Free True Colors by Thea Harrison Page B

be welcomed, but he wasn’t sure he deserved it.
    She had fled her bedroom and her nightmare with a look of surprised horror. But he knew the nightmare she’d had. That nightmare was an old acquaintance of his. The details might change, along with the faces of the victims, but the story remained the same. It was a tale of a fire so dark it burned the soul black.
    He was that nightmare for some people.
    She stroked his hair. “Gideon?”
    Christ, now he was responsible for putting that uncertainty in her voice, right at the time when she should be drenched in the knowledge of how lovely, how desirable he found her. He struggled to tell her something, anything, to let her know it could never be anything wrong with her. It was all about what was wrong with him.
    He whispered, “I want to be a good man.”
    Her hands stilled. Then she brought them under his jaw to coax his head up. She searched his expression, her beautiful gaze troubled. “Why would you think you’re not a good man?” she asked in a gentle voice.
    “I’ve spent almost a hundred years in the army,” he said, his voice strangled. “I’ve seen things. I’ve done things you can’t imagine. I don’t ever want you to be able to imagine them. You deserve someone so much better than me, someone finer who knows how to live your life.”
    “How do you know you’re not that man?” she asked. She reached up to kiss him, the delicate curve of her lips caressing his. “The heart has its reasons, remember?”
    A tremor ran through his body. “You don’t know, you don’t understand.”
    “You’re right, I don’t,” she told him.
     
    Alice stroked his face and passed a hand down the broad expanse of his back, trying to soothe him. This was the same distress that shook through him earlier at the dining table. It was hard to watch him suffer, especially when she wasn’t sure he realized how much he was hurting. “I can’t possibly understand.”
    “I chose it,” he said. “I thrived in the army. I was good at it.”
    He would have been. She could see it. Strong, responsible, stable, reliable as the earth. He would have been the first in battle and the last to pull out, and the need for all of that would have been so self-evident to him, he never would have seen it as sacrifice. True nobility never recognized itself.
    She might have acknowledged him as her mate yesterday, but it was in that moment that she fell in love with him.
    She said, “I am a person of faith, Gideon. It got rocked a little yesterday, but it is back on solid ground now. I do not believe that we would be mates without also being right for each other. The fates or the gods, or whomever it was that created the Wyr to be what we are, would not have been so cruel.”
    He muttered, “I don’t have your faith.   Not after all the atrocities and ugliness I’ve seen. Wickedness and inequities exist; nightmares are real. And the gods allow all of it.”   He met her gaze.   “But I do know one thing—you’re the purest gift I’ve ever been given, and I’ll do anything to keep you safe and be worthy of you.” He closed his eyes and turned his face into her palm.
    She bit her lip. She could almost see the barrier that surrounded him. He wanted and needed to be with her, but somehow he was still closed off, and she knew she had not quite gotten through to him, not all the way, not yet.
    Maybe it would just take time to let the reality of what had happened to them sink in. But maybe…
    “You’ve got to remember, we met when I was having a really off day,” she told him. “Because most of the time I’m actually a bit of a shit, too.”
    His startled gaze snapped up to hers, twin aquamarines frozen in the firelight. She flicked a finger at his nose and rolled her hips at him.
    The corners of his sexy mouth began to curl up. He came on top of her more fully, and she parted her legs, knees bent to cradle him with her whole body. It was so good to feel him grip her by one thigh