Page 45 of Courting Trouble
“It was all a parody. A shadow of what we’d done. Of what I wanted—yearned for—every night of my life, thereafter. I took others to my bed to erase the memory of what my husband did to me, but in my mind. In my heart. I never made love to anyone but you.” She ventured forward, reaching out for him. Feeling bare and raw and exceedingly vulnerable.
“Don’t.” He held up a hand, effectively freezing her in place with her arm still outstretched. Her silent plea for comfort unheeded. “Don’t youfuckingdare,” he seethed, pinning her with an accusatory glare before storming past her toward the window. “Don’t take my anger from me, Nora; it’s all that’s kept me sane. The only thing that stopped me from blasting down the door at Cresthaven, throwing you over my shoulder, and abducting you to some place they never would have found us.”
If only he would have. If only…
She turned to find his back to her, so broad and straight, the striations of his muscles visible even against the silk of his vest. But it was his reflection in the window that arrested her gaze. The agony in his eyes that broke her heart.
“God, all I can think about is the hell of your wedding night. I’ve never been so bloody drunk. I couldn’t endure the fact that you belonged to another man, that someoneelsewas inside of you.”
“It was no picnic for me, either, if that helps ease your mind.”
“Of course, it bloody doesn’t!” he exploded, slamming his palm on a table beside him before whirling back to her. “And yet youchosehim, Nora. After I gave you pleasure. I worshiped every inch of you until you were begging for me. I loved you, goddammit. YouknowI did. And youchosethat…that…” He couldn’t seem to land on a word foul enough to encompass her late husband.
And she couldn’t blame him.
“You can’t know for sure that you loved me,” she whispered.
He pinned her with a glare that would have made the devil himself cower. “How could you dare doubt it?”
She shook her head, aching for him, but also realizing something for the first time. “I do not doubt that your feelings were pure. But like everyone else, you loved a construct. An image of perfection manufactured by your own desires and my fabricated behaviors. You loved your idea of who I was. Because you didn’t know me, Titus. No one ever has.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Who are you then, Nora?”
At that, she stalled. “I—I…” She could not give him a complete answer, because she didn’t know it herself.
Who am I?Shouldn’t someone know that by two and thirty? When everything was stripped away. The title and the artifice. The scandal and the secrets.
What was left?
“You think I didn’t see through you, even then?” he challenged, visibly struggling to regain his composure. “That I didn’t know exactly who and what you were. You were never faultless, but Christ, to me you were perfect. I loved youforyour flaws, not because I was blind to them. And I never would have punished you for being who you are.” He stared at the puckered skin where the bullet had pierced her, and it throbbed in response to the pain underscoring the fury she read in his expression.
“Everything he did to you. Every way he made you suffer. Holy God, Nora.” He laced his fingers in his hair and pulled as if he could tear a thought out of his mind. “I would have…I would havekilledhim for you, you know that? The moment he touched you, at the first cruel word. If you would have come to me, I would have broken every oath I’d taken to do no harm, and I would have butchered the man.”
He shook his head, his gaze a well of fathomless misery. “Can you imagine how it feels to know the privilege of spilling his blood went to Morley whenIwould havebathedin it, Nora? I would have smeared it on my skin like some primitive, clannish ancestor, and torn at his beating heart with my teeth—”
“No.” She rushed forward, pressing her fingertips to his mouth, hot tears streaming from her eyes. “No, that isn’t you. That isn’t who you are.”
He caught her wrist but didn’t move it or toss it away. Instead he turned his cheek into her palm, the stubble of his jaw abrading her with vibrations she felt all the way up her arm. “It seems neither of us knows the other. Not anymore. But I know my mind, Nora. I always have done. I know what I am. I know what I want. And all I’veeverwanted, was you.” His eyes hardened in tandem with his voice. “Andyou…” He released her hand, visibly locking down, pulling up the ramparts and closing the gate.
“No,” she cried, panicked. She wanted this. This honesty. His pain. She wanted him to lash her for what she’d done to him. If ever there was a punishment she deserved, this was it. “What?What?Tell me what I’ve done.”
“You fucked them!” he roared. “You fuckedthemwhen I was here all along. I washere, Nora… I was right. Fucking. Here!”
He seized upon a crystal paperweight and wound his arm to smash it against the wall.
But he didn’t.
He locked his long, talented fingers around it as if he could crush the crystal, filtering a snarl through a tight throat. After a few heaving breaths, he placed it back where it belonged.
Safe. Unbroken.
Just like she’d predicted he would. Because he was wrong about one thing.
Nora knew him.
He didn’t break things or people, he repaired them. He always had. He didn’t act without consideration. Even when every primitive instinct that made him so completely male, howled at him to rend and destroy.
He was better than that.
