The Darkness in Dreams (Enforcer's Legacy, #1)(71)

“She knew nothing of what I am because I refused to tell her. I convinced myself I was protecting her through ignorance. I knew the truth. I was protecting myself, not her, because I was afraid to tell her all the things that I had done. That was why I married her,” he continued harshly, “to bind her to me, to make it easier for me to stay away.”

He saw the small tremor that moved through Lexi, the trembling of a bird’s wing.

“When you said those words to her, Christan. In the chapel, your voice was so deep in your throat. She thought you meant every word. She was so happy. Then she woke and you were gone. It broke her heart.”

“I meant those words—I am damned for it because she knew. You knew, cara, that I was not protecting you, even though you could never put it into words. I knew who Kace was and I did nothing to stop him. In my arrogance I trusted the Agreement would keep you safe, that Kace would never harm you. I could have found ways to protect Gemma, but I didn’t. I could have told her what I was, what I had been obligated to do in the service of the Calata. And I didn’t.”

His voice became deep and rough. “I should have done a better job of loving you. But love is for the angels, and I was never allowed in heaven. I am not a good man. I have always been flawed in ways that can never be repaired.”

The silence drew out with only the continued popping of embers in the fireplace, revealing the depth of pain. Pressure ached in his throat while he waited for her to respond. When she turned, he wanted to hear her as he’d never heard her before.

“You’re not flawed, Christan,” she said. “If you couldn’t tell her your truth, it was because she wouldn’t understand. I remember her tears—I cried them. But I also remember her vengeance. What I did to you in that lifetime—I condemned you beyond all decency, and then I refused to admit what I had done. I would ask, if not your forgiveness, then at least your understanding.”

He stepped close enough to cup her face but didn’t. “You did not condemn me. I condemned myself.”

“And now here we stand.” Lexi was trembling as she stepped away.

“Please,” he said. “Don’t leave.”

And she remembered, then, how he’d filled her heart with simple joy, the one true light in every lifetime. He was the memory she held tight at night. The tears she turned toward the ocean breeze. The whispers when she counted the first five stars. He must have read it in her eyes because he stepped close again. The muddy clothes fell from her hands and she pressed her palms against his chest.

“I carry the scars of what I did to you,” he said, the emptiness in his voice unraveling her. He shifted his weight and restless, aggressive power filled the shadowed room. He cupped her face, wiped the moisture from her cheeks with his thumbs. She trembled and didn’t pull away as he slid the robe from her shoulders, tossed it to the floor. His fingers traced the dip of her throat, to her shoulder in a journey of rediscovery, his eyelids dropping as his hand cupped the soft swell of her breast. A calloused thumb stroked lightly against the sensitive flesh as he waited for the permission he needed in this lifetime.

“Christan,” she whispered, her hands no longer pressing against him but exploring on their own. A shiver of remembered excitement brought every nerve to the surface. She licked her lips, afraid at first, growing braver. “Christan, I’ve…”

“What?” he whispered.

“Missed you.”

Her groan echoed his as he took her mouth. His tongue spread liquid fire while his fingers slid beneath her hair and grasped her nape. He held her until she trembled, lifted her and walked toward their bed. When he put her down she held herself splayed for his taking, a pagan goddess at his command.

Beautiful. The word flashed in Lexi’s mind as he shed his jeans. He was so magnificently, violently masculine. There was an eternity of pain in his eyes and marked across his body, so clear she shuddered on a rush of tenderness. The wounds he had endured in that alley were nearly healed, and when he came to her she traced fingers across his face, then into the dark silk of his hair, finding him where he had been lost.

“Come home,” she whispered, drew her fingers downward. He hissed as her nails scored his skin and it was such a feral sound she arched beneath it. She found his shoulders, ran her fingers down his arms, then back to circle his dark, flat nipples. His chest was massive. She flattened her palms, pressed the solid muscle that tightened beneath her touch. Tattooed lines of black and bronze were alive beneath her palms. She applied pressure and he understood what she meant, sliding his heavy weight to the side and rolling over on his back.

“Mine,” she whispered, coming to her knees and straddling him. His skin was volcanic. She bent down to trace her tongue across his throat, feeling as pagan as he looked when she drew back enough to see his face.

Part of her understood the dark emotions driving him because she burned with the same savage need. Part of her understood the forgiveness he craved but would never request. She ached for it, too, for her sins were as grave as his, if not worse, and she was the addict rolling on the floor, desperate without redemption. But to demand forgiveness that could not be freely given was something neither one would ever do. They took each other as they were this night, raw and exposed and brutal. This fire that raged between them was not seduction, not a resurrection of something that had once been. This was two sinners colliding in the night, torn apart by passion and regret until they both lay bloody at the other’s feet.