She pushed gracefully to her feet, staring at a point behind his head, tears still streaming down her cheeks as she unfastened her silky gown and let it pool at her feet. Then she stood trembling before him, all soft pale skin, gentle curves, and wild dark hair.
“You’re so beautiful,” he breathed, stunned. He’d known she’d be gorgeous, but all his fantasies had fallen short of the reality. Her trembling intensified as he continued to stare, and finally, she released a choking sob and folded her arms across her chest, crying in earnest. He watched in horror as she completely broke down before him, sobbing as if her heart was broken.
“I’m sorry,” she told him brokenly. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t do this to hurt you. I just thought you were never coming back to me, and I couldn’t bear that. I wanted you in my life so badly, but not like this... never like this.”
He couldn’t handle this. He wasn’t made of stone. With a frustrated sigh, he shoved to his feet and swung her up into his arms, carrying her over to the bed and tucking her under the covers. He lay down beside her and held her tightly, running his hands up and down her smooth back, whispering words of comfort and internally cursing himself for being the biggest bastard who’d ever lived.
She had offered herself to him so sweetly, and instead, he’d chosen to make it ugly. What the hell was wrong with him? This beautiful woman wanted him. She’d gone to desperate lengths to get him, and still, he kept pushing her away.
After a long, long time, the storm inside her seemed to abate, and she calmed in his arms, tucking her head beneath his chin, her face pressed against his chest.
“I’m so sorry,” she said at last. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“These last few weeks have been difficult for both of us,” he murmured, running his hand through her hair. “It’s all right.”
“I want to make love to you,” she assured him. “I really do. Just not like that. Not like I’m some... whore you bought off the street.”
“That’s not how I think of you,” he assured her guiltily.
“I care about you so much, Adrian.” She moved her head so she could see him, blinking up at him through her tears. “Don’t you remember how it was between us when you’d come to my flat? I know what I did was horrible, but you stopped coming to see me. You wouldn’t tell me who you were, and I just couldn’t think of any other way to get you back. I knew you wouldn’t believe me if I told you the truth.”
He gazed down at her, wanting so badly to believe what she said but so afraid this was some new ploy. “You should have tried,” he told her, not wanting to hurt her anymore tonight but unable to take her at her word. “How can I trust you now, Vanessa? I want to. I just don’t know how.”
She lifted her hand, brushing a few strands of hair from his eyes, then letting her fingertips trail lightly across his scars. He flinched, but she didn’t pull her hand away. She was the only one who’d ever even attempted to touch the ugliness that was so much a part of him.
“I don’t know what you see when you look in the mirror,” she told him softly. “But I’m certain it can’t be the same thing I see when I look at you. This is such a small part of who you are, yet you were willing to walk away from me forever, just to keep me from seeing it.”
He drew in a long, shuddering breath, unmanned by the sweetness of her words. “It’s not just my face,” he told her, determined to get it all out in the open now. “There’s more. My chest... my back... I’m scarred... ruined... everywhere.”
“Oh, Adrian.” She leaned forward and brushed her lips against his temple, letting her lips trace the path of her fingertips, kissing every inch of his tender, puckered skin. “You’re beautiful to me. Why can’t you see that?”
He caught her face in his hands, bringing his mouth to hers, kissing her with raw intensity. God help him. He wanted so desperately to believe her. As he kissed her, she began to unbutton his shirt, but he didn’t stop her. It had been years since anyone had seen what lay beneath his clothes, but he found himself wanting her to see this ugliest part of him. Her reaction would tell him everything he needed to know.
Without breaking the kiss, she urged him to his knees. Once they were kneeling on the bed, facing each other, she broke away and brushed the halves of his shirt over his shoulders and down his arms, her gaze locked upon what she uncovered. He closed his eyes, unable in the end to look at her face and see her reaction. Nausea bloomed within him as he felt her circle him, obviously determined to see every inch of what he’d kept hidden for so long. Now he was the one trembling beneath her gaze.
The first brush of her fingertips across the scarred skin of his back made him jump, but the tenderness in her touch soothed something deep inside him. He had never expected such a moment, to have a woman touch him voluntarily, without any apparent disgust or revulsion.
“Let me tell you what I see.” As she spoke, she wrapped her arms around him from behind, pressing her soft, bare breasts against his naked back. “Your body takes my breath away.” She ran her hands up his sides, over his pectoral muscles, and then grazed his belly with her fingertips, making his cock strain toward her touch through his trousers. “So hard, so powerful, so beautiful. I could spend hours exploring every inch of your skin, Adrian, and never grow tired of looking at you.”
He took a deep breath, then let it out in shuddering sigh. Christ, he wanted so badly to believe her.
Then she ran her hands over his scars, just as tenderly as she’d touched the rest of him. “These scars... I won’t lie, they’re terrible to look at. But just because they remind me of the pain you must have suffered. You were just a little boy, you’d lost your father, and you were in so much pain. Having met your mother, I don’t think she was there for you the way she should have been, and so you grew up thinking that these marks made you somehow less.”
She circled him again, and he finally opened his eyes. “Your scars are beautiful to me, Adrian. You survived something horrible, something that could have easily killed you, but you’re still here. I’m so glad you’re still here.”
“For the first time in a long time, I’m glad I’m here, too,” he admitted, cupping her precious face and kissing her with all the tenderness her words had created within him. Was it that simple? Could she truly look at him and see more than the scars? For this moment, for tonight, he chose to believe her.
Vanessa kissed Adrian back with all the passion in her soul. She sensed that she’d somehow gotten through to him, and her heart swelled with love. She wanted to tell him how she felt but was afraid that would be too much, too soon.
As the kiss grew hotter and hotter, she let her fingertips trail up and down his broad chest, then slip lower, to dance across the muscular ridges of his belly. His body truly was amazingly beautiful, despite the scars upon his upper left chest and back. All lean muscle and golden skin. She wanted to touch every inch of him.
When she unfastened his trousers, he groaned into her mouth, and the satiny head of his erection leaped against her hand. She pushed the fabric down his hips, freeing him, and then broke away from the kiss, eager to see what she had revealed. He pushed the trousers and undergarments free of his legs and lay supine before her, so breathtakingly handsome. His hips were trim, his legs muscular, his cock thick and proud, lying upon his flat belly.
She brushed her hand across the length of him, then brought it slowly back to curl around his rigid length, gasping at the heat, the unexpected soft texture of the delicate skin encasing such hardness.
“Vanessa,” he moaned, covering her hand with his and thrusting between their entwined fingers. “Oh, God, my darling, I have dreamed of this for so long... to feel your hands on me.” He broke off on another moan, obviously enjoying what she was doing.
Heartened, aroused, hopeful for the first time in weeks, she kept on, learning his big, beautiful, scarred body, thrilling at the knowledge that she could make him gasp and groan. After only a few moments of this however, he suddenly rolled her beneath him, turning the tables abruptly, his hands and lips coasting across her skin as he murmured sweet words.
