Craving Beauty(22)

Hira frowned. "Why did you wish to return to your parents? They may have tried to sell you again."



"I knew they wouldn't, because I'd become their meal ticket."



"You stole for them?" There was no disapproval in her tone, as if she respected what the boy he'd been had done to survive.



Another sliver of his heart fell into her careful hands without his   conscious volition. He just knew it was forever gone. Forever hers.



It was an effort to speak without demanding she give him something to   replace what he'd just lost. "No. I stopped stealing as soon as I left   Muddy. I got work, any work, and I gave them enough to keep them happy.

That's why I went back. I knew that as long as they were boozed, they   wouldn't care what I was up to, whereas a foster parent might've   actually made an effort to discipline me."



Hira lay back down beside him on her side, propping her head up with one   arm, her other hand still intertwined with his. "What were you doing   that you didn't wish for discipline?"



"I had plans. I decided in the hospital that I'd never again be anyone's   whipping boy." Even now he could feel that savagely beaten boy's grim   determination. "That meant I had to have money, and to do that, I  needed  to work. My parents didn't care that I was working far too many  hours  for a kid, working late into the night in factories where the  managers  ignored my age.



"It took a few more kicks before I got my head screwed on perfectly   straight, but once I did, that was it." One of those kicks had been   delivered by Lydia Barnsworthy. "I was young but determined. By the time   I'd graduated high school, I'd saved over thirty thousand dollars from   working and then investing that money. I went to college on a baseball   scholarship. Even though I'd worked on instinct in investing, I knew   that some of the men I'd be dealing with in the future would be   impressed by a degree."



Hira began to nod, her midnight-and-gold hair sliding across her bare   shoulders. "You started your business with the money you made from your   investing."



"Yes, with a little help from the bank. The first company I bought was a   dying little family outfit that produced these unique toys. I busted  my  gut with it and sold it when I finished college for a profit that  was  big enough to allow me to buy my next company. Within five years of   graduation, I was a multimillionaire."



"And you did it by saving dying companies, not looting them," she murmured. "A harder road."



He shrugged, uncomfortable with the veiled praise. "It's the way I like   to work." Not by ripping apart but by slowly, painstakingly, gluing a   fractured masterpiece together. He'd spent too many years with people   who'd tried to destroy him. He couldn't do that to anyone or anything   else.



"You were a very determined boy." The admiration in those mountain-cat   eyes didn't dim. "How did you get involved with the orphanage?"



He found himself wanting to tell her, when he'd kept his secrets from   everyone else. "I met Father Thomas about a year after I returned to my   parents. He gave me a steady job cleaning the church after school. He   also gave me...hope." He'd taken a beat-up, hard-as-nails kid and taught   him the value of compassion and integrity.



"Later, when I needed to borrow money from the bank to finance that   first business, he guaranteed my loan. I tried to pay him back with   shares in my next company, but he said that he wouldn't take money from   one of his sons." Being called "son" by Father Thomas meant far more to   Marc .than any biological relationship.



"I begin to see why these boys mean so much to you," Hira murmured. "You   wish to give them a chance in life as Father Thomas gave you. You're a   good man, Marc Bordeaux." A gentle kiss on his cheek sealed her words.



"I'm a man, same as any other." His tone was husky, not from lust but from the light in her exotic eyes.



His wife smiled at him like he'd given her the moon, when he suddenly   realized he'd never given her a single present that wasn't big and   expensive and meaningless.



"Ah, but you're my man, Marc. That must mean you are blessed." Her lips curved in a teasing smile.                       
       
           



       



Chuckling, he rolled over, pressing her into the mattress. "Is that so,   princess?" Nothing had ever felt as right as telling his secrets to  this  woman with her pride and her curious honesty. Perhaps this Beauty  might  just be willing to love her Beast.





Less than a week later, Marc found himself standing on the verandah,   waiting for his wife to return home. She'd left early that morning for   her first class and it was now after five. Despite the way the lost boy   inside him had wanted to cage her with protection, despite the  primitive  in him who'd growled mine, he'd tried to be gentle when she'd  left,  because the past week had been the most wonderful of his  misbegotten  life. His wife had opened herself to him, heart and soul,  mind and body.



It was the first time in his life that he hadn't been lonely.



Right then he knew that if there ever came a time when Hira rejected   him, it would be because he'd decided to let her go. And quite simply,   he never would. He'd fight to the death like some feral thing before he   watched her walk away.



Second by second, minute by slow minute, his wife had worn down his   defenses and made a place for herself in his heart. The vulnerability   was so sudden and ran so tearingly deep he didn't dare release it to the   light of day. He just knew that only Hira could calm the ache within   him.



But in spite of the new depth of their commitment to each other, a part   of his wife remained out of his reach. The crazy thing was, he knew   exactly why she sometimes acted as wary as a wild deer. If he could   wring Kerim Dazirah's neck, he would. Hira's father had planted that   fear of trusting the one you married in her, a fear that even now   shadowed her eyes.



An engine sounded, snagging his attention. A second later his wife's   cherry-red sports car came around the corner. Parking in the drive, she   exited and ran up to him, leaving her books in the car. Dressed in a   long denim skirt and plain white shirt, her hair pulled back in a tight   braid, she glittered like a perfectly cut diamond.



Delighted when she ran into his waiting arms, he swept her off her feet   and spun her around, her laughter wrapping around them like a silken   whisper. When he finally slid her slowly down his body, her sparkling   eyes had him leaning down to savor the taste of her lips. She opened for   him, warm and welcoming. Her fingers spread on his white T-shirt. "I   like the way you welcome me home," she whispered, her tone husky.



The sight of her well-kissed lips, wet and luscious, made him want to   ravage her. "Did you have a good day?" He was trying very hard not to   demand her whereabouts for the last few hours, since her lecture had   finished long before.



She smiled and wrapped her arms around his waist, raising her face for   another kiss. Tightening his embrace, he indulged both of them with a   slow slide of lips and an even slower stroking of tongues. It was a kiss   of lovers, one that left them both breathless.

"My day was interesting but strange." One hand slipped up to lie against   his heart. "I learned many things at their big library, made a  friend-"  her smile was both surprised and delighted "-and found out  that young  men today have no morals."



His whole body tensed at that disapproving sound, the arms around her turning into steel bands. "And how did you learn that?"



"They kept trying to court me when I'm clearly a wife." She raised the   hand with her wedding band on it. The fine gold sparkled in the light of   the setting sun. At the same moment, a cool breeze ruffled the fine   curls at her temples, causing goose bumps on her arms.



He tugged her inside. "What did you do?" Closing the door, he led her to   the living room sofa and sat down. She cuddled up next to him, one  hand  on his abdomen, while the fingers of her other hand drifted up to  play  with his hair.



Her look would've done justice to a particularly self-satisfied cat. "I told them I was yours and I used your name.

They stopped."



He bit back a grin. "You used my name?" He loved it when she touched him like this.