The Man Behind the Scars

by Caitlin Crews

  She was finally close to him. She was finally touching him. He started to move, carrying her up the formal stair, cursing under his breath when she leaned into him and started tasting the line of his jaw, then the sweep of scars across his ruined cheek. She felt him stiffen slightly, his breath leaving him in a rasp. He stopped moving, and turned his head, his mouth meeting hers, his kiss something approaching desperate. She met it. She exulted in it, and after a moment he began to move again.

  It could have been moments or years, suspended in the sheer joy of touching him like this, but then he was striding into his rooms. The suite next to hers that she had never so much as glimpsed before now. Angel had only the vaguest impression of an immense space, heavy antique furniture and gold tapestries on the walls before he was tumbling her down in the center of his bed, a commanding affair all its own, and coming down on top of her.

  Finally, Angel thought. Or, she thought when his eyes gleamed, perhaps she’d said it out loud.

  He claimed her mouth again with that same devastating mastery, pressing her into the soft mattress. She welcomed it. He gave no quarter, shifting so that the hardest part of him was flush against the softest part of her, making them both inhale too sharply. Heat flared and rolled through her, making her feel like some kind of firework about to scatter across a dark sky. Angel felt that same heat at the back of her eyes, threatening to spill over, and she couldn’t seem to worry about that the way she knew she should. She felt dizzy with the taste of him, shaky with the driving greed that made her want more, even now. More. More of his clever hands. More of his delicious weight over her. More of that impossible mouth against hers.

  His hands were like fire, moving over her, making her burn and burn again. He pulled her top over her head with a quiet intensity that made her shiver in reaction. He cast it aside, his attention narrowing in on her breasts, displayed for him in a frothy pink concoction of satin and lace. His hard face pulled taut with desire, making an answering surge of heat wash over her. And then he dipped his head and pulled her nipple into his mouth, through the material of her bra, making her gasp and jolt against him.

  She hardly noticed when he peeled the bra from her body too, but then his hot, wet mouth was on her breasts, teasing her and tormenting her, making her arch into him and writhe beneath him, making that knot inside of her grow hotter, tighter, harder. He shifted then, making short work of his own shirt and kicking off his shoes and trousers. But when Angel moved to do the same, he stopped her. He rose, gloriously, mouthwateringly naked, and moved to the edge of the bed.

  Distantly, Angel was aware he said something. But she was transfixed, staring at his beautiful body as if she’d never seen a man before. Why did she feel as if that were true? He was all hard-packed, rangy muscle, and she hardly knew where to look. The wide, mesmerizing shoulders, all sculpted muscle and strength. There were matching scars scraped deep into his chest, but they only seemed to highlight his solid, devastatingly masculine physique. His arousal jutted out before him, and Angel felt that knot inside of her begin to unwind, turning into a thick, wet need.

  She wanted to touch him everywhere. She wanted to learn his taste, his scent. She wanted him in ways that should have scared her.

  “Let me,” he said, perhaps not for the first time, and Angel thought her heart might explode in her chest when he knelt down before her and helped her shimmy out of her jeans. He pulled her thong from her hips with the same gentle ruthlessness, and then they were both naked. His dark gaze met hers, and Angel swallowed, suddenly as terrified as she was aroused. As if he could sense it, he slid his palms up the smooth length of her legs, making her breath catch in her throat, making the terror recede and leaving only that delectable, languorous heat in its wake. When he reached her hips his fingers curled around and then tugged her closer to him.

  “Rafe,” she began.

  But he ignored her. He leaned forward and pressed his mouth to the core of her, licking his way into her molten center.

  It was like dying, Angel thought, in the most glorious way possible—and then he shifted position and she stopped thinking altogether.

  And Rafe set her on fire. Again and again and again. He used his lips, his tongue and even the faintest hint of his teeth. He used his hard, beautiful hands. And when she was gasping for breath, writhing helplessly before him, her mind completely and utterly empty of everything but this most divine torture, he pulled back.

  Her hands were fists in the coverlet. Her legs were wrapped around his shoulders.

  “The next time you say my name,” he told her, his voice a dark sorcery that made her nipples draw tight in reaction, pure male satisfaction in every syllable, “I want you to scream it.”

  And when he licked into her soft heat again, she burst into a thousand pieces, and obeyed.

  When she opened her eyes again, dazed and made new in ways she couldn’t begin to contemplate, he was making his way up the length of her body, kissing a trail of fire from her hip bone to the underside of her breasts.

  He moved over her, settling himself between her legs, and for a moment she could only look at him, feeling strangely fragile. Oddly vulnerable. And she could have sworn he knew it.

  And then he moved against her. Teasing her.

  The fire blazed anew, as if he hadn’t just thrown her over the edge. It was hotter, wilder. She gasped as the inferno rolled through her, shocking her, her hands moving to grip his strong shoulders, her hips once again rising to meet him, as if her body was already entirely his. As he knew her own flesh better than she did, and could make her do his bidding that easily.

  He moved again, a delicious, tempting slide of flesh against flesh, and she arched against him, all helpless fire and need, and she understood that, in fact, he could. He did.

  Rafe met her gaze, his own hot and dark and some kind of wild silver, and then, impossibly, he smiled.

  Angel felt her heart break.

  And then he twisted his hips and drove deep inside of her.

  He set a demanding rhythm, but Angel met it, her body moving like silk against his, as if she’d been designed for precisely this. For this slide of skin, this unbearably shattering possession.

  He slid his arms around her, pulling her even closer as his hips moved faster and faster, making that wildfire burn white-hot—and then Angel was falling apart again, falling into pieces, and this time he came with her.

  They made love so many times that night and over the next few days that Angel lost track of time. Of the world. Of anything that wasn’t Rafe or his mouthwateringly beautiful body, that she only wanted more the more she had him. Of the magical things he could do, again and again. It was as if they couldn’t seem to quench the hunger, the need, no matter how many times they tried.

  It was like being lost in a kind of fog, except Angel didn’t care if she ever came out of it. He looked at her as if she was a wonder, as if she was perfect. He touched her as if he wanted nothing but to worship her. He was addictive, and he was her husband, and an odd feeling started to grow in her as each day passed and they explored each other more and more. It was buoyant, and ever-expanding. It seemed to resonate in his hard face when she looked at him, when she kissed him, making even that grim mouth seem softer, somehow. As if he felt it too.

  She had the strangest suspicion it was hope.

  Almost two weeks passed before she bothered to check her email again, to see how the world had got on without her. The answer was: perfectly well. She lay across her bed with her laptop and found herself having to struggle to come up with her usual flippant tone in the emails she exchanged with Allegra. As if all those tough outer layers she’d thought were a part of her had been scraped away now. Here. As if being with Rafe like this, as if theirs was the real marriage she hadn’t known she’d wanted until it was too late, was making her … raw. She didn’t know where to put that.

  Not sure you want to hear this while you’re off exploring the Scottish wilderness with you
r earl, Allegra emailed after several messages demanding more information about Rafe and her exact whereabouts, in response to that email Angel hardly remembered sending way back when. But I’ve had a visit from Chantelle. She gave me a rather large cheque (£15,000!) and said a lot of incomprehensible things about her bills. Please tell me that doesn’t mean your bills? Please tell me she didn’t …?

  Oh, she did, Angel emailed in reply. And while £15,000 is a lovely gesture, that’s really all it is—a gesture. The old Angel would have ripped Chantelle apart. She could have ranted on the topic of her mother’s opportunism for days. It wasn’t as if Allegra hadn’t heard her vent about her mother before—especially in a situation like this. But this new version of Angel couldn’t see the point. It wouldn’t make her feel any better, and it wouldn’t change things, so why bother?

  It doesn’t matter to me anymore, she wrote instead, feeling like someone else—someone far calmer and more at peace than she had ever been. As if being around someone as self-possessed and still as Rafe was somehow contagious. She found she liked this version of herself, with all her usual edges … softened. I’m sure she owes you at least that much. Keep it.

  And what about poor Izzy? Allegra wrote back. No one’s laid eyes on her since that scene at the engagement party. You’re going to have to come back. It’s all gone pear-shaped without you in London, clearly!

  Angel stared at that email for a long time. She was not, she realized with a trickle of something like shame through her belly, a particularly good sister to Izzy. She didn’t even know what scene Allegra was talking about, having spent the engagement party completely engrossed in Rafe—though with Izzy, it could be anything, and had probably involved forcing herself into the spotlight in one way or another. It always did. Angel had always despaired of her half sister’s antics, but for the first time it occurred to her to wonder if that was fair. Angel knew better than anyone how difficult it was to grow up with Chantelle as a mother.

  Izzy is a survivor, she wrote back to Allegra. She’ll land on her feet. It’s the defining family trait. Say what you will about Chantelle (I mean that) but she always sorts things out in her favor, doesn’t she? So will Izzy.

  But she couldn’t help thinking about her half sister long after she hit Send. It wasn’t like Izzy to disappear from view for very long. She was much more like their mother in that regard—she’d never heard of keeping a low profile. But what did Angel know? She’d seemed to turn over a new leaf, quite by accident, in the wake of Allegra’s engagement party. Why shouldn’t Izzy?

  “How is the outside world?” Rafe asked from the doorway, making Angel start. But she only smiled, letting her eyes drink in the sight of him, as if it had been years since she’d last seen him like this, all lean and dark and gorgeous, instead of an hour or two. Her stomach dropped in that now familiar little flip of reaction to him. And her body, so attuned to him now, readied itself for the pleasure he could deliver.

  “Very much the same,” she said, closing the lid of her laptop. She eyed him, standing there in the doorway, almost as if he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to enter the countess’s chamber. She wondered, not for the first time, what kind of woman his mother had been. “The whole world is carrying on just fine without me.”

  Rafe prowled toward the bed. Angel felt her smile deepen.

  “I am not,” he said in a low voice when he was close.

  He stood over her, his mouth slightly curved in that way she found toe-curlingly sexy. She wanted to taste it, him, and so she came up on her knees and moved to meet him. He took her mouth in a kiss so deep, so carnal, that she felt her whole body tighten and then burst into molten heat.

  And that suddenly, she was desperate for him. Again.

  Always, that little voice whispered inside of her, propped up by that brightness that seemed to glow more and more each time he touched her like this, each time they took each other higher.

  And then his hands were on her body and she stopped thinking altogether.

  He could not get enough of her.

  Rafe kept waiting for the fever to pass, for the fire to subside, but it only grew worse. The more he had her, the more he wanted her. On the table in that dining room, just as he’d imagined. In the woods in the spot where she’d almost left him. In the gallery, beneath the austere frowns of his noble ancestors.

  He was made of want. Of need. He knew every variation of her sighs now—what each one meant, how much pleasure each indicated, and what to do to ramp it up even further. He never tired of exploring her lovely body. He began to wonder if he ever would. He had always been the sort of man who concentrated on what was in front of him, but this was something more than simple focus. She distracted him even when she was nowhere in sight. She was like an itch beneath his skin, and all he could think to do was scratch it. Repeatedly.

  He told himself that was enough.

  Tonight he’d had to take a call during their usual meal time, and so looked for her in the library when he was done. As he expected, she was curled up in that same leather chair. And as usual, she was wearing one of her formal gowns, as she did every night, while he remained deliberately casual in response.

  “You are dressed for a ball,” he pointed out as he walked toward her. He realized he’d quickened his pace the moment he saw her, and didn’t know where to put that. She set her book aside and watched him draw closer, a smile in her bright blue eyes if not on her lush little mouth.

  “Who knows?” she asked. “Perhaps there will be dancing in Pembroke Manor tonight. Hope springs eternal.”

  He came to a stop in front of her chair and held out his hand. Her eyes widened, and he felt his mouth move in response. There was no getting around it—he was smiling. He felt it move through him like light.

  What was it about her, he wondered, that made him believe she could cure the things in him he’d always believed were damaged beyond repair? Simply with that smile? Her touch?

  “Dance with me,” he said softly. Repeating what she’d said to him in the Palazzo Santina, he realized, with so much more between them now. Her answering smile told him she remembered it too. She slipped her hand into his and let him pull her to her feet.

  She wore a gown the color of a good red wine, a deep, rich burgundy. It fell low on her neck, exposing her delicate collarbone, then framed her pert breasts with a line of draped ruffles from one shoulder before swirling down to her feet. The effect was somehow edgy and elegant all at once. She looked good enough to eat. She always did. She smelled of something soft and feminine, and her clever eyes glowed as they met his. He wanted to be deep inside her, moving, driving them both wild. He was hard and ready and even though he knew she would be ready for him too, he ignored the temptation and pulled her into his arms instead.

  And they danced. Around and around the library, circling the old globe in its pride of place in the center. This time, they did not talk. They did not spar with each other. They only danced, as if they could both hear the same song, as if it played in them both, guiding their feet across the old, thick carpets. He held her in his arms as if she was his very own miracle come to life. Perhaps she is, some small voice whispered deep inside of him.

  And then he spun her away, making her laugh in delight. He spun her back to him, dipping her down low in the sort of showy way that he would have abhorred in public. But this was for Angel. For that laughter of hers that made his chest feel tight. That made him believe. How he wanted to believe.

  But when he pulled them both back to standing, he saw that she was crying.

  “What is it?” He was shaken. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

  Had the monster in him struck when he hadn’t been paying attention?

  “No,” she said, laughing slightly, wiping at her eyes. “This is so … I never cry!”

  “I told you I was a terrible dancer,” he said softly, rubbing his hands down the seductive line of her back, wanting only to calm her. “I gave you fair warn
ing.”

  Still, the tears fell, no matter how she tried to stop them, and Rafe found he could not take it, even if there appeared to be no particular crisis. He settled them both in the leather chair so that Angel was across his lap, and he tried to calm her the only way he knew how.

  “It’s not the dancing,” she said through her tears. “It’s not you. I’m not even sad!”

  “Then what?” he asked quietly. But she didn’t answer.

  She cried, silent sobs shaking her as she sat against him, and Rafe found himself murmuring soothing words, laying kisses on the bare skin near her collarbone, tracing that enticing ridge with his tongue.

  Slowly, her sobs eased. And then her breath came quicker. Rafe moved from her collarbone to her neck, and then he reached up to slide his hands into her short hair, loving the way she fit so perfectly in his palms. He angled her mouth to his, and kissed her. Slow, lazy. As if the fire that always blazed between them might dry her eyes. As if he could kiss her smile back to him.

  He pulled back, and searched her face. Her eyes were still damp, but the storm had passed. He used his thumbs to wipe away the excess moisture beneath each of her eyes, and something seemed to swell between them. It was deeper than electricity, and somehow warmer than their usual fire. Rafe felt almost dazed.

  “Rafe …” she whispered, and he kissed her again, feeling something too restless, too huge, move through him. He kissed his way from her mouth to her cheek and all over her pretty face, tasting salt and Angel. That thing between them seemed to hum and glow. Still, it grew, and when he pulled away again he was smiling like a fool, like the kind of person who smiled without reservation, and he couldn’t even have said why.