Page 80 of The General's Gift
Lie with me. Even if it’s a lie.
He exhaled her name like a curse. She saw it in his gaze—the decision to pull away before they could fall too far. He would leave her. He would leave and she would die, because if he left now, she would vanish, disappear beneath all the wanting she had dared to feel.
In one moment, she watched him glance at the door, already mourning his absence. Next, he was on her, gathering her as if wrenching her back from death’s grip.
His arms locked across her, one palm spread high between her shoulder blades, the other cinching her waist, pinning her flush against him. Her cheek struck the hard plane of his chest, where his heartbeat pounded like a storm drum behind the curtain. She pressed closer, brushing her face against his coat, aching to burrow so deep he could never cast her off.
Her breath stalled, caught somewhere between his ribs and her own, until the ache of holding it nearly broke her.
“Celeste,” he said against her forehead.
She opened her mouth to respond, and he was there, demanding entrance. Was there such a thing as a dance of tongues, of teeth, of lips?
She laced her fingers around his neck and dared to explore his hair, his nape.
He tore his mouth from hers.
“I won’t take your virginity,” he vowed.
Her breath faltered. The gift that a woman gave her husband on the first night. And he was refusing it. She closed her eyes against the pain and told herself it was enough. Because it had to be.
He lifted her as if she were already just memories and smoke. Her limbs folded easily into his hold, head tucked beneath his chin. The way to the bed passed in a haze of desire and longing, too soon ended by the soft give of the mattress under her spine. Hawk laid her down slowly, as though even this shadow of a wedding night deserved to be honored.
Then he shrugged off his coat. She had never seen a naked man, but this was Hawk, so she pushed up on her elbows, pulse skittering. The shirt came last—tugged loose from his waistband, lifted over his head. And suddenly, he wasn’t Hawk the general, her guardian. He was flesh and shadow and heat. In the dim light, she could only see forms. His chest was broad, dusted with dark hair that thinned as it tapered down to the hard plane of his stomach.
She hadn’t imagined he would look like this. Beautiful. Real. A god made to fight, and yet standing so still—as if afraid to frighten her.
“Can I touch you?”
He nodded, sharp and quiet, like it cost him something.
The mattress dipped as he sat on the edge of her bed. She shifted closer, and sighing, she laid her hand on his shoulder. It was like touching carved stone softened by breath. Warm, solid, strange. His skin was less smooth, and more real because of it. Her fingers grazed his collarbone, and a muscle twitched beneath her palm.
So strong… and hers. If only for tonight.
She pressed a kiss to his neck, tasting its salt and spice. He watched her with a restraint so taut it buzzed in the air between them. As if her touch—light as it was—undid something in him.
Hawk was nothing like a blushing groom from a Shakespearean comedy. No, he was a Caesar before the Senate, or a storm-weathered Hamlet, bowing his head and lending his crown to a girl who barely knew how to hold it.
But oh, how she wanted to.
Celeste reached for the candle on the nightstand, shielding the flame with her hand as she lifted it closer. The glow spilled over him, revealing the ridges of his muscles, the harsh cut of scars. Two puckered marks marred the tanned flesh, one cruelly close to the beat of his heart. She caressed him there, and the wound hurt in her own breast.
“Talavera,” he said flatly. “A French musket ball.”
Her throat closed. She moved lower, to the jagged scar slashing across his ribs, and traced the gash as if she could erase it with the feeble brush of her fingertips.
“Salamanca,” he murmured. “Cavalry sword.”
Her heart ached. This man—this unyielding general—had been broken, pierced, nearly taken from the world. No wonder he didn’t like poetry. Romance had been bled out of him.
His hand covered hers. “I wish I could’ve met you before the steel touched me.”
“Fate brought you to me now. I would not have it any other way.”
This was his world. A place of wounds and survival. She had to see it. Even if his scars ached in her own skin. She would not pretend life was still a comedy.
He took the candle from her hands. The flame sputtered, bending toward him.
