Page 100 of Peasants and Kings
He quelled the long silence when he said, “My mother died during childbirth.”
His hand drifted up and down my arm in a dreamy caress, and I cuddled deeper into his embrace.
“She was a teen runaway. Nothing out of the ordinary. I don’t know who my father is. When they filled out the birth certificate, she was already dead… Anyway, I was taken to St. Michael’s, an orphanage in Lerwick. The nuns there named all the male babies that came to them after Roman emperors. I don’t know why. Maybe they wanted to give us strong names since we’d come to them with nothing. Maybe they thought we’d have a chance at feeling powerful during the course of our lives.”
I lifted my face so I could rest my chin on his chest and stare at him. “And Rhys? Was that your mother’s last name?”
He nodded, his eyes meeting mine.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked him.
“Because you were honest with me this morning,” he said softly, his brogue rumbly and thick. “You didn’t have to be. You could’ve kept your guard up. Lord knows I would’ve understood why. I brought you here and then left you immediately.”
Something finally clicked into place, an understanding of the enigmatic man whose bed I was in and whose arms I found pleasure in.
Everything in Hadrian’s life, from his business dealings, to conversations with people…it was all transactional. Hadrian didn’t know how to trust someone unless they offered him something he perceived as valuable in return.
My honesty, as he called it, was worth something to him. And so he’d shared a part of himself with me.
I stroked my fingers up his chest to cup his raspy cheek and then sank into his strawberry blond hair.
In that moment, I realized who Hadrian truly was: an orphan who’d never had unconditional love. How could he have? He hadn’t known his own mother. She’d never gotten to watch him grow from boy to man. Whatever his course in life, he had done it without family.
“Eden?”
I met his bold stare and said simply, “Kiss me.”
There was nothing boyish about the way he made me quiver. There was nothing boyish about the way he rolled me over, using his brute strength to pleasure me. There was nothing boyish about the way he slid inside me, so deep I wondered if he was settling himself in my heart.
I wanted to unravel every part of his past, each new secret a treasure revealed. I wanted to keep him safe and give myself to the raw beauty that we created when we were together.
And when I tightened around him, climaxing, I let him see the tears that seeped from the corners of my eyes.
I let him see the part of me that really mattered.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The next few days were spent in a blissful, dreamy state of pleasure and companionship. We didn’t venture far from Hadrian’s bed. We were cocooned in safety, and in the privacy of his bedroom, we could express ourselves the best way we knew how—by using our bodies. Neither of us were yet comfortable expressing deeper feelings and secrets, and usually we were able to skirt around them. But after Hadrian told me about his mother, there was a tender peace between us, an understanding that we didn’t have to share everything all at once. That would come naturally with time, and we would hoard our pasts like dragons guarding gold, with each story told, each secret unveiled like a prize to be won.
Hadrian never slept the entire night next to me. His energy was dynamic and limitless. Was his drive something he’d been born with? Or was it something that had been chiseled into his psyche over time as he attempted to compensate for all the things he’d never had? I wondered if his inability to rest stemmed from his desire to prove his worth. Not to the world, but to himself.
He was his own master. He did not hold council with confidants. The few phone calls he’d taken while we were hidden away had shown me that.
There was nothing soft about him. He was demanding in his existence. In bed, and out of it.
One clear morning a week later, Hadrian introduced me to one of his horses, a black stallion named Midas. It was a temperamental beast, and Midas tossed his glossy head and kicked the barn door with impatience as we stood at his stall.
“I’m pretty sure Midas is your spirit animal,” I teased. “You guys have a lot of the same characteristics.”
“Such as?” he asked.
“Tempers, for one,” I said. “You’re both very vocal and demanding about your wants and needs.”
“Speaking of needs… Midas has been lonely,” he explained, and then placed his hand at my waist to guide me to the next stall over that held a chestnut beauty with a white speckled flank. The horse looked at Hadrian with her lovely dark brown eyes and came to him when we arrived at the stall.
“I let him choose his companion. I had dozens of fillies brought here for Midas. He ignored every single one of them—except for her. He pranced around in front of her, and she couldn’t have been less interested. He liked her immediately, and there was no hiding it.”
I grinned.
