But now... Now he had no excuses. Now he had resources, he had experience, maturity. He had already lived an entire existence trying to prove that he was unsuitable to raise the child he’d had at far too young an age.
Now he was going to have to fashion a new existence. One where he became everything these children would need.
He would give them everything. Starting with a family. One with no room for Ashley, who had engineered their existence for the sole purpose of manipulating him. One that consisted of a mother and a father. Esther. She was the one. She was going to give birth to them. She was the one the public would consider theirs, and so, too, would they.
He was renewed in his purpose. As he stood there, his insides being torn to shreds piece by piece as he looked at the beautiful young woman whom he would never know, who shared his DNA but would always remain a stranger, his purpose was renewed.
He turned away from Samantha. He turned back to Esther. “Dance with me,” he said.
She blinked. “I don’t know how to dance.”
“Don’t tell me, dancing was forbidden?”
She laughed, but the sound was uncomfortable, and it made him feel guilty. “Yes,” she said. “Dancing was definitely something that was off the table. But...I did a lot of things I wasn’t supposed to.”
Something about that admission made his stomach tight, made his blood run hotter. “Is that right?”
“Yes,” she said, her cheeks turning pink. “But I didn’t dance. I might embarrass you.”
“You’re the most beautiful woman in the room. Even if you step all over my feet I will not be embarrassed to be seen with you.”
A warm flush of color spread up her cheeks, her dark eyes bright. She liked that. This attention, the compliments. He reached out, sliding his thumb over her cheekbone, tracing that wash of color that had appeared there. “Do you know that you’re beautiful?”
“It’s nothing that I ever gave much thought to. I mean, I’ve probably given it much more thought ever since I met you.”
He drew her close to him, guiding her to the dance floor, curving his arm around her waist and taking her hand in his. “In a good way, I hope?”
She looked down. “Meeting you has made me think a lot about people.”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
She moved easily along with him as he guided her in time with the music. But she kept her eyes downcast. “Just...people. Men, women.” She looked up then, something open and naked in her gaze. It held him fast, hit him square in the chest. “How different we are. What it means. Why it matters. My beauty never mattered until I wanted you to see it. And then, well, since then I’ve wondered about it. If I had it, and if I did, if it was the kind that you noticed. It’s a weird way to think about it, maybe. But I never spent much of my life thinking about how I looked except in the context that being vain about it was wrong.” She shook her head, her dark hair rippling over her shoulders. “That’s quite liberating in a way. If vanity is wrong, then you simply push thoughts of your appearance out of your mind. You don’t worry about it, and neither does anyone around you. But that isn’t the way the rest of the world works.”
“Sadly not.”
“I guess that’s another thing about how I was raised that maybe isn’t so bad. Because now I have worried about it. How my dresses fit, how they look, what you think. But then... Feeling beautiful isn’t so bad. And when you tell me that I am...”
“You like it,” he said.
“I do.”
His stomach tightened, and a smile curved his lips, a feeling of anticipation lancing him. He was very close to having her in the palm of his hand. To having all that glorious skin under his hands. “Vain creature,” he said, injecting a note of levity into his voice.
“Is that a bad thing?” she asked, her tone tentative.
“I find it somewhat charming. Though, I have to ask you now... What have you been thinking about me? You said you had been thinking about our differences.”
The undertone of pink in her cheeks turned scarlet. “That’s silly. Juvenile. You don’t want to hear about that.”
“Oh, I assure you I do.”
He examined the lush curve of her mouth, the dramatic high cheekbones and her dark lashes. She was the epitome of glorious feminine beauty, but there was an innocence there, and part of him wondered just how much.
“You’re just very...” Her lashes fluttered “...big. I’m small. I feel like you could overpower me if you wanted to, and yet, you never have. There’s something incredibly powerful about that. It feels dangerous to be near you sometimes, and yet I know you won’t hurt me. I don’t how to describe that. But sometimes the realization washes over me and it makes me shiver.”
He did something then that he could not quite fully reason out. He released his hold on her hand, sliding his fingertips up her arm and resting his thumb against the hollow at the base of her throat as he curved his fingers around the back of her neck. Demonstrating that power, perhaps.
He could feel her pulse beginning to throb faster beneath his touch, and he felt an answering pounding within his own body.
“What else?” he asked, keeping his tone soft and his touch firm.
“You’re very...hard.”
“Am I?” he asked, lowering his voice further.
She had no idea. He was getting harder by the second. This little flirtation, something he hadn’t quite anticipated enjoying, was adding fuel to the fire of his determination.
“Yes,” she said, doing something completely unexpected, taking her free hand and pressing it against his chest, sliding her palm down to his stomach. “Much harder than I am.”
“You seem like you would benefit from the chance to explore that.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “I don’t...”
He reached down, catching hold of her wrist and pressing her hand more firmly against his chest. “I want you.”
He wanted her. Needed her. And not just because he needed her to marry him, because he needed to ensure that she was bound to him. But because he needed something to blot out the unending pain that was coursing through him—had been coursing through him for sixteen years.
Her eyes widened, an innocent stain spreading across her cheeks. “Want me to...what?”
He pulled her even closer, pressing his lips against her ear. “I want you naked,” he said, feeling her shiver against him. “I want to lay you down in my bed and strip that dress from your body. Then I want to touch every inch of you. And then I want to taste you.”
He barely recognized his own voice. It was rough, hard. And he was somewhere past control.
Esther trembled, and he could feel her shaking her head. “No, you don’t.”
“Of course I do. I said you were beautiful. I meant it.”
“But that doesn’t mean...” Her cheeks looked like they were on fire beneath her golden skin. “There are plenty of other women you could have. You don’t have an obligation to me. We might be engaged publicly, but we both know that privately...”
“Of course I can be seen with no other woman but you,” he said, “but that is beside the point. You’re the one that I want. You, Esther Abbott. Not anyone else.”
“But I’m not... I don’t know... You can’t. Not me.”
The fire in him burned even hotter, and he was surprised by the strength of his conviction. Yes, it was all tangled up in the need to keep