‘I think that’s called unsophisticated,’ she responded with a humorous lilt to her voice.
He caught her chin, lifting her face, surprising her with the dark emotion written across his features. ‘Whenever I compliment you, you turn it into a negative. That is the only bad habit of yours I am aware of.’
She didn’t deny it, nor did she apologise for it. ‘It’s hard to tune out the internal monologue seeded by my mother. I’m a work in progress.’
Sympathy spiralled through him. ‘But she did not attack Olivia?’
‘Olivia’s life has been far from a walk in the park. Our mother hated her for different reasons.’
‘Hate?’
She nodded slowly. ‘Olivia is strikingly beautiful in the same way our mother is—and was. It’s been hard for Mum to see Olivia blossoming, to realise that her own beauty is fading with age, while Olivia’s is at its zenith.’
But apparently, he wasn’t interested in Olivia. ‘And you, she treated like an ugly duckling?’
Sienna winced because it was so completely accurate. How could he have understood so perfectly? She nodded once.
‘What a fool.’
She lifted her shoulders. ‘She has a narrow definition of beauty. I’m nowhere near it.’
‘As I said, she is a fool.’
Her lips parted on a rush of hot breath, surprise and something else—it felt as if a part of her was waking, stirring to life. Before she could analyse it further, he was lifting her, carrying her cradled against his chest, down the corridor.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’
She shook her head, though she had a pretty fair idea.
He shouldered in the bedroom door then placed her down at the edge of the bed. ‘You are beautiful. Funny. Smart. Interesting.’ He ticked each adjective off on a different finger, enumerating the list in a businesslike way. Nonetheless, each word struck her heart like an arrow, making her stronger, not weakening her. A smile played about her lips and then he was nudging her back onto the bed, his body following hers with the ferocity of a wild animal. His weight pressed to her, his hands pinned hers above her head.
‘You deserve to be worshipped so often you never again doubt the veracity of what I’ve said. You deserve to be worshipped until you feel like a goddess.’
A shiver ran the length of her body and goosebumps chased after it. But she couldn’t respond—there was no time to reply. He kissed her, hard, until her senses were on overload and surrender was the only option. Their coming together was a victory, a victory she felt in every cell of her body, a victory strong enough to rewrite, she suspected, some of her DNA, so that some of the wounds of her adolescence seemed to tremble, to fall away, leaving her with a sense of levity she hadn’t known in a long time—if ever.
The desire to protect her was back. Though, of course, it had never left, only subsided a little, with every display of her strength of character and determination. But hearing her describe the relationship with her mother, the way that had shaped her view of herself, made him want to slap the older woman. Oh, he’d never physically hurt a woman, but the anger was the same. How dared she make Sienna feel like this? Wounds that had been inflicted in adolescence were clearly still a part of how Sienna viewed herself, through the lens of her mother’s mistreatment.
Anger fired in his body, and a terrifying need to erase her pain. To make her smile for ever. To make it so that she could never again doubt the power of her appeal... But his own past was right there, hovering on the periphery of his mind, the darkness, the hurt, the pain, his inability to protect his mother; all the emotions were jagged edges threatening to enfold him. He pushed them aside, aware they’d never recede completely, but wanting to keep them at bay, at least for now. In this moment, there was pleasure, and they both deserved that.