Craving Beauty

by Nalini Singh

  Her eyes were huge and round in the early morning light. "You were sold to a thief?"

  "An old thief. He couldn't pick pockets himself anymore but he took me to New Orleans and trained me to do it. We preyed mainly on tourists who wandered off the beaten path in the French Quarter. I was with him for two years and most of these scars come from that work. Not all. Some are actually courtesy of my parents and Muddy's fists, but the really bad ones are from running the streets."

  He ran his hand over one ragged line that ran diagonally from his left clavicle to the middle of his ribs on his right side. "I got slashed by a knife once when Muddy sent me into someone else's patch--territory," he explained, rubbing his hand along the white lines on his face.

  "As for these, a gang took offence at my being in their territory, and I had a bottle broken across my face. Both times I got sliced up pretty bad but the wounds didn't require stitches, which is why the scars are so ugly. No surgeon to make them pretty."

  She laid her hand over his, lips pressed tight. "They are not ugly. I have told you so."

  He turned his palm up and captured her hand, something primitive in him appeased by her lack of resistance. "Not exactly an honorable warrior's marks." His mouth twisted. "But I was a damn good thief."

  Her hand squeezed his, her bones fine but strong in a very feminine way. "They are. How else could you have survived such a life without letting it destroy you, if you didn't have the soul of a warrior?"

  He looked up into that intent, loyal face and found himself believing her. "You're far too innocent for the likes of me. But I'm keeping you." That primitive part of him rose to the surface, hotly possessive.

  Her smile was pure sunshine, calming the primitive. "You are welcome, husband mine. What happened after two years with the old thief?"

  "I was in a really bad street fight. Muddy sent me somewhere he never should have--into drug territory. Anyway, I got opened up pretty bad." The memories were hazy because of the blood loss he'd suffered. "Muddy disappeared, never to be heard from again. I don't know if the drug lords got him or he just escaped when I was wheeled into intensive care. A couple of cops found me lying half-dead on the street."

  "But you survived." Her fingers traced the fine white lines of scars across his abdomen.

  "Yes. The doctors did a good job--those scars are the least visible."

  "And yet there are so many. You were not just cut once." There was such anger in her eyes. "What happened after you recovered?"

  "When the cops asked me how I'd ended up in the city, I lied and said I'd run away. So they returned me to my parents, instead of sending me to a foster home."

  Hira frowned. "Why did you wish to return to your parents? They may have tried to sell you again."

  "I knew they wouldn't, because I'd become their meal ticket."

  "You stole for them?" There was no disapproval in her tone, as if she respected what the boy he'd been had done to survive.

  Another sliver of his heart fell into her careful hands without his conscious volition. He just knew it was forever gone. Forever hers.

  It was an effort to speak without demanding she give him something to replace what he'd just lost. "No. I stopped stealing as soon as I left Muddy. I got work, any work, and I gave them enough to keep them happy. That's why I went back. I knew that as long as they were boozed, they wouldn't care what I was up to, whereas a foster parent might've actually made an effort to discipline me."

  Hira lay back down beside him on her side, propping her head up with one arm, her other hand still intertwined with his. "What were you doing that you didn't wish for discipline?"

  "I had plans. I decided in the hospital that I'd never again be anyone's whipping boy." Even now he could feel that savagely beaten boy's grim determination. "That meant I had to have money, and to do that, I needed to work. My parents didn't care that I was working far too many hours for a kid, working late into the night in factories where the managers ignored my age.

  "It took a few more kicks before I got my head screwed on perfectly straight, but once I did, that was it." One of those kicks had been delivered by Lydia Barnsworthy. "I was young but determined. By the time I'd graduated high school, I'd saved over thirty thousand dollars from working and then investing that money. I went to college on a baseball scholarship. Even though I'd worked on instinct in investing, I knew that some of the men I'd be dealing with in the future would be impressed by a degree."

  Hira began to nod, her midnight-and-gold hair sliding across her bare shoulders. "You started your business with the money you made from your investing."

  "Yes, with a little help from the bank. The first company I bought was a dying little family outfit that produced these unique toys. I busted my gut with it and sold it when I finished college for a profit that was big enough to allow me to buy my next company. Within five years of graduation, I was a multimillionaire."

  "And you did it by saving dying companies, not looting them," she murmured. "A harder road."

  He shrugged, uncomfortable with the veiled praise. "It's the way I like to work." Not by ripping apart but by slowly, painstakingly, gluing a fractured masterpiece together. He'd spent too many years with people who'd tried to destroy him. He couldn't do that to anyone or anything else.

  "You were a very determined boy." The admiration in those mountain-cat eyes didn't dim. "How did you get involved with the orphanage?"

  He found himself wanting to tell her, when he'd kept his secrets from everyone else. "I met Father Thomas about a year after I returned to my parents. He gave me a steady job cleaning the church after school. He also gave me...hope." He'd taken a beat-up, hard-as-nails kid and taught him the value of compassion and integrity.

  "Later, when I needed to borrow money from the bank to finance that first business, he guaranteed my loan. I tried to pay him back with shares in my next company, but he said that he wouldn't take money from one of his sons." Being called "son" by Father Thomas meant far more to Marc than any biological relationship.

  "I begin to see why these boys mean so much to you," Hira murmured. "You wish to give them a chance in life as Father Thomas gave you. You're a good man, Marc Bordeaux." A gentle kiss on his cheek sealed her words.

  "I'm a man, same as any other." His tone was husky, not from lust but from the light in her exotic eyes.

  His wife smiled at him like he'd given her the moon, when he suddenly realized he'd never given her a single present that wasn't big and expensive and meaningless.

  "Ah, but you're my man, Marc. That must mean you are blessed." Her lips curved in a teasing smile.

  Chuckling, he rolled over, pressing her into the mattress. "Is that so, princess?" Nothing had ever felt as right as telling his secrets to this woman with her pride and her curious honesty. Perhaps this Beauty might just be willing to love her Beast.

  *

  Less than a week later, Marc found himself standing on the verandah, waiting for his wife to return home. She'd left early that morning for her first class and it was now after five. Despite the way the lost boy inside him had wanted to cage her with protection, despite the primitive in him who'd growled mine, he'd tried to be gentle when she'd left, because the past week had been the most wonderful of his misbegotten life. His wife had opened herself to him, heart and soul, mind and body.

  It was the first time in his life that he hadn't been lonely.

  Right then he knew that if there ever came a time when Hira rejected him, it would be because he'd decided to let her go. And quite simply, he never would. He'd fight to the death like some feral thing before he watched her walk away.

  Second by second, minute by slow minute, his wife had worn down his defenses and made a place for herself in his heart. The vulnerability was so sudden and ran so tearingly deep he didn't dare release it to the light of day. He just knew that only Hira could calm the ache within him.

  But in spite of the new depth of their commitment to each other, a part of his wife remained out of h
is reach. The crazy thing was, he knew exactly why she sometimes acted as wary as a wild deer. If he could wring Kerim Dazirah's neck, he would. Hira's father had planted that fear of trusting the one you married in her, a fear that even now shadowed her eyes.

  An engine sounded, snagging his attention. A second later his wife's cherry-red sports car came around the corner. Parking in the drive, she exited and ran up to him, leaving her books in the car. Dressed in a long denim skirt and plain white shirt, her hair pulled back in a tight braid, she glittered like a perfectly cut diamond.

  Delighted when she ran into his waiting arms, he swept her off her feet and spun her around, her laughter wrapping around them like a silken whisper. When he finally slid her slowly down his body, her sparkling eyes had him leaning down to savor the taste of her lips. She opened for him, warm and welcoming. Her fingers spread on his white T-shirt. "I like the way you welcome me home," she whispered, her tone husky.

  The sight of her well-kissed lips, wet and luscious, made him want to ravage her. "Did you have a good day?" He was trying very hard not to demand her whereabouts for the last few hours, since her lecture had finished long before.

  She smiled and wrapped her arms around his waist, raising her face for another kiss. Tightening his embrace, he indulged both of them with a slow slide of lips and an even slower stroking of tongues. It was a kiss of lovers, one that left them both breathless.

  "My day was interesting but strange." One hand slipped up to lie against his heart. "I learned many things at their big library, made a friend--" her smile was both surprised and delighted "--and found out that young men today have no morals."

  His whole body tensed at that disapproving sound, the arms around her turning into steel bands. "And how did you learn that?"

  "They kept trying to court me when I'm clearly a wife." She raised the hand with her wedding band on it. The fine gold sparkled in the light of the setting sun. At the same moment, a cool breeze ruffled the fine curls at her temples, causing goose bumps on her arms.

  He tugged her inside. "What did you do?" Closing the door, he led her to the living room sofa and sat down. She cuddled up next to him, one hand on his abdomen, while the fingers of her other hand drifted up to play with his hair.

  Her look would've done justice to a particularly self-satisfied cat. "I told them I was yours and I used your name. They stopped."

  He bit back a grin. "You used my name?" He loved it when she touched him like this.

  "Yes. Apparently they are scared of what you might do--it didn't take me long to find out that you have a reputation, husband." She scowled, and he knew she'd question him on that reputation later. "Now I'll have peace. I said that--" her voice dropped a few octaves "--my husband would not be pleased with their attentions."

  He gave up trying to hold in his laughter. "God, you're amazing!" He tugged her into his arms and kissed her smug little face.

  "I am glad you understand that."

  "So what will you do with your degree once you've finished?" he asked, hungry to learn her dreams, to be allowed into the secret world of her hopes and wishes.

  "Well, I've only just started but...I thought I might like to be a teacher like the ones at the university."

  He caught the uncertainty in her tone. "You'd make a wonderful lecturer."

  Her smile bloomed. "Do you really think so? I'd have to do much more studying to become such a teacher. It will take a long time, especially since I want to spend a lot of time with the boys when they are ours, but I think I can do it if I work hard."

  "I have every faith in your stubbornness, cher," he joked, touched by the way she was embracing his dream. "If you're not careful, you'll make us respectable. Can you see me at some faculty dinner, discussing business theory?"

  She laughed at his horrified tone. "I shall try very hard not to tame you--it's fun having a husband with a reputation such as yours."

  He grinned. "Tell me more about your day."

  A frown marred her face. "Well...many people asked me if I was a model, as if a woman with a certain kind of face could be nothing else."

  He moved his hand to her hair and undid her plait, sending that midnight-and-gold glory tumbling over his hands. "I suppose people think that that would be more glamorous than studying."

  "Hmm."

  "Why didn't you model? Wouldn't it have been a way out?"

  "I thought about it." She settled herself more comfortably against him. "It will be hard for you to understand, coming as you do from this country of ultimate freedom, but I'm very old-fashioned. I don't believe in showing my body to anyone but my husband.

  "I couldn't do it, not even to escape my home. It would've been a betrayal of myself, a surrender to my father's attempts to change me from the woman I am. I always thought I would think of something else."

  "I like being the only one who's seen your body," he whispered, touched by her confession of her deeply held beliefs, of her determination not to compromise those beliefs, even in an attempt to escape the life she'd hated.

  Her fingers undid one of his buttons and touched skin. "I know. Every time you look at me, I know you're congratulating yourself on acquiring me."

  "Men don't acquire women. We woo them." He bristled.

  "When did you woo me?" It was only when she met his gaze that he realized his lovely lady of a wife was enjoying herself by teasing him.

  Grumbling, he captured her laughing face and proceeded to kiss her until she was whimpering and agreeing to his every demand. Then he teased her.

  *

  Things had been going a little too well as far as Marc was concerned. He supposed he should've expected it all to come falling down around his ears. He'd been kicked viciously by life too many times to take anything for granted.

  "There's a letter for you in the mail my assistant just dropped off," he called out, striding into the kitchen the next day. After waking at 4:00 a.m. for an international telephone conference, he'd had no desire to head into his city office. The fact that Hira had had no classes, either, had cinched his decision to telecommute. "It's from within the States."

  Hira's face was as curious as his when he handed her the pale-lilac envelope addressed to her, care of his company's post office box number. "That's strange. I don't know many people yet."

  She didn't object when he walked around to stand beside her, one hand idly stroking over her curvy hip. At that moment he was simply interested in the unexpected letter, with no knowledge of the pain that could result from a single small envelope.

  Hira tore open the flap and pulled out a card with the words I Love You emblazoned in red on a white background. Marc felt his whole body tighten in readiness for a fight. Who the hell had dared to send his wife love greetings?

  "Perhaps it's one of the boys--they make me cards sometimes," Hira muttered, flipping open the cover. Almost immediately she slammed it shut.

  "Who is it from?" he insisted, his hand clenching on her hip.

  Her face was pale but her answer honest. "Romaz."

  "The man you loved?"

  "The man I thought I loved," she corrected. "He wasn't who I believed him to be."

  But, Marc thought with a gut-wrenching shaft of pain, she'd cared very deeply for this man at one time and there had been no coercion involved. Not like their marriage.

  "What does he want?" His wife was entitled to her privacy and he wanted her to trust him.

  "He's in the country with his new wife, but he wishes to visit me." She sounded vaguely shocked.

  "I see."

  Her head jerked up. "What do you see, husband?" Her voice was soft.

  He was furious at the gall of the man in contacting Hira through him. "You had feelings for this man once. Now you're my wife, so you won't be seeing him." It came out sounding like an order.

  Her eyes narrowed and he knew he'd made a mistake. "Ah, so you never see the women who have been in your bed?"

  He blinked. "That's very crude coming from you."

 
; "Perhaps I've decided that with you, a lady will only get crushed into the dirt." She turned to face him fully, those wild eyes of hers furious. "You didn't answer my question."

  "Tit for tat?"

  "Do you really think me so shallow?"

  He rubbed the back of his neck. "No. But I still don't want you seeing him."

  "Why?"

  There was no answer he could give her that wouldn't betray his snarling possessiveness. Hands fisted, he moved away. "If you're determined to meet him, I can't stop you." His tone was harsh.

  Silence, then a quiet, "I'll write him a short note telling him a visit is not possible. Even he should be given a response."

  She turned and walked away, leaving him shaken by the power of the relief he felt at her decision.

  *

  That night as they lay in bed Hira turned to her husband. "I've sent Romaz a letter saying that I'm happily married and have no wish to meet with him." She knew her husband would never ask her what she'd said, having too much pride. A woman who married a hunter of a man like him had to know when to bend, for a hunter's pride was part of his emotional armor, something no true wife would ever steal away.

  He turned to her, arms folded behind his head, ghost-gray eyes glinting silver in the moonlight shooting through their bedroom windows. "Are you happily married?"

  It wasn't a question she'd anticipated. "I suppose I'm happy."

  "That's not exactly an avowal of joy."

  "No, it's not." She sighed. "When I was a girl, I dreamed many dreams about the man I would marry, though I was aware from a very early age that my father saw me as a commodity. I always knew I'd be part of a business deal, so it wasn't such a shock to marry you."

  "Ouch." Her husband rose to lean over her, a wry look on his savagely masculine face, a face that made her heart sigh and her stomach tighten in desire, no matter how hard she tried to resist. And when he smiled that slow smile...

  "I thought you might've fallen for my charm."

  "You tease me, for you know we didn't speak much before our wedding night." Marc had seen her one night, and the next day he'd agreed to her father's desire to seal the deal with her hand.

  At that stage she'd met the American stranger who'd offered her a way out of her father's house exactly twice. And yet he'd seemed by far the better choice. Her womanly instincts had craved him from the first, though the dark intensity in his eyes had scared her.