Page 92 of The General's Gift
“Titania belongs in a fairy world, not in war,” he said, and his voice was hoarse.
Celeste gripped her skirts. Titania, indeed. The gown clung to her form in fragile illusion. The flowers crowning her curls drooped, their stems loosened by the crush of dancing and heartbreak.
She was tulle and tears and a pleading heart.
He was iron and silence and a coming war.
And they had never stood further apart.
“Here are my arms, my cheeks. My eyes. I’m not an illusion.” Celeste removed the flowers from her hair. “Like any woman, I have senses, feelings. Passions. Am I not fed with the samefood? Hurt with the same careless words? Cured with the same caresses? Don’t I feel cold? Sleepy? Sorrowful?”
She let her gown fall and stepped out of it as though shedding skin, and stood bare before him. No flowers. No tulle. No illusions.
Just Celeste.
“I have a heart, like any other woman. It beats. It burns. It breaks. If you tickle me, do I not laugh? If you wound me, do I not bleed? And if you leave me, will I not be destroyed?”
“The world I’m about to enter…” he rasped, “there’s no magic in it. Only blood and smoke. You deserve better.”
There was a finality in his voice that struck her in the chest. So this was the end. She had given him everything—her truth, her tears, her trembling strength. And it was not enough.
He would not change his mind. Nothing she spoke could move immovable Hawk. That he was so strong and she, so weak, was her greatest tragedy.
“I know you see me as a foolish child. And yet, this child loves you with a heart as strong as the mightiest that ever lived in your world.” Her breath hitched. Her arms dropped to her sides. “If only the rest of her were not so pitiful.”
Pitiful? Hawk stared at her. She stood before him stripped of armor. No flowers. No tulle. No illusions. She had the guts to reveal her love, her heart bared, where his was hidden beneath brass and medals.
He crossed the room in two strides and pulled her into his arms. “You are the strongest, most courageous woman I know,” he whispered into her hair, his voice scraped raw.
“If you believed that, you would grant me a place by your side. I love you. And you are breaking my heart.”
He brushed his cheek against her hair, willing her to understand. “You deserve young love, lighthearted and free—”
“Don’t diminish my feelings.” She drew away, forcing him to meet her eyes. “My life would be easier if I loved some poet scribbling pretty lines. But I don’t. Fate gave me you—the man who carries nations on his shoulders. I love your silences. Your strength. Even that blasted temper. I love that I can wring laughter out of you when you’d rather be stone.”
Hawk froze, breath knocked clean from his chest. She couldn’t mean it. Yet she stood before him, unflinching. And she thoughtherself weak? She had said it aloud. He couldn’t even breathe it. Even knowing it was impossible, hope battered its tired wings inside him.
“And when you touch me… I would trade a lifetime of illusions for one day of truth in your arms, Alexander.”
His eyes closed against the ache of hearing his name on her lips.
“I want real love. The kind that stays when it’s easier to run. If you keep pretending I don’t love you, then it isn’t my heart you’re protecting. It’s your own.”
“You’re damn right.”
Hawk grabbed her waist and held on to her like a drowning man clutching wreckage.
“I’ve fought battles that chewed men to pieces. But when you turned my life into a midsummer’s dream, no armor was thick enough to keep you out.
He passed his hands over her fluttering eyelids. “I only remember I have a heart when you look at me with those promise-colored eyes.”
“Then tonight, love me,” she whispered. “Tonight, surrender.”
He caught her mouth in his, a kiss that claimed and begged and yielded all at once.
To hell with duty.
Tonight, he needed to live in her fantasy. God help them both.
