The Man Behind the Scars(30)

           



       

"Then what?" he asked quietly. But she didn't answer.

She cried, silent sobs shaking her as she sat against him, and Rafe  found himself murmuring soothing words, laying kisses on the bare skin  near her collarbone, tracing that enticing ridge with his tongue.

Slowly, her sobs eased. And then her breath came quicker. Rafe moved  from her collarbone to her neck, and then he reached up to slide his  hands into her short hair, loving the way she fit so perfectly in his  palms. He angled her mouth to his, and kissed her. Slow, lazy. As if the  fire that always blazed between them might dry her eyes. As if he could  kiss her smile back to him.

He pulled back, and searched her face. Her eyes were still damp, but the  storm had passed. He used his thumbs to wipe away the excess moisture  beneath each of her eyes, and something seemed to swell between them. It  was deeper than electricity, and somehow warmer than their usual fire.  Rafe felt almost dazed.

"Rafe … " she whispered, and he kissed her again, feeling something too  restless, too huge, move through him. He kissed his way from her mouth  to her cheek and all over her pretty face, tasting salt and Angel. That  thing between them seemed to hum and glow. Still, it grew, and when he  pulled away again he was smiling like a fool, like the kind of person  who smiled without reservation, and he couldn't even have said why.

"You shouldn't look at me like that," he said softly, searching her  pretty face, marveling at the brightness there, and inside him, where  nothing had been bright in a long, long time. "You don't know what I  might do."

Because she looked at him with whole summers in her blue eyes, and her  smile made him want to be the man she saw when she looked at him,  whoever that might be. Whatever it took.

She reached over and pushed his hair back from his forehead with one  hand. Her smile deepened, turned tender. She let out a sigh he couldn't  categorize, and when she met his eyes again, they were bright with more  tears.

"You can do anything you like," she said softly. "I love you."

And everything inside of him went cold.





CHAPTER TEN

ANGEL felt the chill immediately. He might as well have thrown open the  window and let the cold night air into the room. Without saying a word,  he shifted in the leather armchair beneath her and then stood, taking  her with him to stand her on the floor and put distance she didn't want  between them.

Angel only stood where he left her, numbly. She knew she shouldn't have said it. She didn't know why she had.

"What did you just say?" he asked, and she recognized that voice. It was  so terribly remote. Distinctly unfriendly. It was the way he'd spoken  to her when she'd first approached him in the Palazzo Santina. She  looked, and his eyes were as frigid, as forbidding. He stood there like  he was made of stone, dark and coldly furious, as inaccessible as if he  wore a suit of armor instead of that old pair of jeans and long-sleeved  shirt that clung to the hard planes of his beautiful chest like some  kind of cruel taunt.

He was a stranger again. So quickly, so utterly changed. It made her  heart hurt, and she wasn't at all sure what she could do to make it  stop. To make him stop. She was afraid that if she looked down, she  would see that they'd somehow ended up standing on the edge of some  dramatic precipice, with nothing to do but fall. And fall.

"You know exactly what I said," she replied, unable to make her voice  light, but somehow keeping it even. "I didn't mean to say it, if that  helps." She shrugged, feeling helpless and powerless and not at all sure  how to combat that. "It just slipped out."

Like the tears. She wiped at her face, not knowing how to process the  fact that she'd broken down like that, so completely, sobbing for the  first time in all of her memory. So undone by the kindness in his gaze,  the smile on his usually grim mouth, that she had only been able to weep  in response. She didn't know how to feel about any of this.

But it was painfully obvious that he did.

"We have a very clear agreement," Rafe said, and something about his  voice made her go very still. Too still. His eyes were frozen chips of  gunmetal gray. His mouth was a flat line. "I am perfectly aware of what I  purchased. You should be equally aware of what you sold."

She felt as if he'd kicked her. Hard and directly in the stomach. For a  moment, she wasn't sure she could speak through the impact of it. It  seemed to flare out, stealing her breath. She noticed her hands were  shaking slightly when she went to smooth her skirt and she hated,  suddenly, the fact that she was wearing a formal gown tonight. That here  she was, playing dress up. Believing in magic and miracles. Giving in  to hope, of all things.                       
       
           



       

She was furious with herself. And beneath that, something darker and far  closer to despair turned over inside of her and started to grow.

"If you are going to call me a prostitute, Rafe," she said  matter-of-factly, fighting to keep the pain from her voice, the shock  and the fury, and all that swirling dark beneath, "just come out and say  it. Don't hide behind vague euphemisms."

"You sold yourself for money," he said in that silky, insulting way of  his. That dark eyebrow of his winged high, aristocratic censure of the  first degree. She swallowed, and pretended she wasn't affected.

"Am I not allowed to love you?" she asked, her voice too quiet, but at  least it did not quaver. At least, she thought, there were layers to  this betrayal of herself. Degrees. "I don't recall signing anything that  forbade it."

His face darkened and his eyes grew even colder. She wouldn't have  thought it possible. She was torn between the urge to go to him and hold  him, as if that might warm him somehow, and the urge to hide from this.  From him. From her own limitless stupidity where this man was  concerned.

"Do you think I don't know what's happening here?" he demanded. "I don't want this kind of act, Angel. I told you before."

"What kind of act do you think this is?" she asked, not sure she  understood him. And not at all sure she wanted to. "What do you think  I'm pretending?"

"I know what I signed up for, and it does not involve pretty tears and  declarations of love," he said bluntly. Cruelly. "It won't work. Do you  understand me? You can't manipulate me with emotional fantasies. I  bought you. I never forget that and neither should you."

Every word was like a blow, all the worse after the sensual spell they'd  been living in these past weeks, and Angel was so dizzy with the pain  of it that she wondered for a panicked moment if she would topple over  from the force of it all.

But she didn't.

One moment passed, then another, and still she stood there, reeling but  upright. She didn't know if that was a good thing. Perhaps it would be  better to fold-to give in. To let this particular storm pass over them  and start again in the morning, when she could summon her usual airy  manners and handle him the way she usually did. When she could make it  all okay with a laugh and a smile.

But she couldn't seem to make herself look away. She couldn't quite  bring herself to surrender. Not anymore. Not when so much was at stake.  She'd had a glimpse of what they could have been, she and Rafe-and she  wanted it.

Heaven help her, but she wanted it. She wanted all of him.

"I must have misunderstood," she said, still managing to keep her voice  relatively even, as if what he'd said only rolled off her back. "I  thought we entered into a mutually beneficial contract. A marriage."

"Yes, a marriage," he threw at her, his eyes so cold-the coldest she'd  ever seen. She repressed a shiver. "And what a marriage it is. I am such  a terrible creature that I was forced to buy myself a wife whose  financial irresponsibility is what led her straight into my arms. What a  joyous union      indeed. How lucky we are."

"All this because I said I loved you," Angel said quietly. "It seems a little extreme, don't you think?"

"I don't want your love." His voice was like a lash. Angel had to fight to keep from flinching away from it.

He moved closer, so dark and big, looming there, and it crossed her mind  that she should have been afraid of him-but she wasn't. It was almost  sad, how much she wanted that to mean things it couldn't. It was even  sadder how very much she wanted to simply reach over and wrap her arms  around him. Even now.

"I want your compliance," he said, his voice a harsh whisper that might  as well have been a shout. "I want your body. I want heirs. You can keep  what you call love to yourself."

He turned then, and started across the sweep of Persian rug beneath  their feet, as if for the door. As if, she realized in some mix of  dawning horror and something else, something that rolled through her and  made her stomach twist, he had said all he needed to say. And something  in Angel snapped. She felt it break, hard, and then crumble into  pieces.