Page 95 of The Games Lovers Play
In her mind, would the dragon symbolize love or pain?
He stared at the figurine. Even in the weak light, the gold of the body gleamed, the enameled panels were vivid with color, and the gems dotted about the dragon winked and sparkled. The little creature was exquisite and seemed almost alive.
In the end, he’d allowed instinct to guide him and had brought the dragon to her.
Slowly, he sank into the armchair. He sat back, his gaze resting on her face.
Having to deal with the children and Sanderson had forced him to stay focused, to maintain outward control, but now, he had no reason, no incentive, and little remaining strength he could muster to suppress the cauldron of feelings roiling inside him.
As he sat and stared at her, those feelings surged anew. They swelled and grew, then erupted; caustic and powerful, they poured through him, scouring and stripping away all pretense and leaving him—his inner self—starkly exposed.
Fear, guilt, and frantic worry flooded him until he felt in danger of drowning.
He forced in a breath, then exhaled and breathed in again, deeper, longer, before exhaling again. He repeated the exercise until the raging tumult calmed to a sullenly surging sea.
There was no sense in wallowing in guilt over the game he had played with their lives—with their marriage, with their love. No sense in regretting the effort he’d put into maintaining the fiction that he wasn’t in love, his futile yet steadfast attempt to deny reality. There was no point in railing at his own cowardice in refusing to acknowledge what he’d always known was true.
His gaze steady on Therese’s unmoving features, he vowed that, when she woke, he wouldn’t hesitate—wouldn’t allow himself to put off the moment no matter what justification his mind supplied—but would tell her all. He would own to it all—to the breadth, depth, and overwhelming power of his love for her.
His lips tightened as memories of the last hours washed through him; in truth, he knew all about the breadth, depth, and power of his feelings for her—the emotions that had battered him had been stronger, more intense, more fundamentally shattering than any he’d ever felt before.
In starting down the path of admitting his love for her, he’d freed the genie from its bottle, and there was no way to put it back, no way to retreat.
Not that he wished to go back to the way things had been between them. These last weeks had held a promise so golden, so precious, he couldn’t imagine turning his back on it. Everything in him wanted to seize and secure that golden future for him, her, and their family.
Openly loving Therese might leave him vulnerable—more vulnerable—to horrendous grief and misery, to pain, anxiety, fear, and the terror of impending loss, but against those negatives, balancing them and tipping the scales heavily to the positive, were the unrestrained joy, the sunshine of happiness, the glow of warm elation, and a deeper, richer, more profoundly glorious satisfaction that, in the absence of acknowledged love, simply did not exist in life.
Love, in all its many facets, wasn’t to be underestimated. It was, he now firmly believed, fundamental to the human condition. Without it, one couldn’t and wouldn’t experience all there was in life.
Unbidden, his gaze traced Therese’s features, drank in the beauty of her face—a beloved image.
Sanderson’s words seeped into his mind.“Sometimes, with injuries such as this, there’s some underlying trauma that means the patient doesn’t actually want to wake up.”
He told himself that, as Sanderson had pointed out, that wouldn’t apply to Therese. She was the sort who worked through difficulties and managed. Sadly, worry was an unreasoning beast, and it had taken dogged root in his mind.
To counter it, he reminded himself of her temper. Although it didn’t erupt often, when it did, it manifested with elemental force; on several occasions over the years, he’d had to hold her back from some reckless action…
Was that why she’d run for the Priory? In the grip of her temper, had she, perhaps, concluded that he’d raised her hopes regarding love purely on a whim, only to cruelly dash them by consorting with another woman?
He forced himself to face the prospect that she might have decided to cut him out of her life.
It was a battle to haul himself away from the abyss that notion conjured. He managed it only by reminding himself—again—that Therese was far more likely to confront any demons that dared block her path rather than run screaming from them.
He allowed his gaze to roam her face and, deliberately steering his mind in what he hoped would be a more profitable direction, wondered how best to proceed when she awoke. That left him reviewing what he’d wanted to achieve in starting down the track of openly acknowledging that their marriage was a love-match. Put simply, he’d done it because he’d wanted more; he’d wanted to claim what he’d realized was there to be claimed.
He’d wanted all the benefits other Cynster couples had seized and made theirs, with their love for each other openly acknowledged and embraced by both husband and wife.
That initial motive might have been selfish, but he’d known even then that, once she understood that the possibility was there, Therese would want to claim that prize every bit as avidly as he.
Wanting more; it all boiled down to that. Looking back over the past weeks, cataloguing her encouraging reactions, he felt confident that she, too, yearned to achieve the same, utterly compelling goal.
A shared purpose, then, one focused on recrafting their union from what it had been into what it could be, which encompassed and promised so much more.
When she woke, he would have to convince her of that—of their “shared purpose” and all aspects of that “more.” To do so, he would need to reveal all, the complete and undisguised truth of their marriage.
Under his unwavering gaze, her lashes fluttered. Her lids tightened as if she was about to open her eyes.
Hope surging, he sat up, but before he could reach out and take her hand, her lids eased, and her lashes stilled, and she sank into deep slumber once more.
