Nalini Singh: Craving Beauty

A marriage she couldn't bear to give up on.

So today she'd dressed to tempt, wanting her hus­band's admiration of her body. It was the only thing she had with which to fight for a real marriage, the only part of her that had a hope of reaching Marc. She couldn't allow herself to think how pathetic that was. It was the simple truth, and she accepted it because she had no de­sire to be a divorced woman with many husbands. That was never what she'd wanted for herself.

Mouth dry and feet bare, she rubbed her palms on her skirts before walking out of the house and across the lush grass of their backyard. Marc continued to chop wood, though she knew he was aware of her approach. Her husband had the instincts of the great hunting beasts that had once roamed his homeland. Stopping a safe dis­tance away, she called out, "Husband! Marc!"

He kept chopping.

Scowling, she started to walk closer, not heeding the flying chips of wood, trusting his protective instincts. He didn't disappoint her. Slapping the ax blade down into the stump he'd been using as a stand, he turned to her, all rippling muscle and gleaming flesh.

"What the hell are you up to, princess?" He didn't bother to hide his fury. "Come to flaunt your body in front of your animal of a husband?" His eyes raked her exposed skin, already sheened with a fine layer of perspiration.

Her lower lip quivered. She caught it with her teeth, aware that she deserved his harsh words, for she'd been very unkind last night. Her fear had made her behave in a manner that shamed her. "I have come to confess that I let you believe an untruth."

"And what would that be?" He shoved a hand through his sweat-damp hair and gave her a sardonic glance. "That I'd be getting a real wife, not a porcelain doll?"

She winced but forced herself to keep talking. "I was not disgusted by your approach. Neither do I see you as an animal." He wasn't behaving as she'd expected. Many men would've been satisfied by now, more than happy to take the body she was offering in garb that screamed a sensual invitation. Yet Marc seemed to want far more from her than just her body.

He narrowed his eyes. "What game are you playing now? I know a woman recoiling when I see one." His voice was a harsh denouncement.

Suddenly it was too much. "I was afraid!" She folded her arms across her chest, goaded into honesty. "I bring shame to the good name of my family."

"I'm not a violent man," he snapped, as if she'd in­sulted him. "Why the hell would you be afraid?"

Perplexed by his lack of understanding, she snapped back, "I am a maiden, husband. My mother said if I had a gentle husband, he would be careful of my fears. You are not gentle! You growl and snipe and are very ungentle!"

Marc felt as if the ax had jumped up and knocked him on the back of his head. He could barely comprehend what Hira was telling him. Lips pouting in accusation, she was standing there looking so sexy in her little pink nothing of an outfit that he wanted to lick her up, and she expected him to believe she was virginal?

And yet, as he'd seen last night when she'd told him why she didn't want to talk to him, she had the oddest way of telling the absolute truth at the most disconcert­ing moments. . . as if she'd never quite learned the art of subtle lies and half-truths.

"What about your boyfriend?" he finally asked, hooking his thumbs into the waistband of his jeans. No way in hell was he going to touch her unless she asked for it.

"Romaz was not my husband." She sighed. "I shouldn't tell another lie." Her eyes were wide and she was twisting her hands together, but her gaze remained locked with his, determined and so brave that he felt like picking her up and telling her it was all right.

"And the truth?"

"He didn't make me wish to lie with him as you do."

"I turn you on?" He was dumbfounded.

She frowned. "I am not an electrical switch."

"You want to lie with me?" he rephrased. The sun shone bright overhead, but this was the most surreal conversation he'd ever had.

"I have just said that." Her brow knit. "Why do you make me repeat it? Have you lost your desire for me?"

Couldn't she see exactly how much desire he felt? Then he caught himself. No. She'd kept her eyes firmly above the waist—shy innocence or a beautiful woman playing with a scarred man's mind? At the end of his patience, he walked closer. Her cheeks bloomed with a delicate blush at his nearness, but she didn't back away.

"You don't want me," he stated, his voice hard.

He wasn't going to allow some pampered little prin­cess to make fun of him. Not again. Never again. Mem­ories of being humiliated by Lydia Barnsworthy, daughter of Trevor Barnsworthy III, shoved their way to the surface of his mind. He'd been good enough to clean her car, cut the grass and do other menial chores, arid over a summer of flirting, she'd made him believe he was good enough to date her.

When he'd finally asked her out to a school dance, she'd said yes. Using some of his hard-earned cash to rent a tux and buy a corsage, he'd shown up at the door­step. The maid had informed him that Lydia had gone to the dance with someone else, leaving him only a message. "It was just a bit of fun. I never thought you'd actually think I might go with you. Sorry."

That was all the apology he'd received, and he'd known it was meaningless. She'd intended to do this from the first. Fuming, he'd gone to the dance and seen her laughing at him from the arm of the school's star quarterback. In spite of working so many jobs, Marc had managed to be picked for the baseball team. He'd played not because he loved it but because he'd known it would get him through college on a scholarship, allowing him to pursue what he really wanted to do.

But being a sporting hero hadn't been enough to touch the perfect tennis-toned body of Lydia Barnsworthy; he had to have the money and the pedigree, too. As he'd watched her dance, he'd found a new maturity born out of cold rage. To her clear disappointment, he hadn't caused a disturbance. What he'd learned that night was that a beautiful woman was worth nothing if her. heart was cruel. Unfortunately, the two seemed to go together.

His wife gave him a fiery look, shattering the mem­ories. Lydia was a hag compared to the woman he'd married. Yet, as he'd already discovered, Hira's beauty wasn't enough. If she'd remained the ice queen he'd met on his wedding night, he would've ignored her and eventually annulled their marriage, He'd had enough coldness and pain in his lifetime. But she'd kept him on the verge of hope with those fleeting moments of vul­nerability that teased him with hints of the woman be­neath the ice, the woman he'd seen on that moonlit balcony.

"Why should I lie to you?" She put her hands on her hips and moved closer. They were both in bare feet and she had to tip her head back a little to meet his gaze. He wondered if she realized her breasts were pressing against his sweaty chest. "I do not lie. . .perhaps some­times I try to lie, but then I always tell the truth!"

What the hell, Marc thought, bracing himself for a blow. The worst she could do was reject him. Perhaps then he'd finally accept that the hope had been a mirage, an illusion sent to torture the vulnerable part of his heart, the part that held the soul of the bayou boy used to surviving unbearable hurt.

He clamped his hands on the exposed skin above her skirt. Smooth and warm under his touch, her body in­vited him to satiate himself in any way he wished. The hunter in him growled that she was his mate, his to do with as he wished. The civilized man barely managed to keep the instinctive reaction in check.

She shivered under his touch, a smooth whisper of soft skin against callused flesh. "That is odd."

"Odd?"

Those exotic eyes looked at him in accusation. "Why do your hands make parts of me burn that you don't touch?"