She did, her voice trembling with every word.
By the end of the story, fury raced a treacherous path through Tristan’s veins. Killing the boy who had hurt his woman wasn’t punishment enough. He wanted to tie the idiot to an hendrek hill—naked, of course—letting the tiny creatures slowly eat him alive. Instead, he drew on his battle instincts and kept his emotions under tight restraint.
He didn’t have to scratch too far below the surface to understand the anguish she had endured. Both her mother and father had rejected her. The first boy she’d shown interest in had rejected her. Because she had desired a boy “too pretty” for her. Now Julia simply expected rejection from anyone she deemed attractive.
Her past explained so much of her personality, and he sympathized. He, too, had endured many rejections as a child, and he realized now those experiences had hollowed out his chest and filled it with stone. Stone didn’t feel pain. Now, those stones were gone, and he felt her pain as well as his own. He felt deeply.
The waiter deposited their dessert in the center of the table, then disappeared in a flurry of movement. Tristan toyed with the stem of a plump red fruit. Had he and Julia been alone, he would sweep the dewy softness along her silken skin and lick away the evidence. Since they were not, he pinched the fruit between his fingers and held it to Julia’s lips. “Open up.”
The pink tip of her tongue emerged, tasted, then devoured. “Mmm, that’s good. Thank you.”
He gulped.
“What about you?” she asked, unaware of the fire she continually stirred inside his body. She speared a small corner of the cake with her fork and brought it to her mouth. “What’s your life story?” Her teeth closed over the sugary confection.
He dragged his gaze from her luscious charms, across the wide expanse of the dance floor, to rest on the far window that paid homage to a night heavy with glowing stars. “This you do not want to know.”
“Yes, I do,” she said without pause. “Besides, you owe me. I told you about my childhood. Now you have to tell me about yours. It’s only fair.”
Tristan had never shared this part of himself with another, not even Roake. But he refused to lie to Julia, or sweeten the details. She desired to know about him, and so he would tell her. “There were times when I was young that I wished my father had given me to another. I never knew why, but I always knew he hated me.”
“Surely he didn’t hate hate you.”
“Oh, but he did. Why else would he whip me, giving me these and many more?” Tristan clasped her hand and placed it under his shirt, then guided her fingers to his back, to his scars.
* * *
“TRISTAN,” JULIA whispered, horrified by the anguish he must have suffered as a child. “I’m so sorry.” She wanted to put her mouth on every scar, to kiss and make them better while she flicked her tongue over one peak, then another. Temptation…
One she would have given in to if tears hadn’t welled in her eyes. She imagined Tristan as a young boy, beaten, bruised and unloved. While her parents merely neglected and insulted her, his father had physically abused him. She ached for the boy he’d been. How lost he must have felt. How frightened. “I’m so very, very sorry.”
“Do not cry for me, draga. Anger and frustration still eat at me sometimes, but I did not always know hatred.” Smiling gently, he wiped the moisture from her eyes and the curve of her cheekbone. “I spent the first five years of my life with my mother. She adored me.”
“How did she die?” Julia asked, curious about the woman who’d given birth to him.
“She did not.” His eyes darkened to steely gray, revealing secrets and pain. “Where I am from, warriors are looked to with respect and reverence. She was unmated, only a slave, and she could not teach me the art of warfare. When the time came, she entrusted me into my father’s care so that I might acquire the proper training.”
“A five-year-old child training to be a warrior? I bet your childhood makes mine seem like a fairy tale.”
“Suffering comes in many forms. Do not discount your own.” He placed his napkin on the table, effectively ending that line of conversation. “Tell me why you have not arranged the upstairs chambers in your home.”
She flinched. “You saw those?”
“I did.”
Cheeks aflame, she told him, “When I bought the house, I imagined myself there with a husband and children. I planned to make the upstairs a nursery, one room for a boy and one for a girl, but one day I woke up and decided I needed to accept my life as it was. Ever since, I’ve pretended the upstairs of my home doesn’t exist.”
“That is heartbreaking.” Voice hoarse, he said, “What do you secretly crave?”
“Besides another cherry?” she asked, lifting the last red fruit.
“Aye. Besides that.” He claimed the fruit and placed it at the portal of her lips.
Watching him, she chewed and swallowed it slowly.
Her eyes widened when he leaned over and licked the remaining evidence from the corner of her mouth. “Well, what is your answer?”
“About what?” she asked, breathless. His nearness warmed her ear.
“Your other dreams.”
Oh, yes. “Finding my one, true love, I suppose.”
“That much I already know.” Under the table, he stroked her knee. “I meant, is there anything you want right—this—second?”
Ohhhhh. He meant… “Yes,” she croaked. You.
He grinned, wicked and languid, as if he’d read her mind. “Let’s go home, then, and discuss it…”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Imperia
“CLOSE YOUR EYES, ZIRRA.”
Instantly she obeyed.
Firelight licked the lushness of her features. Freshly bathed, Romulis reclined against the corner wall. The marble slab was cool and seeped past the fibers of his silver
