Bravery escaped me when there was nothing worth fighting for on the line.
I imagined, with a swift gulp of air, him watching me in the bed, waiting for his chance to pick me off and then tag my toe. I’d keep for a while with the snowstorm.
“Fucking vermin,” I said.
Brando gave me a downward glance. “Tell me when this happened.”
“Whenwhathappened?”
“The mouth.”
“Oh.” I lifted my hair, putting it in an impromptu messy bun. “I found some comfort in it when I was trapped in a trunk with a sack over my head.”
The bitterness on my tongue burned as fiercely as acid. I didn’t even mean to snap. I glanced at Brando, wondering if he had heard it. Or rather, felt it.
He missed nothing. Not when it came to me. If anything, he was more aware of me than he had been before. Without the miles of words we were used to sharing with each other on a regular basis, the silence of the last couple of months had fused us together even stronger—every nuance, every action or reaction, was felt rather than discussed.
In a move that made me gasp, he backed me up against the cold, hard wall, his eyes intense on mine. Above us a sconce burned with hot light. Candlewax dripped slow and steady. The wavering flame sent shadows dancing across the stones, and the hardness in Brando’s eyes turned soft, though it was only a trick of the imagination.
A trembling breath shook me, but I refused to move my stare. I wouldn’t break first.
“You might have saved me, baby,” he said, eyes intense as the fire, voice as smoky as the ashes, body as hot as the flame, “but I am stillyourhusband.”
My husband! And you should’ve been there! You should have saved me, dammit! Prevented them from taking me. From causing you to bethisway! From causing the change in us, in me!
All of these words surged up from the depths of the darkness where I had hidden them, too ashamed to bring them to light.
I couldn’t hide from him even if I tried though. His was the one soul on this earth that had me body, mind, heart,andsoul.
My wife! You should’ve listened to me! Stayed fucking put. There would have been no need to save you, to have wakeful nightmares of all I imagined that they were doing to you. We wouldn’t be this way now! I would still feel like the man I was born to be. Your man.
The issue with light—if it could even be considered an issue—is that it divulges secrets. I could read his inner thoughts as well as he could read mine. Our love was too bright of a light to snuff out, even during the darkest times.
I never answered hisI’m stillyourhusbandremark, and with our internal dialogue silenced, true silence stretched, our eyes leading the war.
“Too proud to break first,” he said, an almost taunting edge to his voice.
“No. That’d be you. You’re confusing us now.”
I kept my eyes up, but somehow softened them. He was getting to me—in a very real way. Sweat started to drip down my neck, between my breasts. I had to curl my fingers in to prevent them from taking him by the shirt and yanking him to my parched mouth.If I were left in the barrens, he’d be the wine right before I died of thirst.
“Nah. The situation is simple. All too fucking clear. I amyour husband.”
“Act like it then,” I snapped.
The war raged on. He was solid, penetrating, almost unbreakable. I lifted my hand to his face, slow, tentative, on the verge of hesitant.
Violet had painted my nails the color of pearl snow, and against his skin and the darkness around us, lit by only candlelight, my hands seemed to glow. When my skin touched his, a spark shocked the both of us.
He took a deep breath. He breathed out; I breathed him in. Then he rested his head against mine, our eyes still locked. Until…he closed his, gorgeous long lashes fanning out against his cheeks.
“Dammit, Scarlett,” he whispered. “I am your husband, but you are my wife. And you’ll break me every time. Every. Fucking. Time.”
“Brando!” I kissed him, almost comically, because my reaction was so intense, so crazed. He might have closed his eyes first, but we both seemed to break at the same time. “I don’t want you to break! You’ve been broken enough. I’m sorry,mio marito. I’m sorry for not listening, for leaving when you told me not to.”
“Shh,” he said against my neck, against the thundering pulse there. “I have too much fucking pride.”
I couldn’t argue with that—so I didn’t. Instead, I flung his shirt to the floor, enjoying the feel of his skin against my roving, starved hands. His shirt, then mine. We left a telling trail from the hallway to the secret room.
