“You got a lot from her.”
She nodded, threading her fingers through his hair. “I also got a lot from my father.”
After seeing them together, he hated to admit that was true. But then, on the outside, the man was a perfect specimen. Rafael was certain that on the inside Eliana hadn’t been tainted by any trace of his weaknesses and evils.
“Whatever you got, wherever you got it, you became this one-of-a-kind amalgam.”
She gave an adorable little snort. “Did you go to the University of Extravagant Descriptions? Then got a PhD in hyperbolic metaphors?”
“Hush. I have all that vocabulary that I never found use for. You’re getting the benefit of it all.”
“Whether I like it or not, huh?”
He tugged a thick tress. “Oh, you like it.”
A sigh clasped her even closer against him. “Yes.”
He kissed her forehead. “Do you remember her?”
Her eyes became suddenly turbid. “Everyone thinks that I couldn’t possibly remember all that I do about her, since I was just three when she died, and that what I think are my memories are just from what Daddy kept telling me about her as I grew up. But I do remember her. Very well. Too well sometimes.”
He feathered kisses all over her face, needing to take away the raw edge of memories. “Is this why you give so much of your life to orphans?” Almost every weekend, and after work almost every day. “Because you feel like one, and you feel her loss so keenly?”
“If I feel that way when I have the best father in the world, I can’t imagine how those who’ve lost both parents, or never had anyone feel.”
The best father in the world. The man who’d sent him to hell. But she had nothing to do with his crimes. And he’d keep her away from their fallout, whatever it took.
He forced down the bile that rose to his mouth. “Next time I see Sister Cecelia I’ll correct her. You’re the angel.”
Her eyes widened. “You heard her?”
“I have very, very good
hearing.”
Her eyes grew heavy as they traveled down his body. “Everything about you is very, very good.”
He caught her tongue in a gentle bite, sucked it inside his mouth. “I’m agonizingly thrilled you approve...as you can feel.”
He ground his hardness against her and she mewled, became even more pliant against him. His head almost burst with the urge to forget his promise and just take her as she’d asked. But he had to wait. Had to deepen her involvement until she was as dependent on him as he was on her.
Insinuating a leg between his, she pressed her knee into his erection, wringing a growling thrust from him.
She chuckled, eyes telling him she considered them equal now. “But Sister Cecelia got it right, even if at the time I wanted to tell her that fallen angel would describe you better.”
“It would. I’ve done very, very bad things in my time. I still do, when the need arises.”
Her eyes grew serious. “But not to innocents.”
It was a statement, not a question. Pride expanded inside him that she trusted him again, and saw his fundamental truth.
“No. But the law still calls what I did and do illegal.”
“The right thing to do isn’t always legal. And as long as no innocents were harmed, as long as you help them like when you crush those corrupt people to save helpless children, then I call what you do heroic.” She sighed wistfully. “Sometimes I wish I could do the same, but I don’t have enough power. I’m only thankful someone like you who does exists, and that you use your power this way.”
Was it possible that once he destroyed her father—if she ever realized it was him who did it and she found out the reasons why—she’d find his actions heroic? At least, excusable and understandable?
“You can’t imagine how helpless I feel most of the time.” Her pain made him want to go out destroying everything that had ever made her feel this way. “I try to reach out to as many children as I can—to provide them with someone who cares, who’s there to listen to their problems and ideas, to take part in their activities, to encourage their interests and talents. But no matter how hard I try, I always feel nothing I do is enough. Thank God for people like the sisters who do far more. But someone like you? You can do the most.”