Where to Woo a Bawdy Baron (Romancing the Rake 3)

“Just a minute. Now you’re angry and that wasn’t my intention. I just wanted you to understand that no matter how I feel, I can’t give you the future you wish for.”

“You’ve explained.” Pain radiated through her body, her chest aching with the hurt of it. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

“Bianca,” he said and touched her shoulder but she shrugged it off. “It isn’t you.”

“Horse shit,” she said, spinning back and giving him a useless shove. He barely moved.

But his mouth dropped open. “Did you just push me?”

“Yes. I’ve asked you to leave. You should go.”

“I will,” he answered. “Once you understand.” And then removed his shirt.

Her breath nearly stopped as the hard, rippling muscles of his chest appeared. Dear lord in heaven, he was built like a Greek statue. For all his dark and shaggy hair on his head, his chest only had a tiny bit of hair sprinkled about the rippling muscle. His shoulders were so broad and his waist narrow. Her mouth dried as she looked at him. “What are you doing?”

He turned his back to her and even in the candlelight, she could see the scars that crisscrossed his back. She gasped, her insides jolting to see such damage to otherwise beautiful skin. Reaching out a hand and running her fingertip along one particularly deep line. “What is this? Who did this to you?”

“My father’s cure for my stutter.”

Chapter Eleven

Chris heard her gasp as her palms spread out on his back, tracing every line left by the crop. His father’s preferred method of discipline. Not that he hadn’t also used his fists.

“There was a time, before I didn’t stutter. When I was little my speech was perfectly clear.”

“What happened?” Her hands spread down his back and he was glad he couldn’t see her face. But her hands, they soothed his soul.

“I broke my father’s ship model. One he’d built himself.” He swallowed still remembering the vicious beating his father gave him. The way he’d wet himself and how he’d stuttered out pleas for forgiveness and relief.

She stroked her hands to his front, her fingers spread wide on his abdomen as she continued to caress his skin. “And he hurt you for it?”

“Viciously.” A shiver ran down his back.

“How old were you?” Her cheek pressed to his back, her breath warm on his skin.

“Five.”

“And that’s when the stutter started?”

Chris felt something wet against his back and craned his neck, as he tried to look down at her. One of her hands left his stomach to swipe at her eyes.

He turned in her arms and wrapped his arms about her back, resting his cheek on the top of her head. “Yes. That’s when it started.”

She looked up at him. “Did he hit your mother too?”

He closed his eyes. “Yes.” He swallowed hard. “As I got older, I used to put myself in front of her to take her blows. Or bait him to divert his attention.”

“Protecting women since childhood,” she murmured, reaching up to stroke his cheek.

He shook his head. “I don’t know about that. My father, he once told me that his father had been the meanest man alive. It struck me that this was a legacy that had been passed down.”

If he weren’t careful, he could end up being the same man. The thought of hurting Bianca, it stole the air from his lungs.

She sighed. “So you won’t marry and you won’t have children.”

“That’s right,” he answered, rubbing his cheek on the top of her head. “But just so we’re clear. You shouldn’t marry William either. That man in a piece of dung.”

She laughed softly, though a hiccup interrupted the middle and he looked down to realize her face was completely tear-stained. Using his thumb, he brushed all the tears away. “Don’t cry, my beautiful Bianca. You’ll find a wonderful man who is far more whole than I could ever be.”