The Man Behind the Scars

He set the pace, and she met it. She rode his hand, chasing that wildfire, more and more desperate with each rolling thrust of his fingers. She was aware of the other arm that wrapped around her waist and held her tight against his body, and that hard, serious mouth that continued to taste her, drinking in the sounds she made, encouraging every sigh and whimper and moan. Sensation built on sensation until she was nothing at all but lost in the feel of him, the wild perfection of it, the agony and glory of this man and the way he played her body like an instrument made only for him, only for this—

And then she shattered in his hands like glass.

When she came back to herself he had let her skirt drop back down to the floor, though he continued to stand there, so still and strong behind her. Her legs were so shaky beneath her that she was not at all certain they would hold her. She shifted, dropping her hands and turning, sinking against the door as she finally faced him.

It was like a punch in the gut, hard and sharp. He was too fierce, too focused. He could see far too much. Once again, she was aware of his scars only after she’d absorbed the impact of his cold gaze, his dangerous expression, and even then, they only seemed to underscore what she knew about him. What she’d just experienced. That he was entirely too powerful here. That he could make her do anything, and she would enjoy it.

More than enjoy it.

His dark eyes glittered in the shadows of the room, and she was sure she could hear the echoes of her cries rebounding from the high walls. She felt some emotion she couldn’t name move through her then, shaking her. She was afraid to name it—afraid to face it.

He reached up a hand to touch her cheek, his face so very fierce, his gaze so hard, so relentless, and she could not handle the intensity. She could not allow herself to feel this way. She could not allow herself to feel. But the emotion seemed to swell in her, tightening and sharpening, and she balked at the feel of his hard palm against her skin, balked at the sheer possessiveness in even so small a gesture.

It was slight—she hardly moved a muscle—but he froze.

“Ah, yes,” he said, his voice harsh in the quiet of the room. Bitter condemnation and severe judgment warred on his grim face, while that flash of near silver in his dark eyes that looked too much like pain nearly made her weep. “It is so much less exciting when you must look the monster in the eye, isn’t it? Impossible to pretend it is someone else touching you—someone less hideous to look upon, for a start. My apologies. I lost my head.”

She thought she said his name, but he didn’t look at her again.

He moved past her in the doorway, and then disappeared into the darkness of the manor house, leaving Angel to cling to the door as if it might keep her from falling while her heart pounded out a sickening beat in her chest and she wondered what, exactly, she’d just lost.

* * *

Angel could not sleep.

She’d tried everything to get herself to drift off into slumber, and had failed. She’d counted sodding sheep, but that had only made her more agitated. She’d attempted to quiet her mind—with precious little success. She’d even started to write a long, detailed e-mail to Allegra, her princess bride of a stepsister, but she’d given up several long and twisted paragraphs into all the tortured back story that had led her to this night and everything that had happened.

Sensible, play-it-safe Allegra was not likely to understand the things that had compelled Angel to marry Rafe, much less the things that Angel could hardly bear to express about what had passed between them without any words at all. So how could Angel possibly explain to her the potent mix of despair and deep, encompassing delight that coursed through her even hours later, marking her like some kind of internal tattoo, making her think she would die if Rafe put his hands on her again?

Or worse, she thought in some moments, if he did not?

That, Angel had decided, was far too much to dump in an email to her stepsister, who was probably carried aloft by doves and rainbows nightly with the force of her royal love, or something equally unimaginable and over-the-top, as suited the soon-to-be Princess of Santina. If she’d wanted Allegra’s counsel and input, she should have included her in this madness from the start, before things grew so wholly out of control. But she had not. She had—as ever—completely failed to imagine any circumstance in which she might need someone else, even as a friend to reach out to on a dark night when she suspected she’d acted terribly and foolishly, and so she was now forced to rely on only herself.