Page 101 of The Scandal You Started
There weren’t any. So then what was the point?
“Might you be swayed?” Dominic asked softly.
She should have said no, but she sceptically said, “Swayed how?”
He shook his head. “Your complaints lie not with love or marriage, but with the way many have twisted them into something hollow and one-sided.
“But what if you met a man who truly loved you? Who wanted to marry you, not because he needed someone to look after him, but because he simply wantedyou? What if he were competent and caring and did not infringe on your freedom? What if he fulfilled his responsibility towards you simply because he enjoyed doing so, and did everything he possibly could to make you feel safe and happy with him? What if he wanted to protect you, knowing you did not need it, but only because he loved you so much he wanted you to have it?
“Would you marry then? And have children?”
His words weighed heavier than his entrapping stare, compressing her rib cage until she felt near breathless. The beating of her heart made her skin pulse hot and fast, and she couldn’t shake the feeling, couldn’t break out of the intensity completely surrounding her.
At least until instinctual panic and denial kicked her in the chest and snapped her out of it.
“No man like that exists,” Rayna bit out.
“Answer me. Would you marry?”
She opened her mouth. And closed it. And opened it again. “I don’t…I don’t know. If I felt like he was being genuine, then yes. Maybe.”
A faint smile melted across his features, and his chest deflated on a gentle sigh.
Her narrow eyes darted rapidly between his. “Why do you care?”
“I want you to believe in love.” His arm went around the small of her back, huddling her close. “I want you to trust there is a man out there who would tear everything he knew apart just to have the privilege of calling you his wife.”
Confused, fluttery, unnerved echoes of her heart teemed the base of her throat.
Why…why did it sound like he was talking about himself?
Why were his words inscribing themselves across his eyes like something more powerful than a written law?
Does he think…does he want…
Rayna pushed against his chest, curling herself back over his arm so she could look at him properly. “Dominic, tell me you understand this thing between us is temporary. We’re just having fun before you go back. That’s it. You understand that, don’t you?”
He smiled. “I understand, little witch.”
He lowered his mouth, and she let him kiss her.
But a hushed voice in her gut hinted that perhaps he wasn’t being completely honest.
Chapter 31
Dominic
“She does not want to marry,” Dominic said, sweeping scatterings of hay into a single pile. “She does not want to marry, dammit.She does not even believe in love!”
He smacked the prickly bristles of the broom down on the stable floor, kicking up errant strings of hay around his boots, and glared at Beast as if it were the animal’s fault. The massive,snowy-mountain-coloured horse stretched his neck over the stall door and flapped his upper lip.
Yes, Dominic had been reduced to talking to a horse. Because it’d been a single day since Rayna had announced her abhorrence for marriage, and he was already losing his mind over it. He’d needed someone to yell his woes at, but there was no person he could speak to, so the only other candidate had been the maddening woman’s horse itself.
So he was spending the evening sweeping the stables in Declan’s place and venting to the only creature he was sure would keep his troubles a secret.
“What am I to do now?” he asked, throwing a hand out. “How am I to convince her that I…that she…” He dropped his hand on a pained, frustrated sound. “She’s my wife.I would like her to be my wife. I long for her to love me. I want her…to want me to stay. Or for her to come with me. Something—anything—that will allow her to be mine.”
His face twisted in a scowl as he jabbed a finger towards the open doorway. “But she…shewants nothing to do with love or marriage.”
