"Every night, Ian," she countered, unwilling to let him look away.

The desperate fight left his eyes to be replaced with something that looked like joy. Grinning like a boy, he tumbled her over, pouncing with playful fervor. "Glad we have that settled," he said as she laughed breathlessly. His grin widened and, without warning, he flipped her onto her stomach, intent on a different play. Her hair fell around her face, and she heard the sound of his sudden, ragged intake of breath. Everything in her froze. Her back was to him.

His growl cut into her. "What the f.u.c.k?"

Humiliation washed over her in a wave of sour sickness, and she scrambled to get up, get away. But he was too fast for her. His hand lashed out, s.n.a.t.c.hing up her wrist, his powerful thighs pinning her hips, holding her facedown on the bed.

"What the h.e.l.l is this?"

That position, that exposure. She could not bear it. Rage surged like hot fire, and she bucked.

"No," she screamed. "Do not!" Her legs thrashed against the bed, tangling in the sheets. With one arm she swung out, sending a glancing blow off his jaw. "You will not touch me."

"Daisy!" Hands clasped her arms. She reared, her head smashing against his nose. "Oof! Christ. Daisy, stop."

She would not be held down again. She would not. A body fell upon her. No!

"Daisy-girl," his voice crooned. "Calm yourself, la.s.s."

Not his voice. But Ian's. Ian's voice. Something in her stilled. Ian's body on top of her. Not pressing but holding, his strong arms a coc.o.o.n.

"That's it, luv." Lips brushed against her hot cheek. "It's me. Only me." He kissed the corner of her eye, and she realized that tears leaked from them. "It's all right. You're safe."

The fight left her on a sob.

Ian's strong body trembled, and she knew it was from rage held in tight check. Rage at seeing the network of red slashes along her lower back. One moment of relaxing her guard and he had seen. He rested his head next to hers on the bed, close enough for her to see his expression. Daisy closed her eyes against it.

"Ah, my sweet, la.s.s," he said brokenly. "What did that b.a.s.t.a.r.d do to you?"

Shame was a hot tar coating her insides, clogging her throat. "I can't."

His hand smoothed down her forearm. "You can. Haven't you realized yet? I am yours, whether you will it or no."

She sobbed again but took a quelling breath, squeezing her eyes shut to stop the tears running down. "He found out I wasn't a virgin," she said at last.

Dark memories filled her mind. The disgust she'd felt in having to bed Craigmore on their wedding night. The sick feeling of him on top of her. Craigmore's ugly face twisted into something hideous and profane as he raised his hand high and smacked her.

She licked her lips. "There was a riding crop."

Ah, the pain. She could remember it still. The way he'd ripped her gown from her, somehow pinning her down as he unleashed his fury upon her back. It had taken a week to heal. And the scars stayed. A red crisscross to forever mar her lower back. She supposed she ought to be thankful they weren't raised.

"Did he..." His breath caught. "Did he-"

"No." She opened her eyes to find him looking at her with compa.s.sion. It hurt almost as much as the telling. "He'd already had me, hadn't he?" A bitter laugh left her. "He never touched me again. He called me the worst sort of filth. *A wh.o.r.e whose foul c.u.n.t was poison to a man's sword.' "

"Filthy, f.u.c.king b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Ian hissed, his teeth clenching.

Her lips twisted. "That he was. But, in truth, he only said what society believes."

"No-"

"Yes," she said. "A true lady remains a virgin for her husband. She doesn't go off bedding the stable lad. Or the tailor's son." She lowered her lids. "He might have been the vessel, but I was the source of my shame."

Ian's forehead fell lightly against hers. "Christ, that b.a.s.t.a.r.d twisted your mind." When she opened her mouth to protest, he kissed it gently. "That rotten piece of filth hurt you because he was a coward and a b.l.o.o.d.y hypocrite."

Daisy swallowed hard. "I thought I was over it. But then you saw my back, and..." She closed her eyes. "I feel such shame. For letting him do that to me. For giving him cause to do it in the first place."

"Daisy-girl."

"And nothing can change it," she hurried on. "I'll always carry these marks. The ugliness of it. I will always be ugly because of it."

He moved then, his hand brushing away the ma.s.s of her hair cascading down her back.

"No," she said, twisting to move her back from view. "Don't..."

"Yes." His lips found a mark and pressed there. "You are the most beautiful woman..." He kissed his way along a red path. "... I have ever laid eyes upon."

"Ridiculous-"

He raised his head to spear her with a glance. "Ever."

A warm hand cupped her bottom and gave it a squeeze. "Ah, Daisy-girl, when you look at me with those eyes, even if they're scowling at me from over your shoulder as they are now..." He smiled. "You light me up."

She clung to the soft bedding. She could not take his kindness, didn't know how. She wanted to run away, but he wouldn't let her. Firm but gentle hands held her as soft kisses a.s.saulted her senses. He slid over her, his body a weight that anch.o.r.ed. So often she felt as if she might float away in the darkest part of the night and not a soul would be there to see her go.

"Ian." Tears clogged her throat. She wanted to say so much more, but didn't know how to say the words-she'd never said them to anyone.

He traced the groove of her spine with his lips as if he could erase old hurts. "I wouldn't take away a single scar for all the world, if it meant changing the woman you are today. I-"

She spun round and silenced him with a kiss. He kissed her back, soft yet fierce kisses that punctuated his former words. Her throat ached as she wrapped her arms around his neck. "It might never fully go away, Ian." She searched his face for any sign of wariness. "These old fears. As much as I try to change, I might fall back into darkness now and then."

Gently, he threaded his hand through her curls, spreading them about her. "We are all imperfect creatures, love. I don't want perfect. I just want you."

Pressed against his lean body and wrapped within the security of his arms, Daisy felt that lost part of her self finally return and slip into place. She might have wept in grat.i.tude. "Foolish man... Lovely, foolish..." But he was her fool, and so she kissed him and then smoothed a lock of his hair back from his brow and studied his face, the sharp angles and sweeping planes that held both strength and vulnerability. "I could love you, you know."

A look of bemus.e.m.e.nt clouded his eyes, as if he wanted to believe her but couldn't, and Daisy's heart squeezed in response. She saw him reach for the careless expression he often wore, but he failed, and his voice came out rough when he spoke. "I could love you, too."

Chapter Thirty-three.

Sometime in the night, Ian awoke with a suddenness that had him lurching upward. Panting as though he'd run miles, he stared unseeing in the darkness. His heart pounded painfully within his chest, and for a moment, he couldn't place where he was. Beside him, a feminine form stirred and a soft hand smoothed his bare thigh. Something in him eased. Daisy.

Sweat rolled down his temple as he gazed down at her. Sweet, luscious Daisy. At the sight of her, need, longing, and tenderness rolled within his heart with such force that he wanted nothing more than to gather her up and squeeze her tight.

The wolf inside him didn't brood-he lived in the now. And the wolf was clamoring for Ian to make Daisy his in all ways. But the man in him was lost in the past.

I will never be like you, forced to roam this world alone. A thing not of nature but of fearsome myth. Pain sliced through him at the remembered words. Christ. His stomach pitched.

Ian swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He was going to be ill. Grabbing his dressing robe where it lay slung over a chair, he wrenched it on as he fled. His breath came in harder pants, his heart going like a metronome.

Running blindly now, he found himself in the garden, the gra.s.s wet and cool beneath his feet. Moonlight warmed his skin. His kind felt the moon's rays as humans felt the sun's. Even with the warmth and the power of the moonlight, his insides were ice cold. He fell to his knees but still he felt as though he were falling. Falling without a thing to cling to. b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. He was done in.

His breath came out in a wheeze as his fingers dug into the moist, fragrant earth. He wanted to be happy. He wanted it with every fiber of his being. You know as I do that my very existence is wrong. Every breath I take is an exercise in selfishness. I will not wait out my fate.

Ian's arms buckled. Why? Why must he think of Maccon now? But Ian knew. And he ground his teeth so he wouldn't shout. It didn't help. Black spots dotted before his eyes as he struggled for air.

Footsteps sounded behind him, and he whirled around, landing on his a.s.s. Christ, he hadn't even noticed her approaching.

Daisy stopped short at his movement. Her unbound hair undulated and coiled down to her waist. Moonlight caught the golden strands and turned them silver. Her eyes, indigo in the night, were wide and troubled. Ian's fists curled tighter. He couldn't say a word, find a jest to hide behind.

"You are hurting," she said.

His chest heaved, the feeling of falling making him dizzy.

Her bare feet sank into the gra.s.s as she drew near. Closer, and he shook with the need to run. But she was upon him, her body emanating heat. He rose upon his knees as she stopped before him. Without a word, she wrapped her arms about him and drew him close. He shuddered and clutched the skirts of her dressing gown.

"Ian," she murmured, "hold onto me."

The acceptance in her voice choked him. His claws snagged on the satin as he clung tighter.

"I had a son." The confession broke from him without thought. Acid burned in his throat. "Maccon."

Her fingers sifted through his hair.

"He was perfect. A good lad." The weight on his chest crushed into him, and the words came out hard. "Brooding at times, but a smart lad." Ian's throat worked. "I was so proud."

"Tell me, love," she whispered.

"Una. She was human. We met before I had reached maturity. She told me that our differences wouldn't matter."

Daisy continued to hold him and keep him steady while his heart raced and his chest ached.

"Then I became lycan. I did not age, and she did." He closed his eyes and pressed his face into the safety of Daisy's bosom. Her heartbeat strong and true. "It did not matter to me. I loved her still. But Una could not stand it. Nor could she stand the wolf within me.

"And Maccon. She made him her confidant, told him that his life would be an endless misery, that he would become an animal. Stupid, b.l.o.o.d.y Una." A growl of rage rumbled in his chest. He hated Una in the end. "Maccon was thirty, so close to the change. There are signs when the time approaches. He tried to enjoy life, women, but he began to withdraw. And then he... s.h.i.t..."

Ian could not breath. "He f.u.c.king killed himself... Christ..." His voice was too high, too thin.

Daisy's arms held him tight, so tight he could not fall through the black hole that opened up beneath him when he thought of Maccon. Maccon who had flung himself off the high tower of their ancestral keep in Scotland. Maccon's head crushed on the pavers, blood pooling around him. Maccon's body twisted and broken.

"Ian. Oh, Ian." She rocked him gently.

"He left a note. Said he would not turn into me. Wouldn't become a thing destined to be alone. Trapped in a body that would not die."

And everything in Ian's world had stopped. He would no longer be a lycan. He would ignore that side of himself. Until now.

"Una faded away after that." And cursed him with each dying breath she took. He hadn't found it in himself to grieve her loss until years afterward.

"A broken heart," Daisy whispered, and then kissed the top of his head. "Ian, love."

"G.o.d, I am a hypocrite," he said. "I tell you to let go of the past when I cannot release mine."

Her hand was in his hair, stroking, petting. "Perhaps there are some things we can't let go of, but simply accept as over."

He would. If she was his future, he would accept the past for her.

She held him until he could breathe properly, and the black thing that threatened to take him slipped back into the shadows. Ian's grip upon her skirts eased, and his hands slid to her hips. "He did not want to become like me. He didn't want to be a monster." When he looked up at her, she touched his cheek tenderly.

"You are not a monster, but a man." Her fingers spread, bracketing his jaw. "The best man I've ever known."

Ah, but she killed him. She had cut out his heart and taken it for her own.

"I want to marry you." He winced, cursing himself for letting the words spill out.

Daisy's hand fell away. "What?"

He wouldn't let her go. "It's happening again, and I can't seem to fight it. I want to be with you. Take you to the theater, to parties and b.a.l.l.s. I don't want the world to a.s.sume you are my mistress because you deserve to be a wife. A wife who can hold her head up high when out in public. My wife. And it tears into my soul because I should not want it. I should let you go."

He leaned into her. She smelled of cool silk and warm roses. She smelled of home. "I am afraid, aye? b.l.o.o.d.y terrified of history repeating itself." He wrapped his arms about her waist and held on tightly. "But I want you more. Do you understand? I feel free when I am with you. Happy. You are the gift I never saw coming."

She was quiet, and he knew it would end now. But a man could ignore his fate for only so long. Soft hands touched his cheeks, saving him from further humiliation. She tilted his head back, and he made himself look at her.

"Then have me," she said, throwing him off kilter.

He blinked up at her, not understanding. "Have you not heard a word I said, la.s.s?"

Her cheeks trembled as she smiled, a weak smile but there, shining in the moonlight. A rustling sounded around them, fingers of gra.s.s brushed his bare legs as they began to lengthen. "We've both lived in fear for so long, denying what we are to the world, to ourselves. And what good has come of it? I don't want to live that way anymore, Ian."

Her finger traced his ear. "I am afraid, too," she said. "Afraid that when the time comes, I will not be any different than Una."

"You are already different than Una. You are... you." Brave, proud. His other half.

Fragrance bloomed as the gra.s.s grew lush and wild flowers burst free beneath the moon's bright glow. It was magic perhaps, or all in his mind. He did not care. Not in this moment when his hope had finally returned. His only care was for her.

Daisy's thumb traced his bottom lip, and he caught it up as she let go of a sigh. "But I'll have you," she whispered. Joy surged through his chest like wildfire. "Because I too want you more than I am afraid."

He pulled her down into his lap, and she laughed a bit as he peppered her face with kisses.

"Daisy." He tumbled them down onto the dewy gra.s.s, now thick with flowers, and rolled on his back to protect her even as his hands slipped into her gown. She made an appreciative noise. Greedy thing that she was, she ripped his robe open and ran her hands over his chest. His beast preened right along with him. A sigh escaped her when he pulled her close, laying them skin to skin.

She raked her fingers through his hair. "This is madness, Ian. You know that, don't you?" But her gaze was without fear.