He paused, swallowing hard, forcing his words to continue. “Sacrifices had to be made. That was what I told myself as I would watch the heels of their boots disappear. That was always what I would watch—see last. Their boots. I would memorize their boots so I could identify them after the fact.”
“And it has torn you in two.”
His look dipped to the book. “So that—the book—those names—it is what I do. What I have to do. What I owe.” His head shaking, his gaze lifted to her. “But you could not have known it—known the importance of the book. And I reacted. I had no control and you bore the brunt of that.”
Her arms unfolded, her hands dropping to her sides. “You are not a monster, Theo.”
His eyes closed, his head shaking against her words. “You do not get to decide that, Vee.”
“No, but I do get to try every minute, of every day, to convince you of that fact.”
He could feel her move closer to him.
“You are not a monster, Theo.” Her hands went to his waist, slipping under his tailcoat.
“You don’t know that.”
She turned him, shuffling him backward as her hands moved up to slide off his coat. “Would I talk to a monster?”
The back of his thighs bumped into the card table. As much as he wanted to deny her, hold hard against her hands on his body, he could not do so. For he wanted even more so to believe her. To pretend that her words, her belief in him was warranted. Even if it was a lie he was allowing himself to be told.
“Would I talk to a monster?” she repeated, her fingers deftly removing his waistcoat.
“Vee…”
She pushed his white linen shirt up and off his body. “Would I touch a monster?” Her hands slipped down the front of his bare chest.
He shook his head, his eyes still closed.
“Would I press my body against a monster’s? Let him touch me? Take him deep inside me?”
His head shook again, slow, fighting her words.
“Would I love a monster, Theo?”
At the corner of his eye, a tear escaped down the side of his cheek.
She moved upward, her breath dusting his chest, his chin, until she set her cheek alongside his, the wetness of the tear spreading between their skin. “Because I love you, Theo.” She paused, her lips moving closer to his ear, her words wisps of air. “I love you, and I know in my soul you are not a monster. You are complicated and wounded and have the weight of unspeakable tragedies upon your shoulders—yes—all of that. But I know you. I know the man I once knew. The man before me now. And he is not a monster. He is the man that makes me feel when I had sworn to never do so again.”
Her head slid backward away from his ear as her hands settled flat on his chest. “Look at me, Theo.”
A deep breath lifted his chest, fortifying him against her words. He was a monster. He knew that. And it would only be a matter of time before she realized it as well.
“Open your eyes, Theo.”
He opened his eyes.
She stared at him, the violet shards in her blue eyes darkened almost to blackness. “Hear me now, Theo. There was only one man that could have done what you did for me. Make me feel again. Real, heart gripping, soul rendering emotion. That man—all of him—everything in his past—everything that he now is—is the man I love. You are not a monster. You are the man I love.”
Her fingers lifted from his chest, going to her hair to let the pins down out of her upsweep. Her hair unfurled, the long chestnut waves falling past her shoulders and down her back. Silently, her eyes never leaving his face, her fingers slipped under the edges of her dress, her chemise, and the mound of cloth puddled to the floor.
“You are not a monster, Theo. A man. Just a man.” She took a step toward him, her fingers slipping under the band of his trousers, unbuttoning the flap and removing them along with his boots. “And you are going to prove it to me—prove it to yourself.”
Her actions calm and smooth, only the ferocious brazenness in her voice betrayed what she needed from him. What she needed him to do. Do to her body.
His cock already straining at her naked body before him, her words lit the fuse she had laid when she stripped, no margin for feather kisses or sweet caress.
No. He understood this exactly as it was. As what it needed to be.
He rushed her, his right arm wrapping around her, pulling her backside up to slam her body into his. Her lips met his mouth with hunger. Raging, demanding hunger.
He spun, setting her backside on the octagonal card table, his tongue voracious in its appetite for her skin. Lips, neck, breasts, belly, and he went lower, tasting her for several strokes before she whimpered, yanking him upward.
Shifting her long onto her back, he moved onto the table, his knees pushing up on her thighs, opening her to him. He hovered for only an instant before driving himself deep into her wet body. Sliding in effortlessly, her body tightened around him only when he reached his hilt and started to withdraw. The core of her clasping upon him, begging him for the next stroke. Begging him for deeper.
Over and over and over. Her fingernails set hard into his back, savage as she provoked him onward. Faster. Deeper. Always deeper.
Her body arched upward, her breasts slamming into his chest as a garbled scream built in her chest.
He knew that scream. Knew it well.
He dropped his mouth to hers, capturing her as he rammed himself into her depths. The release, the contracting of her body was instant. The scream smothered in his mouth.
Her body clenched, seizing him, demanding he surrender.
Demanding he release.
Demanding he succumb to her words—he was just a man.
And the rest. The rest he had to let be.
He knew she was demanding all of that from him.
Begging it of him.
He let it go.
All of it.
He had to. For the one reason alone—she demanded it of him. Expected it of him.
And he would not disappoint her.
With a roar that expelled all of that from his body, he came, releasing himself.
Time, space, and his own body lost all meaning for long moments. Dead, alive, he could not decipher.
He hovered in the abyss until his breath suddenly sucked into his chest with a gasp, and his eyes opened. He realized he was squashing Violet into the table.
He instantly spun them, flipping her on top of him. “Hell, Vee, I crushed you.” He forced the words out between frantic gasps for breath.
She lifted herself from his chest to look at his face. “It will take a touch more than that to crush me, Theo.”
Her eyes searched him, studying carefully the pace of his breathing. Studying his soul, if he was to guess at it. It wasn’t until his breathing slowed that her body eased from tenseness and she gave a slight nod to herself.
Her arms shaking with exertion, she dropped herself onto his body, her fingertips tracing the scars along his chest in front of her nose. “You have survived terrors I cannot even imagine. All these scars, and you were never broken, Theo. Not like I was. You humble me.”
Watching her head bob up and down with each breath he took, he wrapped a strand of her chestnut hair between his fore and middle finger, staring at it as he curled and unfurled it over and over. “There are a thousand ways to break, Vee. And I did. I broke in ways that weren’t obvious. In ways I will never understand.”
“But you never sank…not like I did.”
“No. But you also managed to do what I never could, Vee.” The strand of hair slipped from his fingers and he snatched it back up, unwilling to free it quite yet. “What you did afterward, how you moved forth after your lowest moment—that was true courage. Courage most men would not have the mettle for. Courage I have lacked.”
“I don’t know if it was courage so much as a constant, gripping fear of ever being so numb, so distraught again, that I would believe my only option would be to give up.” A shudder ran across
her shoulders. “You must remember, I had Adalia and Cass to bring me back. To remind me of who I was. To force me to take each step until I could do it on my own.”
His left arm tightened around her bare back. “And I thank the heavens for them every day for what they did for you.”
“Theo, I know I said I couldn’t be your anchor. But you must know I resisted it because I was afraid—afraid of everything with you. Of feeling again. Of wanting.” Her face tilted up to him, her fingertips going to the line of his jaw. “If I remind you of who you are, who you can be, then I willingly take that responsibility. I will be your anchor. I had your sister. I had Cass. They were my anchors until I could be my own again. I will do that for you. I will remind you of who you are.”
“But I don’t want only that from you, Vee.”
Her brow wrinkled. “No?”
“You said love, Vee.” A smile curved his lips. “You said you loved me and now you cannot strike that from the world.”
She chuckled. “I don’t want to strike it, Theo. I want to live it.” Her fingers slipped from his jaw to rest along his neck as she tucked her head back onto his chest. “What you said about the night of the gala—I want that more than anything. To wake up in your arms with a world of possibilities open to us.”
The gala.
He stiffened slightly, kissing the top of her head in an effort to cover the motion. His hands casually settled flat onto the slope of her lower back. “Vee, that woman that was with your creditor, Mr. Olston—I don’t want you to do business with her.” He attempted to step lightly into it.
She perked up, setting her right fist on his chest and balancing her chin atop. “You saw her? You know Lady Toplan?”
“Lady Toplan, that was her name? Cassandra said that, but I wasn’t positive I heard correctly.”
“Yes. Lady Toplan. Do you know her, Theo?”
He didn’t care for the concern that suddenly etched Violet’s brow. He wanted it gone. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t Fiona he had seen. He exhaled. “No. No, I guess I do not know the lady. Do not mind my imagination.”
“Your imagination is bringing you into the past?”
“Yes.” He shook his head. “Forgive me, Violet. I fear I will never be able to escape the past—I will always be drawn back to it—to the ghosts of the past.”
“Ghosts?”
He sighed. “Of people long dead.”
She moved herself up higher, balancing on the length of her forearms along his chest. “Theo, know what I ask of you. I do not need to know all that has happened to you in the last five years—nor will I demand to know.”
She drew a long breath, her head dipping downward for long seconds, hiding from him. She lifted her look to him. “But I don’t want you to live in the past that cannot be changed. I want you to live here, now, with me. Yet I also know you cannot forget the past. So if it creeps into our lives, into your voice, your actions—all I want is for you to tell me. Tell me it is not me. Tell me it is a ghost that has set your face to darkness and I will wait—wait for you to come back into the present. Just tell me you will not bow—not break under the weight of the past—and I will wait.”
His throat constricted, a hard rock against any words he had, not that he could manage any.
He lifted his hand, wrapping it around the back of her neck and then drew her down onto his chest. It took a long minute before he could push words past his tight throat. “I need you, Vee. I need you with me tonight.”
She nodded, her cheek rubbing against his skin. “I can get Cass to handle the gaming tonight.”
“No. I don’t want to come between you and your responsibilities. I will wait. Here. In your office. Upstairs in that mouse hole of a room if needed. I just don’t want you in an empty bed. I don’t want me in an empty bed.”
His arm around her bare back tightened, a tremble going through his hand. He knew the hours alone in sleep—in the vast, dark lands between sleep and consciousness—offered little mercy to imaginations that could so quickly turn ugly. He needed her to ward against that. Needed to hold her. Needed to assure himself he was not imagining this—she was truly his, accepting him, scars and all.
She tilted her head on his chest to look at his face. “Yes. I think I overreacted when we first arrived here in London. The reality is no one bothers to monitor my whereabouts. I imagine a hood and cloak will get me in and out of the back entrance to your townhouse without issue? I will stay here through the first half of the evening, and if all is well, Cass and Logan can handle the rest of the evening’s affair.” Her hands slipped down to the sides of his torso, her light touch near to tickling as she lifted herself up to look at him straight on. “Theo…I don’t ever want you to question this. I want you. And if demons come with you, ghosts of the past, then I accept them as well. You—all of you—is what I want.”
“You have me, Vee. You have me.” He lifted his left hand, cupping the side of her face. “And I will wait all night if I have to. Just as long as you are in my bed.”
“I will be there.”
{ Chapter 15 }
“I have been waiting for your appearance, Fiona.”
“I imagine you have.” Fiona Van Halverstin, now Lady Toplan, set her tea cup down and stood from the settee in the front drawing room of Theo’s townhouse. She had helped herself to the tea he’d had readied for his meeting with Mr. Olston.
Turning to him, her green eyes, canny as always, swept across Theo where he stood in the doorway.
She had been a dead woman. Or so he had thought. Her neck for the noose, last he knew.
By the time word had gotten to him, she should have been dead.
Too late to save.
A ghost. One of the ghosts that had been haunting him for far too long.
He should’ve known she’d escape that fate. Fiona had always been able to escape anything. One of his best spies during the war.
And he’d been waiting for her since he verified hours ago just who Baron Toplan had married a year ago.
The three years since he’d last seen her had done her well. Her light blond hair swept softly into a sweet chignon under a tidy cap of black, she looked the part of the innocent. Heart-shaped lips that pouted on cue. Big green eyes with long dark lashes that could flutter, dripping of sexual innuendo.
That had always been her forte. Sex wrapped in innocence.
One of the most effective weapons in the wartime arsenal he commanded.
Maybe all of this was innocent. Maybe Fiona had moved on with her life after the war. Maybe it was happenstance that she was in his drawing room, drinking his tea.
Maybe.
For their past, for what she had suffered, he had to give her that benefit of the doubt. He owed that to her.
She took a step toward him, a cunning smile playing along her rosy lips. “I saw you on the street, Alton. I saw the second you recognized it was me coming from your lover’s adorable little gaming establishment.”
“Fiona—”
“The moment”—she shivered, her shoulders shaking in glee as her smile went wide—“let us just say it gave me chills. Old friends such as us—together again.”
“Was it you by the coaching inn in Northampton as well? You at the Vandestile ball in Derbyshire?”
Her wide smile stayed in place, feigning confusion. “Me, in the countryside? You do know how I hate the countryside.”
“I thought you were dead, Fiona.”
“It is quite certain I am not.”
“How did you manage to get to the Vandestile estate?”
“By carriage.”
Theo held back from gritting his teeth. Once one of his closest confidantes in the war, Fiona knew each and every way to drive him to madness. Sweetly talking in circles did that very thing.
He spun around to shut the door of the drawing room, his eyes purposely avoiding the bottom step of the staircase where Violet had stopped to kiss him before she had left hours ago. Kissed him with such wanton pro
wess, he had been forced to carry her back upstairs—laughing the whole way—and delay her departure.
He pulled the door closed, the latch clicking as he paused to steel himself. He turned back to Fiona. “You know very well I could care less if you walked there. Tell me how you made it into that ballroom in Derbyshire, Fiona.”
“I was invited.”
“Were you stalking me?”
“Stalking you?” She laughed, her black-gloved hand landing on the flat expanse of her creamy chest. Her black dress was cut low, highlighting the long slope of her ample bosom. “Why do you imagine I would even know if you were alive, Alton? Last I was aware, you had disappeared, captive to Boney’s Band of Vipers. The ball in Derbyshire was coincidence, nothing more. In fact, once I saw you there, I excused myself to my room. I did not want to chance bumping into you on the dance floor.”
His right hand balled into a fist. “I don’t believe you.”
“Why is it always about you, Alton?” Her hand slipped off her chest, settling to her side. “Just as it was during the war—always about what you wanted—what you needed—what you ordered.”
She took another step toward him, her green eyes searing into him. “Why do you believe you are still that important?”
In that moment, Theo knew without a doubt Fiona’s appearance was anything but innocent. She had found him—sought him out on purpose.
Relaxing the fist at his side, he set an easy smile onto his face. “You don’t make a move without a motive, Fiona. That is one of your outstanding traits—it always has been. How did you manage to procure an invitation to the Vandestile ball?”
“Are you asking how they could have possibly allowed a poor girl from the Cornwall countryside to walk into a ballroom of the aristocracy?”
His jaw shifted to the side and he nodded.
“I married well, Alton, after I made it back onto English soil. It was quite simple, actually, after all I learned in the war. Learned from you. Identifying the right elderly, rich baron to marry was the most difficult part of the process. But Baron Toplan turned out to be a gem of a man.”
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