Midnight Eyes by Brophy, Sarah (well read books .TXT) 📕

up to this strange new experience. Never before had she stood so close to a man that she could feel the ridges of muscles beneath the soft spun wool of his tunic.

So Robert had come to her dressed as a suitor after all, with no metal to hide behind. She wasn’t surrounded by the acrid smell of sweat-soaked metal; instead her senses were clouded with sandalwood, fresh air and another strange element that she couldn’t name, something unique to this man himself.

It was intoxicating, just as was the warmth radiating from his large body. For the first time since she had been exiled to this cold north, she felt a warmth that actually seeped into her bones, warming her to the core. Her limbs felt like they were on fire, but it was a strange fire that excited rather than hurt. It rushed along her nerve endings, causing sensations she didn’t understand, but she already knew she never wanted them to end.

It was a moment that seemed to both last forever and yet to end far too soon.

Robert struggled with himself. Every fiber of his body screamed the rightness of this near-embrace. She fit against him like she had been made to rest there. It seemed against nature to let go. He longed to pull her closer; longed to raise a hand along the soft, smooth skin of her throat and cup her face; longed to lower his head…

He tried not to think such things. Down that path lay madness. He closed his eyes for a second, but quickly opened them again. He didn’t want to lose one moment of this. He stared deep into her eyes, and almost lost control altogether.

Her pale translucent skin was flushed, and her lips parted to reveal two rows of perfect white teeth. It was as if she could hear his lurid thoughts and was responding with a desire that equaled his own. He tried to read an invitation, a rejection or anything to stop this torment of indecision.

Her eyes didn’t quite meet his.

He wanted to howl to the moon. He wanted to kiss her till they both lost their senses. He wanted. He had never understood want until this moment. He pulled her closer for a fraction of a second. Then he let her go and stepped back, holding his hands ruthlessly to his sides.

The end was cold, abrupt and complete.

For a second she couldn’t work out where she was on her mental map. She seemed to float a little above the ground, her carefully crafted realities dissolving around her in the heat of this man. Without the warmth of his body she seemed to have no existence.

She floated for a second but quickly pulled herself back together. She shouldn’t stand stunned before this man like some lovesick mooncalf. She wouldn’t show him such weakness. Unfortunately, despite her reluctance to show weakness, her knees no longer seemed strong enough to support her.

“Can you please direct me to my seat?” If her voice broke a little, she could always blame it on the near collision, she decided desperately.

“Sorry?” Robert asked, bewildered both by her apparent calm in the face of his own suddenly burning needs and the question itself.

Imogen could feel the color leave her face. It seemed like the ultimate humiliation.

“Don’t worry,” she snapped out. “I’ll find it myself.” She stretched out her hands, groping for a familiar object. She could have cried with relief when she felt the back of his chair.

She moved her hand over the still-warm fabric and reached out to where she should have been able to grab the next chair. She could barely suppress the urge to stamp her feet. He had moved the chair. That was what had caused the chaos in the first place. She stood undecided. The two options before her were both equally unattractive. She either stood till the wretched man left, or she was going to have to crawl to her seat.

Robert stared, stunned by the dawning understanding.

“You can’t see?” he muttered, unable to hide his shock.

She let go of the chair and straightened her spine. The simple words belied all the pain of the reality.

Robert was lost for words. He had braced himself for ugliness, had been prepared for it, even—but this, this was somehow more unjust. A perfection that couldn’t even glance into a mirror to see itself?

His silence was beginning to grate along her nerves.

“Say something,” she said through gritted teeth.

“My lady, I don’t know what to say.”

She made a frustrated gurgle in the back of her throat and threw up her hands.

“By all that’s holy, you can’t be that shocked. You didn’t think I was called Lady Deformed on a whim did you? You bargained for damaged goods knowingly.”

“I asked you not to use that insult,” he said carefully.

For a second her mouth fell open. “You really meant it? Why ever not? That is how I’m known the length and breadth of the country. I find it strangely apt and I can’t see why I alone should stop using it.”

“I care not about the rest of the people on this island, only my small corner of it, and in that corner I expect never to hear it again. Am I understood?”

“No. It’s nonsense. And I won’t be dictated to this way.”

“I’m your husband, and to a larger extent, my word is your law.”

“You’re not my husband yet,” she muttered resentfully.

“Why will everyone keep reminding me of that small, inconsequential fact?” he murmured enigmatically.

“Because, fact it is.”

“Well, not for much longer. I shall send word to the priest this night and we will be married by sunrise.”

“We are still to be married?” she asked in a small voice, not entirely sure what answer she feared hearing the most. Inside her all was confusion, but the one thing she seemed to know for sure was that she was glad Robert hadn’t fled when he had found out about the first of her dark secrets.

He smiled a little and stepped closer. He