“Never,” she vowed, her voice fracturing. She slid one hand down his arm to cup his poor, damaged hand between hers. “Never, never, never.”
Dear Lord, she had to stop crying. She sucked in a broken breath and struggled for control.
He was as taut as a drawn wire. On edge. Furious. Grieving. Likely to lash out at the least provocation. Perhaps she pushed him too far, risked another attack. She muffled a sob and stroked his hand with trembling fingers as if touch alone could mend what could never be mended.
His other hand opened, and the coat dropped to the floor, tacit admission that he wasn’t going anywhere. His glossy dark head lowered until his forehead rested against the door.
In the unnatural contours of the hand she held, she felt what his captors had done. The tracery of scars. The spurs and welts. The jagged knitting of the bones. Bones that had been smashed over and over. The knuckles were swollen. The fingernails were jagged and misshapen.
What had happened to him was obscene, unspeakable, barbaric. The damage made her want to scream and claw and fight. But all she could do was cry.
Heaven help me, I need to dam these endless tears.
“Charis, I don’t want your pity.” His voice was so deep, it was a subterranean growl.
He was wrong about her reaction. Pity was too weak a response to the horrors perpetrated on him. What he’d withstood beggared imagination. She felt like an ax cleaved her heart, and nothing would ever weld it whole again.
“I don’t pity you.” The words emerged as a choked murmur.
Still Gideon didn’t look at her. “I don’t believe you.”
With a jerky movement, he laid his other hand flat against the dark wood of the door. It had been as tortured as its twin. But staring at his hand against the timber, she saw the grace and beauty it must once have possessed.
“My love…” Curse these tears, nothing stopped them. “I’m so sorry.”
Words failed her. What could she say? Nothing was equal to what he’d been through. Instead, she followed where her heart dictated. Holding his shattered hand tenderly between hers, she raised it to her lips.
She placed a fervent kiss on the uneven knuckles. It was an act of homage for all he’d borne. It was an act of overwhelming anguish. It was an act of gratitude that he’d survived so she could fall in love with him.
Under her lips, his flesh was warm. His hands looked like they belonged to a monster. The skin she kissed was unquestionably a man’s.
He went utterly still. His shaking quieted. He didn’t breathe. He didn’t speak. His back was stiff with tension. If his living hand hadn’t rested between hers, she’d almost wonder if he’d turned to stone.
In the brittle silence, she finally heard him take a shuddering breath. The hand she held curled into a fist. He drew another of those long, difficult breaths.
“I hate what they did to me.” His voice was so low, she strained to hear him. He spoke toward the door. “I hate that I have to live with Rangapindhi forever.”
Oh, my dear.
She recognized his shame and pain. Without thinking, she shifted, pressing herself hard against his back with its interlocking network of scars. She turned her hot sticky cheek against his skin, feeling the tight muscles, the lines of raised flesh.
His shoulders bent forward. He was so rigid, it was as if he kept himself upright through will alone. Compassion, all the more poignant because she couldn’t express it, stabbed her. She waited in painful suspense for him to push her away, berate her, walk out. But he didn’t move.
Without releasing the hand she’d kissed, she raised her other hand to cover his where it flattened against the door. He jerked infinitesimally under her touch, then subsided into stillness. She tried to infuse him with every ounce of her love. Physically. Through the human warmth he’d thought denied to him forever.
She didn’t know how long she sprawled against him in wordless communion. She closed her eyes and let darkness take her.
After a long while, she felt him shift. She opened her eyes and straightened.
Finally, he turned to face her, forcing her to free one of his hands although she kept her clasp on the other. She steeled herself to look into his face as fear sent icy tendrils along her spine.
What would his expression reveal? Anger? Disdain? Coldness, as he rebuilt barriers of pride and detachment that had crumbled tonight?
His face was stark with some deep emotion she couldn’t identify. She stared into his burning eyes.
“Charis…”
He looked as though he’d lost his soul. The stony desolation in his eyes cut her to the quick.