Ruthless Alpha, and his Curvy Saint

Lord Merrick’s POV

Agnes didn’t say anything on the way up the stairs.

I didn’t either. I had no words at that moment, except to think of ways to make things right. So I walked up the stairs and she walked behind me and the inn was quiet around us.

I opened her door and held it for her.

She went in.

I followed.

The room was small enough that there weren’t many options for arrangement - the bed, the chair, the small table, the window with the yard below it where a horse was standing in the dark wondering what had happened to its rider. I took the chair. Agnes stood near the window, her arms crossed, her back not quite to me, gazing out silently.

"Tomorrow," I said. "We will go back."

She turned.

"No," she said.

"Agnes..."

"That woman will not listen." Her voice was controlled, despite the turmoil I knew was flowing within her. "I saw her face. I know that face. That’s the face of someone who has already decided and is not going to un-decide because someone asked her nicely." She looked at me with a direct expression. "I’m a woman. I know what I saw. She loves that boy. She loves my boy."

"She does," I said.

"Then she will never..."

"We came at her wrong," I said. "Today. We walked in with the slave trader and the soldiers and the formal request and we put it all in front of her at once. The whole thing - who we were, why we were there, what we wanted." I leaned forward slightly. "We gave her no room. She had nowhere to go except into defense."

Agnes was quiet for a moment.

"It won’t matter how we come at her," she said. "The answer will be the same. She’ll never release my son to me."

"Don’t make that conclusion yet." I held her gaze. "Let me try one more time."

"Merrick..."

"One more conversation," I said. "Tomorrow. Without the soldiers, without the formal arrangement. Just us. Me, you and her." I looked at her steadily. "And If it doesn’t work..." I stopped. I thought about the castle’s layout, which I had been examining on our way out. "If peaceful dialogue doesn’t work, then tomorrow night I will go in myself."

Agnes stared at me.

"I’ll go into the castle," I said. "Alone. Quietly, and sneak the boy out." I held her eyes. "But everyone else will be mounted and ready, because the moment I come out with the child we are riding for Black Wolf and we do not stop."

The room was very quiet.

Agnes looked at me with the expression of a woman running a plan through its paces and looking for the failures in it.

"What if something goes wrong," she said.

"Then it’s on me," I said. "I’ll take the full responsibility."

"That’s easy to say..."

"Agnes." I looked at her. "I swear on my honor. If talking doesn’t work, I go in and get him. That’s what happens."

She held my gaze for a long moment.

Then something in her posture shifted - like a heavy weight has been slightly lifted off her shoulders.

"If anything goes wrong," she said, "it’s on you."

"I know."

"I mean it."

"So do I."

She nodded.

I stood and moved to where she was standing. I put my hand on her shoulder.

She went rigid for a moment - the automatic response. Then, slowly, the rigidity left.

"It’s going to be alright," I said. "He’s here. We know he’s here. That’s further than you were three days ago."

She didn’t answer.

But she didn’t move away either.

"Agnes." I said her name carefully. "He’s going to come home."

And then I felt it.

The shaking.

Small at first - barely noticeable, the kind that a person tried to have quietly. Her shoulders, under my hand moved with deep sorrow.

I did the thing that I had not planned and had not decided. I put my arms around her and embraced her.

She didn’t stop me.

She stood in the circle of my arms and she shook with tears, letting it all out. I held on with the steady presence of someone offering solace and comfort.

I lifted my hand to her face.

I tilted her chin up.

I wiped the tears carefully. Gently, because I had this quiet urge in me to make everything right. To make her happy.

"Don’t cry," I said quietly. "It’s going to be fine."

She looked up at me, and I returned the look with heated gaze.

This was the part I was going to have difficulty explaining to myself later - the way one moment was simply one moment and then it was something else without a clear line between them. Her eyes - the quality of them, the depth of color, the way they looked in the small light of an inn room in the middle of the night - was beautiful. And right now, she was not looking at me with any of the defenses she usually wore.

I was drowning in her eyes.

And then I was thinking about something shameful and forbidden.

I was... moving. Leaning close like I was being pulled in by an unexplainable force.

She would stop me, I thought. She would slap me or push me away or look at me with disgust.

But she didn’t.

Instead, her eyes closed.

Her chin lifted, and her lips parted a little, inviting me in. I stared at those rosy lips and I told myself it was only a kiss. Just a kiss. It wouldn’t take five seconds.

God. I needed to taste those lips.

I slid one hand behind her neck, caressing the slender hollow back there.

But just as I was about to dive in and claim her mouth, Angels face flashed before I eyes.

I stopped abruptly and took a step back, shame and embarrassment surrounding me like a shield. "I’m... that was... I shouldn’t have..." I was already at the door. "Good night."

I left.