Chapter Five #3
“We were good together like this.” He’d chosen this position so he wouldn’t have to see her face or recognize the disgust in her eyes when she looked upon his scars. Yes, she’d seen them before, but as time had marched on, he’d only grown more hideous.
“Yet why do you wish to destroy those memories by acting like this?” A whimpering sound escaped her, but he ignored it in favor of gripping her hips and stroking into her hot passage, deep and fast, claiming her again and again.
All too soon, frantic need tingled through his shaft and stones signaling that completion was near, but he ignored that too.
“Because… Because…” He shook his head. “Because I want you but realize you’d be better off without me.
” With his emotions so close to the surface, he concentrated on her.
Over and over, he thrust into her passage while holding her hips, anchoring him to her.
When she uttered another half-stifled cry as she found bliss, the spasming of her inner walls ushered in his own.
That urgency roared through his shaft, and after one last push, Cecil pulled out just before his release could take hold.
Seconds later, his seed decorated the smooth cheeks of her arse as his shaft jerked and pumped.
Soft, muffled crying reached his ears, but he didn’t care if it was from joy or horror. This was his life. A life he couldn’t find a grip on as each day he fought his way through a miasma of confusion.
As he stepped back from her and widened the gap between them, Cecil stuffed his semi-flaccid shaft back into his breeches.
“I’m sorry.” For everything. He wasn’t quite the monster, was he?
That was debatable. Not sure what to say, not that words could even hope to bridge the quickly widening gulf between them, on top of the original reason she was miffed with him, he was about to turn away from the delicious sight of her draped over the edge of the bed when her next words stopped him cold.
“You are a coward, Thornton.” When he thought she would ignore him, Emma slipped from the bed. She straightened, stood a moment on wobbly legs, and gave him a withering glare as she went to retrieve her wrapper.
“Why do you say that?” He knew his reasons, but wondered if hers were the same.
“Claiming your wife from behind so you don’t have to look at my face, see into my eyes, not even once trying to kiss me?
Not even attempting to woo me both times you’ve violated my body?
” She shook her head. There was no mistaking the disappointment, the anger, in her expression.
“Pure cowardice. I thought you were better than this.”
Quick anger of his own sprang through his chest. “So did I, but when one looks like a monster, I suppose, after a period of time, one becomes exactly that.”
“Not an excuse to treat me like that.”
Though her words rang true, they left icy trickles of fear in his blood, for he was terrified of being his father, who was a horror greater than he.
He swallowed around a ball of emotion in his throat; he owed her an explanation.
“The things I saw during the war left me damaged in my upper stories. I didn’t know how badly when you and I first married.
” Slowly, he shook his head. “Sometimes I don’t trust myself to get close to anyone… including you.”
“Why?” As she tied her robe about herself, questions reflected in her eyes. “What happened after you left me?”
“I…” He cleared his throat. “It was just before that, actually.”
“And?”
Glancing away, he retrieved his cane. “The night before I left, I’d been napping in the drawing room. You were out at the shops. I came out of that doze suddenly when a maid entered the room, and still lost in a nightmare, I assumed she was an enemy solider.”
“Oh heavens. What then?”
“I, uh, I knocked her to the floor, began choking her, intent to kill her because I thought her one of the French…” As the old horror rose in his chest, moisture came into his eyes.
“I felt horrible, of course. She left my employ shortly afterward, but the damage had been done. The servants talked. Everyone talked. There was nothing for me to do but push everyone away. Including you. To keep you safe.”
Silence brewed between them, and as he turned to look at her, she stood staring with shock, horror, and compassion flitting over her face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“How could I? You’d hate me, or alternately implore me to stay. For love.”
She chopped the air with a hand. “Of course I would. You don’t get to say when we’re done without consulting me, and you sure as hell aren’t allowed to act like an ogre just because you’re hurting. That’s not fair to either of us.”
Would she request a divorce after all? “I know.” He needed to say words, anything, to her, for he wasn’t this man, not really, didn’t want to be that man, but he was trapped in the darkness with no way out. “I’m sorry,” he said in a barely audible whisper. “I just don’t know—”
“Get out, Cecil.” She pointed to the still open door and there was frost in her gaze.
He frowned. “But I—”
“Get out. If this is how you think to treat me after acting the arse by kidnapping me, after all the years of courting me through letters and you believe I’ll never understand you?
Then I want nothing to do with you. Where I’d hoped to repair our marriage, clearly that won’t be possible if I can’t reach your heart, your soul, your reasoning.
Because you have shut me out without talking to me.
” She shook her head as tears fell to her cheeks. “You broke my heart again, Thornton.”
Shit. That wasn’t what he’d wanted. “Emma, please…”
“No.” She again pointed to the door, and her hand shook.
“If I can’t reconnect with the man I married, there is nothing left of our union to save.
To all accounts, I truly believe that man died in the war.
The man who returned is much different; perhaps you hadn’t fully acclimated to married life in those two months we had together, and that’s fine, but I don’t know if I have the strength to know him only to be shunned again. ”
There was much to unpack in that statement. Yet their time together now was over. With nothing else to say because his mind was frozen, he left to the soft sound of her crying.
Closing the door behind him, he hated himself all over again for losing her was one of his fears, and losing her because of what he was? The thought had his chest seizing.
Dear God, help me not to cock this up a second time.