Then his eyes lifted and she saw it—and her heart flipped over. He was moved—actually moved! His free hand snaked up, caught the two edges of her new scarf and tugged, pulling her face down towards him.
‘Thank you,’ he said gruffly, and kissed her. And it was special, this kiss, because it held not a hint of sexual passion. Only—
‘Shaan…’ he murmured as he drew away again, with a sombreness that did not quite fit the occasion. ‘I want you to know that I’m not playing games with you here. I want this marriage to work. I want us to work.’
‘Can it work?’ Considering the way it had started, Shaan didn’t really think it had a chance.
‘You mean because we started with nothing?’ he asked. ‘Well…’ A powerfully muscled shoulder moved in a shrug. ‘We can build on nothing. In fact, I would go as far as to say,’ he added, ‘that it’s probably a darn sight easier to build on nothing…’ He paused. Then, on a small sigh, he concluded, ‘I suppose the point I am trying to make is—do you want to try?’
‘You mean I’m being given a choice here?’ She tried mocking the seriousness out of the moment.
It didn’t work, though he did allow himself a grimace at the justice in her taunt, because they both knew that until now Rafe had not really given her any choices about anything that had happened between them.
But, ‘Yes,’ he replied, and his eyes remained serious—deadly serious.
Her eyelids lowered while she thought about what he was actually telling her here. He was talking permanence. He was offering permanence. ‘Is it what you want?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’ It was gruff and it was sincere.
‘Piers and Madeleine—’
‘No.’ His warning tug on the cerise scarf stopped her. ‘They no longer belong in the equation,’ he stated firmly. ‘This is between you and me, and what we’ve discovered we can have if we just try to work at it.’
‘Sex’ was the word Shaan would use to describe it. But then it was her turn to grimace, because she’d tried love without sex and had got nothing back from the relationship. So maybe Rafe was right, and they did have a chance of building from nothing—with sex as their foundation instead of that more intense emotion called love.
‘Are you a faithful man, Rafe?’ she asked him quietly.
‘Yes.’ he replied.
And she found she believed him. There was something about this conversation which insisted on honesty. But, still, she wanted clarification on that point. ‘No other women on the side? No little stop-overs in brief ports of call?’
‘Who’s been talking?’ he sighed, then grimaced. ‘Or don’t I need to ask?’
‘Just answer the question,’ she insisted. ‘I’ve been fooled by one man in that way too recently to let another one walk me into the same trap.’
‘Rumours about my love life have been greatly exaggerated,’ he informed her satirically. ‘But, no, no other women.’ His eyes caught hers again. ‘Just you, me and a chance of something special.’
Something special. Something special sounded tempting. Something special was what she was already beginning to feel for this complicated man with his hard crust of ruthlessness and his mind-blowing sensuality, and this—this warming show of honest sincerity was perhaps worth more than all the rest put together.
But…
Lowering her eyes away from him, she contemplated her fingers while her mind tried to come up with a catch in all of this. Because there had to be a catch, didn’t there? It was all just too good to be tr
ue—too darn easy—and that prodded at another little sore point she had been struggling with.
This quick, this right and this easy—that did make her fickle.
Or gullible? she suggested to herself soberly. Gullible in a lot of ways. Gullible to Piers’ false kind of charm, gullible to Rafe’s more aggressive kind, and gullible to—this, this need to be wanted as hotly and as passionately as he clearly wanted her.
Could they build on that? Was it at least worth trying, or was she just asking for more heartache at the end of it all?
‘Well?’ he prompted when she took too long to answer.
‘OK, we’ll work on it,’ she heard herself surrender.
His eyes flashed, and in the next moment he was pushing her onto her back and coming to lie across her, his mouth hot and urgent as it covered hers.
When she lifted her arms so she could bury her fingers in his hair and hold his mouth on hers, he caught one hand with his own, his fingers pleating with her fingers as he pressed them back against the bed.