought she must have fallen asleep.

“Poor France,” she said.

Poor France, indeed. Whatever happened over the coming weeks and months, one thing was certain—the common men and women of France would suffer and die.

Sin waited perhaps half an hour before getting up to check on her. There was a gap in the drapes and enough light coming in from the courtyard that he could see she had fallen asleep, her lips slightly parted, her breathing even.

At first, his attraction to her had terrified the hell out of him. Now, it just left him feeling as battered and bruised on the inside as she was on the outside.

Even in this light he could see the swollen, bruised skin around her eye.

Fury clawed at him, as well as helplessness, at his inability to do anything to stop the abuse she endured.

It was no surprise that he wanted to rescue her from such a life. He would want to spare anyone—man or woman—from such a brutal existence.

But Sin didn’t just want to rescue her. No, he wanted to explore all the facets of her character, which she was only now beginning to share with him. He wanted to make her laugh the way he’d seen her friends do. He wanted her to smile at him with pure, unadulterated joy shining from her eyes.

In short, Marianne Simpson—with her grit and her grace even in a life filled with brutality—was exactly the sort of woman that he wanted to share his future with.

He smiled bitterly, darkly amused at the irony of his situation. For the second time in his life, he wanted someone desperately. And, for the second time, he’d chosen somebody he could never, ever have.

“I can practically feel you thinking.”

Sin jolted and met her gaze in the gloom. “I thought you were sleeping.”

“I don’t want to sleep,” she said, her expression solemn as she pushed back the blankets and swung her feet to the floor. “I’ve already slept far too long.”

He suspected she wasn’t speaking literally.

She held out a hand. “I want you.”

Not for the first time did she render him speechless.

Her hand wavered when he didn’t take it—as if she might pull back—and his hand shot out, lacing their fingers together as he stepped closer, pushing her knees apart, not stopping until his thighs touched the mattress.

And then Sin did something he’d wanted to do at least once a day for weeks; he reached out and lightly ran the knuckles of his free hand down her jaw.

“Your skin is so soft,” he murmured. So unspeakably soft. “Just like a pearl.”

Her lips parted as she stared up at him, and the raw desire in her gaze ignited a fierce hunger within him.

Sin slid his fingers to her chin and traced the sensual curve of her wicked lower lip. She opened her mouth to him, touching the tip of her hot, wet tongue to his thumb. He stifled the groan that was trying to force its way out, his self-control hanging by a thread.