The Man Behind the Scars(27)

"Thank you for coming out here to offer your support, Angel," he gritted  out, not sure who he was angrier with in that moment-her or him. Her,  he decided, for being so constitutionally incapable of being properly  scared off, properly cowed, properly any of the things she ought to be.  Like being appalled at his monstrous appearance on that damned dance  floor, so that none of this would have happened, and he could have  simply rebuilt his house and marinated in his solitude, as planned.  Without worrying that she would see the real ugliness within him.  Without descending into sarcasm. "I'm sure it will speed along the  restoration of the manor considerably."

She slid her sunglasses from her eyes, securing them on the top of her  head and fixing him with her frank blue gaze. It was as if Pembroke  Manor disappeared, with all of the workmen and the power tools, the  stone walls the fire had failed to topple, the glittering loch and the  silent sentries of the mountains in the distance. It was as if there was  nothing at all in the whole of the world but Angel, and he was rapidly  losing his ability to keep his cool where this woman, his wife, was  concerned.

"Do not speak," he told her, his voice too dark, his patience too thin.  "Unless you plan to invite me into your bed, right now. It is the only  thing I want to hear from you at the moment."

Something he might have called fear in someone else moved through her  bright eyes then, clouding them. Making her look soft for a moment.  Vulnerable. Not the Angel he knew at all.

"I can't," she said, and laughed slightly, as if the admission surprised her. "I don't know why, but I can't."

His gaze bored into hers, daring her. Challenging her. He wished the  power of his gaze alone could seduce her, somehow. Could make her want  him enough to finally prove what she'd said to him that morning in the  woods. Could make him believe that she truly saw all of him, and could  accept it. Even if he knew better.                       
       
           



       

"What are you so afraid of?" he asked softly. Deliberately. "You already know I will make you come. Screaming my name, in fact."

Her breath came out in an audible rush that was, in part, a kind of  dazed laugh. He did not try to hide the force of his desire, the sweet  torture of it, and he had the satisfaction of watching her eyes widen as  she shivered slightly, then the exquisite pain of watching her pull her  lush lower lip between her teeth and bite at it. He felt it as if she'd  bitten him instead. But once again that look moved over her face, and  she shook it away.

"I have to go," she whispered, stepping back and breaking that odd  enchantment that hovered between them and shut out the world. Rafe was  aware, again, of the din around them, the crowd only a small distance  away in the ruined wing of the house. He felt it as a loss.

She turned away. But her shoes were absurd and much too high for even  the manicured sweep of lawn outside the manor, and she took only a step  or two before she stumbled. Rafe didn't think, he simply reached over  and righted her with a hand on her arm. And then, because he could, he  acquiesced to an urge he hardly understood and swept her up and into his  arms.

She clutched at his shoulders, her blue eyes wide, though she made no  sound of protest. Holding her high against his chest, Rafe began to walk  toward the house. She was light in his arms, a sweet weight against his  chest, and he wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything. He  could not seem to tear his gaze from hers as he shouldered his way  through the great front door and into the grand entry hall. He was  breathing too hard, as if he'd run up the side of one of the mountains,  and he could only imagine the look that must have been stamped on his  face. Arousal. Desire. As if he was some kind of wild animal, he thought  in self-disgust, so desperate was he for her. And still she only stared  back at him as if she was frozen in place, in his arms and in his gaze,  as he carried her over his threshold.

The symbolism was not lost on him.

But this was a different sort of marriage, and she was a very different  sort of wife, and he had no choice but to let her down from his arms. He  did it slowly. So slowly. And if she slid a bit and rubbed against him  on her way down, well, he could only do so much.

Her feet touched the ground and she took a shaky sort of step back, her  eyes too wide, as if, finally, she was as frightened of him as she  should have been from the start. Why should that surprise him so much?

"I will see you tonight," he said then, which was not at all what he  wanted to say. Nor was he sure he could survive another meal with all of  this tension and flame drawn so tight between them. He might just snap,  spread her out on the antique table and take her as he longed to do.

He didn't know himself in that moment. His iron control seemed to have  deserted him entirely. He could feel his hands clench as if they might  simply reach for her, and his promises be damned-

But he could not be that man. He could not break his word. Not this  time. He didn't know why it felt so important to him, but it was. He  knew that it was.

"Maybe," he could not help but grit out, with passion and pain and  something much deeper he refused to identify, "you will take the time to  think more carefully about what it is you want, Angel. Because you  continue to play with fire and it will burn us both."

He forced himself to turn, to leave her standing there, to make for the  door. And when he heard her say his name he ignored it, because he  wanted it too badly. He knew it couldn't be real.

"Rafe," she said again, her voice husky. And definitely not in his head. "Please."

He stopped walking, though he could not bring himself to turn around and  face her again. He wasn't sure he could keep walking away from her. He  wasn't sure he would, no matter his best intentions. No matter that it  would be better for both of them if he did.

"I'm tired of these games," he said quietly, even bitterly. "I promised you I would wait, and I will. But-"

"I don't want to play games." Her voice was still shaky, but there was a  certain note in it that seemed to hum in him, like some kind of tuning  fork. He turned to look at her. Her pretty face was clear, her eyes a  hot flash of blue, and all he could see was hunger. A hunger deep and  wild, to match his own.

He hardly dared let himself believe it.

"What do you want?" he asked, his voice too quiet. As if he might  startle her, and lose her, should he speak too loudly. "If not these  endless games?"

Her eyes were so blue. Her face was so pretty, and flushed now with the  force of this thing between them, this great wilderness of desire. She  blinked, and he thought he'd lost her, but she only raised her chin  slightly, as if fighting off attackers he couldn't see, and met his gaze  with that directness that he'd admired in her from the start.                       
       
           



       

"You," she said, and he could see the enormity of this move over her,  through her, as if she felt it too, these impossible currents that  flowed around them. That threatened to suck them both under, and Rafe  couldn't even bring himself to care.

She stepped toward him, closing the distance between them. Rafe was not  sure he breathed, and then he knew he did not when she reached over and  put her hands on his chest, tilting her head back to gaze up at him,  heating up the great hall until there was nothing at all but this shared  hunger. This sweet fire.

Her. Angel.

"I want you," she said, her voice a mere scratch of sound. "I do."

And then she pushed herself up on her toes, closed the distance between them and kissed him.





CHAPTER NINE

FOR a moment he was still, too still, and Angel only pressed her mouth  against the grim, sober line of his, as close as she'd ever come to  begging. But it didn't feel like begging-it felt like some kind of  homecoming.

And then everything seemed to burst into color and heat.

Rafe slid his hands into her hair, cradling her head between them even  as he angled her mouth against his for a deeper, hotter fit. And just  like that, he took control. He demanded. He possessed. He took. He  tasted male and enticing and Rafe, and she could not seem to get enough.  He kissed her as if they would both die if he stopped, and there was  some part of her, Angel knew, that believed they would.

She didn't care where they were. Some small voice in her head whispered  that they were standing in the entry hall, that anyone could walk in and  see them-but she shoved it aside. Sensation bloomed into new sensation,  and she soaked each one in. The devastating perfection of his mouth on  hers. The strength and command in the hands that held her there, while  his mouth plundered hers. That lean, hard body of his that was all  around her now, right in front of her. Hers to touch. To taste. At last.