“Why would you think what we’re building is going to fall apart?” He chose each word with equal the care she had chosen hers.
Soleil couldn’t tell from his tone what he was thinking. Sometimes Ice retreated behind a wall and she felt she couldn’t get to him. It wasn’t often that it happened but when it did, that was another thing she feared. Another reason to think he was withdrawing from her.
“You’re . . . extraordinary.” She sat up slowly and forced herself to face him.
He gave a slight shake of his head, as if in complete disbelief, and she nodded. “You are, Ice. You’re this amazing man. The way you treat me is unbelievable, like we’re living a fairy tale. The world isn’t really like that. I may have been an outsider looking in, but I watched people. Because I didn’t have a family, I watched others. They seemed to start with love or wild passion, but it always ended fast. Like they just stopped caring about each other. It was so sad.”
He took her hand and pressed it to his chest, right over his heart.
Before he could say anything, Soleil continued. “It was so sad, and they were strangers to me. You’ve gotten inside me in such a short time. If we’re together longer, you’re going to take me over until I can’t breathe without you. I know everyone would say it isn’t healthy to love that way, but I don’t know any other way. If I’m with you, I have to give you everything. It terrifies me to see ahead—”
“Stop, Soleil.” There was pure steel in his voice. “We’re not going to break up. I told you that when you signed on. We live by a code. You’re part of that now, and by marrying me, you consented to live by that code. We fix anything broken between us. You’re my first priority and I’m yours. I give you my everything, and I expect that same level of commitment from you.”
He sounded more like a dictator than a lover, and somehow that reassured her more than his words. He meant them. The air in her lungs that refused to release rushed out of her all at once. She watched his eyes grow even more crystal blue as he lifted her hand to his mouth and gently scraped his teeth back and forth over the pads of her fingers. It felt erotic. Sensual. Strangely, as if she belonged.
“Baby, you think I’m extraordinary, and I’m fuckin’ glad about that. I’m not. I’m not even a nice guy, but you go ahead and think that of me. Maybe it will make me have to live up to your standards and I’ll be a better man for it. To me, you’re the extraordinary one. You’re beautiful and funny and you want to please me. Believe me, that’s a new experience for me. You take care of me in ways I love. I think you’re sexy as hell, and when I ask you to do something, you do it with no hesitation. You’ve given me your trust and that’s priceless to me. Bottom line, we aren’t going to end this.”
Soleil wanted to believe him. She touched her fingers to those three perfect teardrops. She loved them. They belonged on him. “I don’t think I could ever love anyone else the way I do you, and it’s growing every single day we’re together.”
“You’re not alone in that. You aren’t, Soleil. What I feel for you is enormous. So much so that I can’t look at it sometimes. Talk about terror. Let’s just live. We’re good. Don’t worry about things that aren’t going to happen. This gets broken, we fix it. You get upset, don’t like something, you tell me and trust me to do the same. We don’t hold shit back from each other. That’s what fucks up relationships.”
She held his words tightly to herself. Whatever he felt for her terrified him, and she knew that emotion. She nodded. “I’ll try. Sometimes I can’t help what creeps into my mind. I’m used to being thrown away because I’m not good enough. That I was lucky I had money.”
He studied her face, seeing too much, and she looked away. He caught her chin and forced her to meet his furious gaze. “Who the fuck told you that, Soleil?”
She shook her head, feeling humiliated, just as she had when she was a child. “Ice . . .”
“No, I want to know because someone said it to you.”
She shrugged, trying to be casual, trying not to let him see how much it hurt. Or how much she let it color her life. “An aunt who took me in for a short while, and Winston said something similar.”
“Well, it’s bullshit. We haven’t touched your money and we’re not going to. I pay. I told you that. As for Winston, that little pissant is going to reap his rewards. We’ve got eyes on him and have almost since we came back from Vegas.”