AllFreeNovel
Share Us
s a firm command she didn’t intend to heed. Absurdly thankful that she’d discarded her shoes earlier, she flew down the stairs. From their tour, she remembered the staterooms were on the lower deck and made a mad dash for them, desperate to put a solid locked door between her and Maceo.
Halfway down the carpeted hallway she lunged for a familiar-looking door, her heart banging against her ribs when she heard his footsteps behind her.
Safely inside, she turned to bolt the door.
One long arm thwarted her, followed by his large, immoveable frame as he filled the doorway. Faye chose the safer option of backing away from him. Of looking anywhere but into a face no doubt filled with horror and revulsion.
She sucked in a desperate breath when the tips of his polished shoes appeared in her lowered eyeline.
‘Faye. Cara—’
She jerked away from the hand rising towards her. ‘Don’t touch me. I don’t want you here. I don’t want your pity. Or your morbid curiosity. Or whatever this is!’
His hand dropped. ‘Explain to me why I am the focus of your anger,’ he invited, with a quiet calm that perversely ignited her anger. Anger that made her forget she wasn’t intending to look into his face. Into eyes that stared back at her with stomach-hollowing ferocity.
‘Because I warned you and you didn’t listen!’
His head tilted with mocking arrogance. Then he had the audacity to nod in agreement. ‘True. You warned me that you were “damaged.”’ He had the gall to use air quotes. ‘That I would “regret it”. Oh, and something about you not being worth it. Have I got everything?’
‘No!’ she railed. ‘You haven’t adequately described your disgust. The horror I saw on your face!’
Mockery and arrogance fled and his face assumed the formidable façade that made lesser men quake in his presence. ‘Of course I’m horrified. No woman should have to endure what your mother went through.’
‘You...’ She stopped. Sucked in a stunned breath as his words sank in.
‘Any man who harms a hair on a woman’s head isn’t worthy of the name. Any bastardo who does what was done to your mother is a deplorable waste of space who deserves to be thrown into the darkest pit,’ he condemned, flames roaring in his eyes.
Faye shook her head, unable to comprehend his reaction.
‘As for what you believe should be my reaction to you...’ He dragged a hand over his jaw, bewilderment flitting over his face. ‘Why would you expect me to blame you for something you had no control over?’
Old flames of humiliation and shame washed over her. ‘It’s never stopped most people in the past.’
‘Who?’ he snarled.
Her heart twisted. ‘Someone I was involved with...briefly. He called me an abomination.’ Among many other things.
His nostrils flared. ‘Then he too was a despicable idiot. And I believe I warned you before that I’m not most people.’
She wanted to laugh hysterically. Of all the times to remind her he was extraordinary!
Her insides rumbled, as if the tectonic plates formed of every negative emotion she’d suffered because of the circumstances of her birth were attempting to shift. Simply on the strength of his words?
‘Why are you trying to convince me that this isn’t... That you’re not...?’ Completely and utterly nauseated by me?
He sighed. ‘It seems that, like me, you need re-educating, cara.’ His voice was firm, yet gentle.
The rumbling intensified. Faye shut her eyes and tried to calm the roiling. When she opened them he was closer. Much closer. Breath-robbing gravity pinned her in place.
‘No child should have to bear the burden of the circumstances of their birth,’ he said. ‘Or permit those circumstances to get in the way of what they want.’
Her head spun. She felt turned inside out. She’d been convinced this would go so differently. And now...
Now she needed a moment—several moments—to think.
‘Can you leave, please? I’d like to be alone.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t oblige you, seeing as you are in my bedroom, mio dolce,’ he drawled.
