The Man Behind the Scars

“Out of curiosity,” he asked, need and desire making him hard, making him fierce, “how many other men have you asked to marry you tonight?” He studied her face as he guided them across the floor. “I only ask in case there is some kind of battle for your affections I should prepare myself to fight.”

“Not at all.” Her expression was very nearly demure—and therefore wicked by implication. He felt the impact of it move through him, making him burn. Want. “You are my one and only.” He was fascinated by her. And by his reaction to her. “But aside from my obvious charms, which, let’s face it, no man could possibly resist, why do you want to do this?”

He let himself look at her for a long moment. The sharp blue eyes. The pretty face. The lush mouth so at odds with the quick, disarmingly honest words that came out of it. And her short, choppy blonde hair that, he realized, he wanted to drag his hands through as he angled that mouth of hers to fit his. He wanted that with an intensity that surprised him anew. He wanted it all.

He hadn’t let himself want anything in years. But he wanted her.

And best of all, there was nothing hidden. No artifice. No murky agenda. No great pretense. She was in debt. She needed money and, he suspected, the security of knowing that there would always be more. Meanwhile, he needed a wife he did not have to woo. A wife who would not want things from him that he was unable to give—things that most wives would expect from a husband, but not this one, not if he bought her. She might see the monster in him, over the course of their time together, but she would be paid well to ignore it.

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.”

There was a certain cynicism in her voice. He wondered what marriage she’d seen too closely and found so wanting. Not that it signified.

“They may be,” he said darkly. He stopped dancing then, pulling them over to the side of the great ballroom, though it took him longer than it should have to let go of her. He wanted her that badly. It should have horrified him. “But I should warn you, there are two things I will never be, Angel. Modern or fashionable. At all.”

He was warning her off, Angel realized, in a sudden flash of understanding. He had backed her into one of the grand pillars, and she felt it hard and smooth against her back with a sudden rush of sensation that was as much exhilaration as it was wariness. He was big and dark and entirely too dangerous, and she told herself it was reasonable nervousness that kicked to life in her veins, sending that wild shiver throughout her body. Nerves. Nothing more.

“Do we have a deal?” she asked softly. “Or will you keep growling at me until I run screaming into the crowd to find myself a more malleable rich man to proposition?”

His mouth softened, and she saw that flash of arrogance again, reminding her of how powerful he was. He was not, she could see, at all concerned that she might run anywhere. She would have found that somewhat offensive, had she had any intention of moving.

“Is that what I’m doing?” he asked, all aristocratic hauteur, eyebrow crooked high in amazement. “Growling?”

She reached over and laid her hand against the hard plane of his chest, carefully and deliberately. He was warm to the touch, and she had to fight back another shiver. Of nerves, she told herself again. This situation was extreme, even for her.

“We’re talking about a marriage of convenience,” she said. With some urgency, as if that might dispel the lingering darkness that she sensed hung between them. “Yours as well as mine. I don’t expect you to sweep me off my feet while quoting Wuthering Heights.”

His mouth crooked. It wasn’t a smile, not really, but it made her feel absurdly glad, even so.

“You are so reasonable,” he murmured. He reached up and took her hand, but kept it where it was, trapped tight against his chest. Was that his heart she felt thumping so hard, or was that her own pulse? “One is tempted to think you’ve had a run of convenient husbands.”

“You will be the first,” she assured him. “But who knows? If it works out, it could be the start of a long and profitable line of husbands. I can collect them, one by one, and live on their tireless support until I’m a doddering pensioner.”

“That is a lovely picture indeed,” he said in that low voice, and it licked at her, making her think about the begetting of heirs and all manner of other things he made seem far more enticing than they should be simply by talking about them in that voice of his. And the way he looked at her, a dark fire in those deep gray eyes, made her chest feel too tight, her skin too small for her bones. “But let’s concentrate on the one in front of you.”

“Yes,” she agreed, though something was happening to her. She couldn’t look away. The hand that he held, flat against his wide, distracting chest, wanted … wanted. She felt light-headed. “Does that mean we’re agreed? One perfectly convenient marriage, made to order right here in the middle of the Palazzo Santina?”

For a moment he only looked down at her, his scarred face harsh and his remote gray eyes cold, and she was suddenly much too aware that he was a stranger to her. A complete and total stranger, who she had asked to marry her in the middle of a crowded ballroom, in a country not her own, on what amounted to little more than a whim. How insane was she? How could this be anything but a disaster?

“Yes,” he said. “We are agreed. We can marry as soon as you like.”

Again, some sense of deep foreboding moved through her, shaking her. She would be far better off with some older, much less dangerous man, she thought in a sudden panic, someone she could manipulate with a smile and bend to her will. That would not be this man. That would not be Rafe. She knew it as well as she knew her own name. If she had any sense of self-preservation at all, she would call this off. Now.

But she didn’t move. She didn’t say a word. She had no idea why not.

“You look terrified.” That single brow rose, pointedly.

“Not at all,” she said, shoving the foreboding aside. Better to be practical, especially in her dire circumstances. She tilted her head back, invitingly, and gazed up at him. “But I feel the occasion calls for something, don’t you? Something to mark such a momentous decision. How about a kiss?”

“A kiss.” His voice was dark and disbelieving. Gruff. “This is no fairy tale, Angel.”

She felt her own eyebrows rise then, in cool challenge.

“Then you have no need to fear you’ll be turned into a frog,” she replied tartly. His mouth twisted, but his eyes burned hot.

“As you wish,” he murmured, mocking her—or perhaps both of them.

His hand moved from hers to hold her chin in an easy grip, as if her mouth was his already, before he’d even tasted it. And then he bent his head and captured her mouth with his.

It was a swift kiss, commanding and sure. Possessive and demanding, it seared into her like some kind of red-hot brand. She felt it storm through her limbs, lighting her up with that sweet and terrible electricity, making her lean closer to him, fascinated and captivated by the sure, carnal mastery of his kiss, the hint of more, of something dark and sweet and addictive—and then he pulled away.

Too soon. Much too soon—but then she remembered herself. Where they were. Who they were.