It felt very much like something she wanted to tell him instead of keeping it trapped inside herself.
“I’ve fallen in love with you, Theo.”
He worked his jaw. “You don’t know me.”
“But I do.” She lifted a hand, cupping his stern, beard-covered jaw. “I know everything I need to know about you. I know what my heart feels.”
“Marchioness.” His eyes closed, as if he couldn’t bear for her to see the emotion shining within their depths.
Too late. She’d seen the yearning there, the hunger. The need.
“Don’t tell me I don’t feel it, that I don’t love you,” she said. “Look at me. Please.”
He opened his eyes at her plea, such indecision and agony on his face now, those full, sensual lips that had pleased her so well twisting with grim determination. “I’m new to you. You’ve buried yourself away in your grief for so long that you’ve forgotten what it felt like to be desired. You forgot to tend to your own pleasure. But you’ll find someone else now, someone worthy of you, someone—”
“Stop,” she commanded. “I don’t want anyone else, Theo. I want you.”
“You want the idea of me. You don’t even know the true man I am.”
“Then tell me,” she entreated. “Tell me who you are.”
“I’ll show you,” he said bitterly, releasing her.
He shrugged off his coat, discarding it on the Axminster, his long fingers moving to the line of buttons on his waistcoat. One by one, he plucked them free as she watched. He tore at his cravat next, plucking it away. By the time he reached the handful of buttons at the collar of his shirt, his eyes were blazing, and her heart was pounding for him.
She hadn’t meant to push him so far.
“You needn’t,” she protested, guilt arcing through her.
“I do need,” he ground out. “You say you want me. Here I am, the beast.”
He caught fistfuls of linen and tore the garment over his head, throwing it at his feet. And then he stood before her wearing nothing but his trousers and boots and a scowl, daring her to tell him she loved him anyway.
The reason for his reluctance to disrobe was revealed to her at last. His beautiful, strong body was covered in scars. His arms, his chest, his abdomen. The only parts of him which remained untouched were his face, his neck, and his hands. Everywhere that he had been hidden by fabric was a mass of slashes and ridges and puckers and healed-over wounds.
But if he had expected her to be disgusted, he was wrong. Because he was gorgeous, his body a map of resilience and thick, corded muscle, all lean, masculine power. She closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around him. Pressed her cheek to his bare skin. Breathed him in. Reveled in his warm, reassuring strength.
“Pamela,” he ground out, her name sounding as if it had been torn from him, as if its very utterance caused him pain.
“You are not a beast,” she said firmly, as loudly as she dared in the quiet of the night. “You are Theo, and I love you. I love the man you are, outside and in. Every part of you.”
His arms came around her then, anchoring her to him, and he lowered his face to her crown, pressing a reverent kiss there. And she knew that she had won this part of the battle. All that remained was the war.
CHAPTER15
She loved him.
It was all he could think as he lowered Pamela to her bed and covered her body with his. His mouth sought hers, and he kissed her deeply, slowly, ravenously. Showing her how much he desired her, how much he worshiped her.
They were naked, skin to skin, for the first time, and although his ruined flesh had lost sensation in many places, he could not deny how positively glorious having her beneath him felt. She was creamy and silken and warm and soft and curved everywhere a woman should be.
And shelovedhim.
When he had torn his shirt over his head for her, revealing himself, she had shown him neither revulsion nor pity. Instead, she had embraced him. And he had known with crushing certainty that he did not deserve this woman. But her arms had encircled him, her smooth hands traveling over his ruined back, over the hideous scars his uncle’s torturers had left behind with their lashes, and he had felt whole for the first time since he had been forced from his homeland with nothing but the dirty, blood-stained clothes on his back and his mother’s ring.
She made him forget.
But she made him remember, too.
