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It was anything but romantic—and that was precisely why he liked it. And her.
He told himself it was just that simple.
“You are the first woman in years who has approached me as a man, instead of a desperate charity case before whom they might martyr themselves for an evening,” he said quietly. He might know there was no man beneath his monstrous face, but she did not. And still she treated him like one. How could he resist it? “More often, they do not approach me at all. And I must marry after all. It might as well be a woman with no expectations.”
She cleared her throat. “Oh, I have expectations,” she said, and he wondered if it cost her to keep her voice so even, her gaze so light on his that he felt an echoing brightness inside of him. “But I feel certain you can meet them. You need do nothing more than sign the cheques to win my eternal devotion.”
In Rafe’s experience, few things were ever so easy.
“Since you have been so forthright, let me share my expectations with you,” he replied then. He held her close, so close she could do nothing but stare directly at the scars that told the world who he was—the scars she would spend a lifetime staring at, should this odd, very nearly absurd conversation turn into some kind of reality. “You understand that I must have heirs.”
“You great men always do,” she said knowledgeably, her eyes bright with some kind of amusement. Then she laughed. “Or so I’ve heard. And seen in films.”
He pulled the hand of hers he held to his chest, and understood, in that moment, how much he wanted this. Wanted her. More than he could remember wanting anything—anyone—ever. Because this is so convenient, he told himself. I need do nothing at all but accept. He told himself he believed it.
But he knew the truth. It beat in him like a drum, thick like desire and as damaging, making him think he could have a woman like this, that what lived in him would not destroy her as it had destroyed everyone else he’d ever loved or wanted to love. That her need for his money would protect her, somehow, from his need for her.
She should be so lucky, he thought grimly, but he did not let her go.
“You are a beautiful woman, as we’ve agreed,” he said in a low voice, his eyes hard on hers. “I imagine begetting the next generation will be no hardship at all for me—but you may have more difficulty with it.” He let that sink in, and when he spoke again, his voice was gruff to his own ears. “I will try to be sensitive to your revulsion, but I am, sadly, only a man.”
Was that a faint hint of color he saw, moving across the golden skin at her neck, her cheeks? Another quick shadow chased through the blue of her eyes.
“You are too kind.” He felt himself stiffen as her gaze traced over the path of his scars again, sweeping across his face, impossible to ignore. He couldn’t decipher what he saw in those marvelous eyes then, darker than before, and continued on.
“I don’t like anything fake.” He shrugged. “Thanks to my scars, I am unable to hide from the world. I dislike it, intensely, when others do.”
“I’ve never been very good at hiding anything,” she said after a moment. That smile spread over her mouth then, as tempting as it was challenging. It made him want to know her—to figure out what went on inside that head, behind that pretty face. You play a dangerous game, he warned himself. “What you see is what you get.”
He doubted that too.
“Most importantly,” he said, hearing his voice move even lower, and feeling her shiver slightly, as if in reaction, as if she felt him deep inside of her, or perhaps that was only his own fervent wish, “I am not open-minded. At all. I will care, very much, if you take a lover.”
Again, that electricity, stretching between them, burning into him, making him forget where they were. Who they were. Who he was, most of all. She made him forget he was a monster, and he found he didn’t know how to handle it. Or what it meant. And he squashed down, ruthlessly, the seed of hope that threatened to plant itself inside of him. Hope was pointless. Damaging. Better by far to deal in reality, however bleak, and weather what came. Better to banish what if altogether. It never brought anything but pain.
“No seas of lovers then,” Angel replied, the faint huskiness in her voice the only indication that she was affected by this bloodless talk of sex. Perhaps she, too, was fighting off the same carnal images that flooded his brain. “And here I thought we would have a modern sort of marriage. I hear they’re fashionable these days, all adultery and ennui.”
