AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His brows shot up. ‘Doyouwant children?’
She focused on the tattoo scrawled across his chest. ‘You seemed disgusted by the idea.’
‘No. Not disgusted,’ he corrected, searching for a better way to describe how he felt. ‘Adamantly opposed,’ he settled on eventually.
Alicia’s face was impossible to read, her eyes shielded from him by her determined focus on his chest. On the one hand, he was flattered. On the other, he wanted to see, to understand—to know what she was feeling. Danger perforated his lungs, making breathing difficult. He knew he should get out of bed, but he wasn’t strong enough. Not then.
He’d been in the wilderness a long time; for now, he just wanted to enjoy the strange sensation that he’d come home, without analysing why that was problematic.
‘Why?’
Her small-voiced question took a moment to understand. He’d forgotten what they were talking about. But how to answer? How to explain the hole that opened up inside his chest when he’d lost his family so many years ago? As a teenager, he’d known he’d never have a family. He was a loner, through and through. In fact, the only time he’d doubted that decision, that deeply held knowledge, was that one summer, what felt like a lifetime ago, in Seville.
‘They’re disgusting,’ he said, flippantly. ‘Tiny hands, sticky fingers.’
‘I’m serious,’ she said, blinking up at him so something jolted in his chest.
‘So am I. Snotty noses. Do I really need to elaborate?’
‘But your own children,’ she said after a beat. ‘Surely you’ve thought about it?’
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘That’s one decision I’ve never doubted.’ He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t admit the truth to Alicia—that as a boy of eighteen, when they’d met and he’d felt like maybe he wasn’t a loner after all, he’d imagined a future rich with all the things so many people aspired to. That Alicia had made him doubt his desire to be solitary and truly independent.
But he’d been wrong then—there was no sense owning those feelings now.
‘My family died when I was just a boy—I have never wanted another family. I have never wanted that for myself.’
He waited for her to say something else, but her eyes were closed, her body still, and he let her sleep, or feign sleep, because the silence suited him, too.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ITTOOKAMOMENT, and considerable skill, to coax his arm out from under Alicia without waking her, to slide from the bed slowly, gently, then stand, taking a few beats to stare down at her and reassure himself she was still asleep. After all, they’d had a disturbed night, punctuated by passion when their chemistry had sparked between them and demanded indulgence. He’d reached for her, or she’d reached for him, and the next moment, they’d been kissing, exploring one another, making love as though it were their lifeblood.
Her body was now as familiar to him as his own, and yet, she was still a mystery.
He stiffened, remember the words she’d spoken the night before describing her father’s rejection of her, and a dark anger consumed him completely, forcing him away from the edge of the bed and away from Alicia, lest he make some kind of noise in response to the emotions rolling through him.
The truth was, minister Edward Griffiths was a totalbastardo.
But why hadn’t Graciano anticipated there would be consequences for Alicia? He grabbed some boxer shorts, then strode from the room, shutting the door gently before moving down the hallway towards the central stairs, while deep in thought.
The unpalatable truth was that he’d been so focused on himself he hadn’t thought about Alicia, beyond how disappointed he’d been in her—how angry, how all his hopes and feelings and barely acknowledged future aspirations had been destroyed. That anger had prevented him from predicting the likelihood that she would go to her father with the truth. He hadn’t foreseen that.
Now he wondered how that was possible. He’d spent months that summer watching her, admiring her, understanding her. She wasn’t like anyone he’d ever met. She didn’t judge him; she didn’t care about his background. She was the first person in his life who really sawhim, and wantedhim.It was those very traits that had made her rejection sting all the worse. She’d brought him out into the light and then turned it off, and he’d been determined not to forgive her for that—but even when, as it turned out, she hadn’t deserved a decade of his scorn?
He stopped in the kitchen, pressing his palms to the bench in a physical response to that. Snatches of that morning came into his mind, memories he’d spent a decade trying to ignore.
Edward Griffiths shouting.You took advantage of my daughter! You raped her!
And Alicia, silent, eyes to the floor, face ashen. He’d waited for her to interject. To sayanything.
Get the hell off my property. If I ever see you again, I’ll call the police. Hell, I’ll call them right now.
And then Edward had put his arm around Alicia and led her away. They’d walked off, side by side, a team, Alicia’s loyalty made oh so obvious by her choice to stay silent, to walk with Edward.
Graciano wasn’t an idiot, though. His experiences had made him particularly demanding of fidelity, unable to forgive disloyalty. It was possible he’d expected more than any sixteen-year-old girl, who was alone in the world besides her father, could deliver. But he was sure she’d looked at him with coldness that morning. He’d felt her rejection—it had turned his blood to ice—but what if he’d been wrong? What if that had been fear of her father? His gut twisted at that new idea.
He made a coffee, then slipped out of the kitchen before anyone could appear and interrupt. He needed to be alone to reflect on the fact that last night had shifted something inside of him—something he’d held on to for a long time. Parameters that had defined his existence, that had been established for his safety and protection, were moving without his consent.
