Page 32 of Crying Wolfe
Right before she broke his fucking heart.
What a selfish bastard he’d been, to kiss a lady like that and then avoid her like a coward. Like a dangerous, insatiable coward who could think about nothing but the flavor of innocence he’d tasted in her kiss. Of the lithe body she’d pressed against his.
Kissing her was the first time since he planted boots on this fucking island that he’d been warm. Her touch had set his blood on fire, and damned if he couldn’t wait for it to happen again.
What stopped him from wrenching the latch and kicking the door open was the quiet desperation of her pleas on the balcony. Her fear of his ire. Her frantic need to do what it took to please him and her assumption that she’d repulsed him in the first place.
The bruises behind her eyes had been put there. Her skin was peach and perfect in every regard, but she’d been wounded by someone. She carried the kind of scars no one could see.
If he ever found out who it was, he’d put a bullet betweentheirfucking eyes. But not before making them beg for the release death would provide.
The door swung open, and Eli found himself face-to-face with a strange woman burdened with a veritable metric ton of cream fabrics of every conceivable texture. He recognized the hem of the wedding dress as he stooped to gather a silk stocking she’d dropped in her surprise.
“Och, ye’re an eager husband,” she said in a lyrical Scottish accent before giggling and shouldering past him out the door.
Eager. The word wasn’t strong enough.
His wife sat at a dressing table smoothing a brush down hair that already crackled from being tended to. It’d been a riot of intricate coils and curls earlier but had relaxed into sleek waves that fell down to her waist.
Eli stood in the doorway reminding himself to breathe. He had to do this often around her. Like when she’d floated down the church aisle looking some kind of fairy princess, complete with a goddamn crown and everything. Women like her weren’t real…and they certainly weren’this. She belonged in a story born of fantastical mythology, rather than this harsh and filthy world full of guile and greed.
He’d been so painfully aware that she should have been walking toward a charming prince, not a miserly Midas.
Swathed in acres of froth and cream, she’d been so ethereally beautiful, it had physically hurt to look at her. She shone like the desert sun, her light reflecting off everyone and everything it touched.
And she didn’t even know it. She didn’t see the masculine eyes that followed her every step. Didn’t hear the envy other men portrayed when congratulating him. Didn’t mark the jealousy of women who might outrank her but were far beneath her in every respect.
Beautiful blueberry eyes met his in the mirror of the dressing table, and they stayed like that for a time. Every hair on his body lifted as a strange voltage forked through the space between them. Women had greeted him naked before, and hadn’t had the effect she did in her modest, high-necked nightgown that shimmered in the lanternlight and did enchanting things to the luster of her hair.
Eli had chosen this room in Hespera House because he’d enjoyed the dark, masculine blues and coppers, the air eternally seasoned with scents of Moroccan leather, wood polish, and freshly laundered linens.
Looking around it now, he was surprised not to find it drenched in honeysuckle vines, so pleasant was the feminine florals that seemed to drift with her everywhere. She was so out of place here, so pale and unabashedly female among all the dark wood and heavy leather.
She rotated her shoulders to welcome him with a genuine smile that made him a bit light-headed. “Do come in, Mr. Wolfe.”
His body obeyed her edict before he’d made the decision to, all but stumbling forward until he stood in the middle of the room like a supplicant summoned before a goddess.
“I feel like you should call me Eli, as we’re married and all.”
Her smile flexed with amused chagrin. “And you should call me Rosaline, then. Or Ros if you’d rather, as my family often does.”
“Rosaline…” The name felt nice on his tongue.
She giggled. “I like how you say it in your accent. Long instead of crisp.”
“That right?” He felt a smile tugging at the corner of his own tight expression, as she charmed him into a more comfortable stance. He liked her accent too.
And she’d say his name often, if he had anything to do with it.
“It’s been a long day,” she sighed. “You look tired.”
And she looked fresh as a fucking spring daffodil.
“You’ll have to get used to that, a husband old as me,” he teased, rubbing at eyes that felt gritty as sandpaper and twice as heavy. “These lines never disappear no matter how much sleep I get.”
“I don’t mind, you know,” she said.
“Mind what?”
