“You already know I would only wish away your scars because I hate that you were hurt at all. But I see them as a badge of your ability to overcome,” he heard himself admit. “Your sort of willpower, your deep survival instinct, is rare, Tiffany. You probably don’t realize it because it’s such an integral part of your nature to fight, but not everyone accepts such a life blow and makes herself live through it.”
Luiza hadn’t, he acknowledged with a crash of his heart into his toes. Thinking about her when he was with Tiffany, contrasting them, was wrong. Setting aside Luiza in his mind was like ripping an essential part of him away and abandoning it, but he had to do it. They couldn’t occupy the same place inside him, and right now Tiffany needed him.
“All my life I heard, ‘You’re so pretty.’ Like that was the most important thing to be. You’re the first person to compliment me on having substance. I really thought I’d lost everything by losing my looks.”
Where Luiza had built him into the man he was with vision and belief in him, Tiffany slayed him with honesty and vulnerability. His heart felt as though it beat outside his chest. When she rose and came to him, and went on tiptoe to brush soft lips against his jaw, he closed his eyes in paralyzed ecstasy. Deep down, at a base level, it felt wrong to be this gripped by her, but he couldn’t help it. In this moment, she was all he knew.
“Thank you for wanting me exactly as I am.”
He did. God help him, he wanted her in ways he couldn’t even describe.
They shouldn’t come together like this, with hearts agape and defenses on the floor, but he couldn’t not touch her. Pulling her in, he settled his mouth on hers, tender and sweet. The animal in him wanted to ravish, but the man in him needed to cherish.
She drew an emotive breath and kissed him back in a way that flooded him with aching tenderness. The sexual need was there, strong as ever, but it sprang from a deeper place inside him. Hell, he thought. Hell and hell. Lingering feelings of infidelity fell away. This woman was the one he had to be faithful to. This one.
The rending sensation inside him hurt so much he had to squeeze her into him to stop what broke open, fearing his lifeblood would leak away if he didn’t have her pressed to the wound. Her arms went around his neck, light palms cradling the back of his skull as she fingered through his hair, soothing and treasuring and filling the cavernous spaces in him with something new and golden and as unique as she was.
When they stripped and eased onto the bed and came together, it was with a shaken breath from him and a gasp of awe from her. She gloried in his possession, and he bent his head to her breast in veneration, golden lamplight burning the vision of her into his memory with the eternity of a primordial being caught in amber.
* * *
Twin fingers traced on each side of her scar, the sensation dull on one side, sweet on the other. She stretched in supreme pleasure and reached for him without opening her eyes, finding only cool, empty sheets where he was supposed to be.
“I’m already showered and dressed, draga,” he said on her other side. “You said to let you sleep and I did as long as I could, but we have to leave soon. We have a dinner engagement in Zurich.”
“Are you serious?” She rolled onto her back so she could see him where he stood over her, his knife-sharp suit of charcoal over a dove gray shirt set off with a subdued navy tie. He looked way too buttoned-down, hair still damp, chin shiny and probably tasting spicy and lickable. She skimmed the sheet away and invited, “Come back to bed.”
“Your parents are expecting us. I already agreed to see them, but if you’d like to send our regrets...”
“They’re in Zurich?” She sat up, bringing the sheet to her collarbone as if her father had just walked in the room. “How? Why?”
“I left it to our collective staff to work out the how. I simply extended the invitation when I informed him about the photos. He wanted you to come back to America. I said you were accompanying me to Rome and that I had a commitment in Switzerland, but that we’d be pleased if they could meet us there.”
“How delightfully neutral. I guess that explains why they haven’t been in touch. They’ve been traveling.” She threw off the sheet and walked naked to find her phone, pleased at the way he pivoted to watch her.
Sending him a saucy smile over her shoulder, she clicked her screen and tapped in her code, reading aloud the message she found. “‘Staying with the deHavillands in Berne.’ That’s the American ambassador. Mom went to school with her. Longtime friends of the family. ‘Where will you be staying?’” She looked to him.
“At the hotel where the banquet will be held. My people should have sent the details already. I’ll ask them to extend the invitation to include your parents’ friends.” He reached inside his jacket pocket for his mobile.
Tiffany heard only one word and lowered her phone, barely hanging on to it with limp fingers as she repeated, “Banquet?”
He gave her a long, steady look. “Something I arranged months ago. I’ve been trying to ease you into the public eye, draga. Don’t look so shocked. It’s not something I can miss since it’s a charity I personally fund. We remove land mines and petition to stop their use completely. They’re an appalling weapon.”
She felt as though she stood on one, but he didn’t coddle her over what attending would mean. Given everything that had happened, she supposed it was time to set aside her fear of being in public. As long as she had him by her side, she’d be okay, wouldn’t she?
CHAPTER NINE
A FEW HOURS LATER, she wasn’t so sure. She’d taken an in for a penny, in for a pound approach and forgone the one-shouldered gowns that would have disguised a lot of her scarring, deciding instead to let her freak flag fly. Her halter-style gown set off her breasts and hips beautifully and was the most gorgeous shade of Persian blue that glistened and slithered over her skin as she walked.
...snakeskin...
Stop it. She pretended she was her old self, the somewhat infamous fashionista who had graced more than her share of best-dressed lists. With her trained yoga posture reaching her crown to the ceiling, shoulders pinned back with pride, she entered the lounge and took the druglike hit that was Ryzard in a tuxedo.
“I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me,” he said. His smile was sexy and smug, but held a warmth of underlying approval.
Winded, she dissembled by checking her pocketbook, trying to grasp hold of herself as she reacted to him and the effect he had on her. Did he know how defenseless she was around him? She suspected he did. He was coming to know her very well, maybe too well. There was an imbalance there because he could see right past her defenses, but he remained unpredictable to her.
As if to prove it, he came forward and threaded a bracelet up her marred arm until it wrapped in delicate scrolls against her biceps. It was a stunning piece of extravagant ivy tendrils fashioned from platinum. Diamonds were inset as random pops of sparkling dew, fixating the eye.
“It’s beautiful.”
“When people stare, you can say, ‘Ryzard gave it to me. He thinks I’m a spoiled brat, but wouldn’t change a thing about me.’”
She wanted to grin and be dismissive, but she was too moved. Her voice husked when she admitted, “You do spoil me. I have no idea why.”
“You inspire me,” he confided, then swooped to set a kiss against the corner of her mouth. “Lipstick, I know,” he muttered before she could pull away in protest. “In the future, don’t put it on until I’ve finished kissing you.”
“Then we’d never leave the room, would we?”
“And how is this a problem?” He held the door as he spoke, the light in his eye making her laugh, reassuring her the evening would turn out fine.
* * *
They stopped by another suite on their way downstairs. He’d arranged it for her parents and the ambassador. Her father greeted her with a long hug before he set her back. Then he looked between her and Ryzard, not seeming to know where to start.
She quickly introduced them and included the ambassador’s husband, Dr. deHavilland, using Ryzard’s title as the president of Bregnovia, and heard the crack in her voice as she queried, “Mom didn’t come?”
“The ladies are fussing down the hall,” the doctor said after kissing her cheeks. Taking her chin, he turned her face to eye her scar. “The specialist did wonders, didn’t he? It’s good to see you out, Tiffany. Ryzard, what’s your poison? We’re having whiskey sours.”
He accepted one and she squeezed his arm. “Do you mind if I...?”
“Of course, go say hello, but we need to be in the ballroom to greet the guests in fifteen minutes.”
“Five,” she promised with a splayed hand and hurried in search of her mother, nervous of the confrontation, but experiencing the homesick need to reconnect.