Tried for Love (TSATD)

Chapter 24

Leah

  For the first time in years, I could for once call my problems foolish. For once, I didn't have to worry about whether I would be killed the second I'd step out of my house or not. No, my only concern was whether I could make the house staff believe that Gabriel Valentine was truly my husband. 

  Lawfully, he was. But everyone had to believe the wedding night had gone successful.

  And they would never if we were found in separate rooms. So, we had made a deal. In the morning I was to bring him the wedding dress. And myself.

  After making my own bed so that no one would notice it was undone, I pushed through the connecting door and slipped straight in his room. If I had learned anything from living with Valentine for the past month, it was that he was always the first to wake. And damn him, it wasn't even seven in the morning yet.

  The man had a rigid schedule, and everyone in the house had to follow. The staff had to be awake and ready before their boss, so that the house would be bustling and everyone doing their duties by the time he descended from his rooms. 

  Everything seemed to have an order. Everything had rules. Which was ironic, because for him, no laws existed.

  Yet when I made my way to his room, I found him spread across the bed, still lost in deep sleep. My breath hitched. How very strange. Considering his daunting demeanor during the waking hours, it almost felt wrong seeing him.. Well, as a mere man. Lazing and vulnerable on his bed.

  The bed was a large one, but his extended lounge was taking up quite a lot of the space. Every one of the coverlets had been cast aside. The pillows too except the one wrinkled and squeezed under his head. 

  There he laid on his stomach with one arm hanging from the edge, tangled in a single white sheet, loosely around his backside, while the rest—The rest was all that sun-kissed skin and keenly defined muscles across his wide back and thighs. His dark brown hair was unkempt around his head as the morning light peeked from the windows, hinting a lighter shade than the previous night.

  Good heavens. Wasn't he magnificent.. 

  I held my breath. The sight of all that vigor tamed to such vulnerability was oddly satisfyingly. So much that it made me move closer. For the first time, this robust man I was to call my husband, was unshielded before me.

  With all the barriers were put down, all those masks, there was just a man, naked and unarmed. Something inside me was growing to despise the fact that he would have to return to that world of guns and revenge. We both would.

  Blinking, my thoughts trailed back to the present moment. Right. I was only losing time. I was in his room for a reason, after all. Making my way to the bed, I tossed the wedding dress on the floor and with the sound of footsteps somewhere outside the door, I climbed beside my husband. 

  The strange thought of him as my husband was disturbed by him rising his head awake. I should've known. Valentine was a light sleeper, vary of every movement. Drowsy emeralds looked at me the second I slipped under the sheets. It wouldn't have surprised me if he pulled a pistol from underneath his pillow.

  Yet, there was a sense of calmness on his face, as if I had spent the night laying beside him. Bizarrely enough, his heavy-lidded glare caused a rush of tingles through my stomach.

  I pressed a finger to my lips to shush him before he would start asking questions. He should had known this was necessary. Still, it took me everything not to laugh.. And laugh loudly. He was right. Shocking someone did bring a strange wave of amusement. A strange wave of awareness as well.