Chapter 33
The door clicked softly. Hawk’s footsteps rumbled under the soles of her feet.
How could she face him when her heart was crumbling?
Celeste looked instead at her body, draped in tulle illusion.
At the ballet studio, she had always admired her reflection.
But today it felt like a poorly made fantasy.
No wonder Hawk had rejected her. While he resided in a world of battles and lost limbs, fighting for the destiny of thousands, she lived in a makeshift dream, plotting romances fit only for a foolish girl’s diary.
He came closer. The heat of his chest warmed her back. He placed his hands on her shoulders. It was a wonder that her knees held her.
His eyes found hers in the mirror. “It is a beautiful gown. And it will make your husband the luckiest man in the world.”
But it won’t be you. He didn’t say it, and she was too afraid to voice it, but it hovered between them, weighing the air, and rasping against her throat. A tear rolled down her cheek.
He brushed it away.
“I don’t want you to be sad. What do you need to feel better? To smile again, to laugh and make merry?” He sounded gentler than usual. A thread of hoarseness, of helplessness, coated his consonants.
She drank in his gentleness and felt some childish glee at the helplessness. It meant he didn’t understand her. The all-powerful general could not figure out how to please his wayward ward.
She looked away.
He pulled her face back, searching her eyes.
What could she say to him?
Oh, Alexander, quite unexpectedly, you became the villain and the hero of my story, who hurts and soothes, for whom I feel the height of bliss and the dregs of despair, whom I want to obey and rebel against, whom I look after for everything.
I love you, and today I realized that no fantasy can breach the chasm between us. My heart is breaking, but I need you to kiss the pain away.
She turned in his arms. What a fright she was, with wet cheeks, lips trembling. “Make love to me.”
Once the words were out, she kept her chin lifted, daring him to retreat. Typical Celeste, bold on the outside, terrified within.
He ran a hand through his hair. “You know that it is impossible.”
Her spine bowed as if she had been wounded, a wound not all the bandages of the surgeon’s tent could heal. Which was foolish, because didn’t she know beforehand he would deny her?
“Let’s pretend. Just this once. That this is my wedding night,” she whispered.
Another illusion. Was she not living in them forever? She was even cloaked in one. Anything to keep him close. She could live in a dream if that was all she could get from him.
His eyes fell shut. “This won’t help, it will—”
“Please.” She hugged herself, her fingers digging into her arms. “If I know what to expect when the time comes for me to marry, I won’t be so afraid.”
Hawk groaned.
The sound of his resignation made her heart ache.
He could not stand her fear, could he? But what else could she say that would convince him?
Juliet had lied to her parents. Viola had worn a man’s clothes.
Portia had argued the law in disguise. But none of them had stood before the man they adored and used his need to protect against them.
Perhaps she was no heroine after all, but how she needed him by her side, if only for an illusion…
If she had to be born without the traits to be courageous, why did she carry such a need to be loved?
She took his large hand in both of hers and kissed the center of his palm. Her lips lingered, brushing softly against his dry skin.
He closed his eyes, and she felt him shudder.
“Let us play this play, just for tonight. Let us forget the ending.”
Lie with me. Even if it’s a lie.
He exhaled her name like a curse. She saw it in his gaze—the decision to pull away before they could fall too far. He would leave her. He would leave and she would die, because if he left now, she would vanish, disappear beneath all the wanting she had dared to feel.
In one moment, she watched him glance at the door, already mourning his absence. Next, he was on her, gathering her as if wrenching her back from death’s grip.
His arms locked across her, one palm spread high between her shoulder blades, the other cinching her waist, pinning her flush against him.
Her cheek struck the hard plane of his chest, where his heartbeat pounded like a storm drum behind the curtain.
She pressed closer, brushing her face against his coat, aching to burrow so deep he could never cast her off.
Her breath stalled, caught somewhere between his ribs and her own, until the ache of holding it nearly broke her.
“Celeste,” he said against her forehead.
She opened her mouth to respond, and he was there, demanding entrance. Was there such a thing as a dance of tongues, of teeth, of lips?
She laced her fingers around his neck and dared to explore his hair, his nape.
He tore his mouth from hers.
“I won’t take your virginity,” he vowed.
Her breath faltered. The gift that a woman gave her husband on the first night. And he was refusing it. She closed her eyes against the pain and told herself it was enough. Because it had to be.
He lifted her as if she were already just memories and smoke.
Her limbs folded easily into his hold, head tucked beneath his chin.
The way to the bed passed in a haze of desire and longing, too soon ended by the soft give of the mattress under her spine.
Hawk laid her down slowly, as though even this shadow of a wedding night deserved to be honored.
Then he shrugged off his coat. She had never seen a naked man, but this was Hawk, so she pushed up on her elbows, pulse skittering.
The shirt came last—tugged loose from his waistband, lifted over his head.
And suddenly, he wasn’t Hawk the general, her guardian.
He was flesh and shadow and heat. In the dim light, she could only see forms. His chest was broad, dusted with dark hair that thinned as it tapered down to the hard plane of his stomach.
She hadn’t imagined he would look like this. Beautiful. Real. A god made to fight, and yet standing so still—as if afraid to frighten her.
“Can I touch you?”
He nodded, sharp and quiet, like it cost him something.
The mattress dipped as he sat on the edge of her bed.
She shifted closer, and sighing, she laid her hand on his shoulder.
It was like touching carved stone softened by breath.
Warm, solid, strange. His skin was less smooth, and more real because of it.
Her fingers grazed his collarbone, and a muscle twitched beneath her palm.
So strong… and hers. If only for tonight.
She pressed a kiss to his neck, tasting its salt and spice. He watched her with a restraint so taut it buzzed in the air between them. As if her touch—light as it was—undid something in him.
Hawk was nothing like a blushing groom from a Shakespearean comedy. No, he was a Caesar before the Senate, or a storm-weathered Hamlet, bowing his head and lending his crown to a girl who barely knew how to hold it.
But oh, how she wanted to.
Celeste reached for the candle on the nightstand, shielding the flame with her hand as she lifted it closer.
The glow spilled over him, revealing the ridges of his muscles, the harsh cut of scars.
Two puckered marks marred the tanned flesh, one cruelly close to the beat of his heart.
She caressed him there, and the wound hurt in her own breast.
“Talavera,” he said flatly. “A French musket ball.”
Her throat closed. She moved lower, to the jagged scar slashing across his ribs, and traced the gash as if she could erase it with the feeble brush of her fingertips.
“Salamanca,” he murmured. “Cavalry sword.”
Her heart ached. This man—this unyielding general—had been broken, pierced, nearly taken from the world. No wonder he didn’t like poetry. Romance had been bled out of him.
His hand covered hers. “I wish I could’ve met you before the steel touched me.”
“Fate brought you to me now. I would not have it any other way.”
This was his world. A place of wounds and survival. She had to see it. Even if his scars ached in her own skin. She would not pretend life was still a comedy.
He took the candle from her hands. The flame sputtered, bending toward him.
“I know there are more,” she whispered, voice breaking. “I want to see them all. All of you.”
“I’d rather you remember my strength than my wounds,” he said hoarsely. His gaze burned into hers, more piercing than the candlelight. “Tonight, let me be whole for you.”
He extinguished the flame with his fingers. Acrid smoke curled upward, and the scars vanished. Only the hearth-fire remained, painting him not in harsh truth but in a golden glow—like a hero lit for the stage.
A play. He had drawn the curtain, chosen the role he wished her to see. Whole, unbroken, untouchable. And though her heart longed for the man beneath, she yielded to the illusion, because she would rather have the fiction than nothing at all.
Her fingers rose to the bows of her camisole. If he would not bare his wounds, then she would bare herself to him.
He caught her wrist. “The tulle stays on. A barrier to remind me of the line I must not cross.”
He wanted a veil between them. This was just a play.
Still, it didn’t feel like a play when he kissed her lips, entwined his hands in her hair, or lowered her slowly back on the pillows, as if she were made of something breakable.
The sheer cloth skimmed her breasts, her belly, her thighs. She felt more naked for it. His gaze darkened, and her nipples pebbled beneath the cloth.
Then he bent, and his mouth found her breast. His breath dampened the gauze, making it cling to her skin, and when his tongue pressed, the wet heat seeped through until she gasped, clutching his shoulders.