Carys stopped at the top of the stairs. She had been telling herself all night and throughout the day that she was fine without Rune, that the hours since she’d last seen him hadn’t been some of the slowest, most empty hours of her life. All of those little lies burned to ashes as she gazed down at him now.
He turned her way and looked up at her on the stairs. His dark eyes seared her with their familiar heat, but his face remained unreadable.
She descended at a measured pace, even though her stomach felt as if a hundred butterflies had been turned loose inside it.
“What are you doing here?” The words blurted out of her, sounding more like an accusation than a greeting. “Shouldn’t you be back at La Notte, getting ready to open?”
He shook his head. “Jagger’s overseeing things tonight. I told him I had other plans.”
Carys stepped off the final stair, but stayed put at the bottom, hesitant around him now. She crossed her arms, mostly to keep herself from giving in to the urge to touch him. “What kind of plans?”
“A proper date.” The hint of a smile tugged at his sensual mouth. “At least, I hope that’s where I’m heading.”
“A proper date?” She exhaled a soft puff of air. “Because you want to, or because that’s what I said to you a few nights ago?”
“Both.” He closed the distance between them, making every nerve ending in her body tingle with awareness. With longing. “I’m trying to apologize to you, Carys. I’m trying to make it right between us.”
She couldn’t summon words. God, she could barely breathe for the sudden chaos of emotions stirring up inside her. She wanted to forgive him. She wanted to throw herself into his arms, never mind that they were standing in the middle of her place of work.
And they weren’t without an audience either. From the corner of her eye, she noted the handful of people who had gathered at the promenade railing overlooking the lobby. Andrea and a few other colleagues from their department stood there, watching with avid curiosity.
Carys lowered her voice to a private level. “I’m working, Rune. You should’ve called first.”
He tilted his head in nonchalant acknowledgment, but his dark blue eyes stayed locked on her. “I didn’t want to give you an easy way out. I’d hoped it would be harder for you to say no to my face.”
It was, and the last thing she wanted to do was refuse him now. But she couldn’t make it easy on him. He had hurt her, and one gallant gesture wasn’t going to fix things between them any more than a tumble in his bed would. Not that she expected she’d have the strength of will to refuse him that either.
“I can’t leave right now,” she murmured. “I have to finish what I was doing, and it could take a while—”
“I’ll wait.”
The determined look on his face didn’t leave room for argument. It also stole some of the indignation and stubbornness from her sails.
She shrugged. “Suit yourself, then. I’ll finish up, and if you’re still here when I’m done, maybe we’ll talk about a date.”
“I’ll be here, Carys.” He tenderly stroked her cheek with the back of his hand—in front of the museum staff watching above them. “I’ll wait as long as it takes.”
Heaven help her, but that simple touch nearly incinerated her on the spot. She had to force herself to step back, to move out of his reach before she did something stupid, like fling herself into his arms.
“Fine,” she murmured. “I’ll be down . . . in a while.”
He gave her a sober nod.
She pivoted away from him and marched back up the long flight of stairs, trying not to feel the weight of his eyes on her as she went.
Impossible, of course.
From the beginning, Rune had been a presence she felt in her blood, in all of her heightened senses. Her body had no qualms reacting to all that primal, masculine heat even if her heart and mind wanted to pretend otherwise.
He was still watching her as she reached the top step and as she breezed past the cluster of people who only now began to disperse.
“Andrea, please call on that lighting delivery for me, will you?”
“Of course.” The assistant nodded and hurried off to take care of it.
Carys forced herself to walk leisurely back to her office, despite the urge to run there and put all of her work aside for him. But she truly did have things to do.
And while she couldn’t deny her elation that he had come to take her on a date tonight, damn it, she was going to make him wait for it.
CHAPTER 17
She kept him waiting almost an hour.
Rune didn’t comment, and he had no room to complain, since he’d kept her waiting a lot longer for this date. He had pulled some strings with the owner of one of the most popular restaurants in Boston, one of La Notte’s regulars in the arena. The human had raked in a lot of winnings off Rune’s blood and sweat in the cage, so he’d been more than willing to help with a favor by giving them the best table the place had to offer.
Apparently, the owner wasn’t the only fight fan in the place. A trio of young men walked past the table twice since Rune and Carys had arrived. They poked each other, whispering in obvious recognition.
Rune ignored them. He ignored everything except the beautiful woman seated across from him.
She smiled in awe when the waiter brought her plate of seared scallops and some kind of brightly colored, artfully arranged vegetable accompaniment. Even Rune had to admit the dish looked and smelled delicious. Not that he would be partaking. Unlike Carys, the rest of the Breed could only consume human food in minute quantities.
“Why take me to dinner if you can’t enjoy it too?” She took a sip of her chilled wine and all he could do was stare at the delicate working of her throat.
“You’ll enjoy it, so that’s enjoyment enough for me.”
He watched her cut into a scallop, then spear it on the end of her fork. Her lips closed around it and a slow smile spread over her face. “It’s amazing.”
She moaned in quiet pleasure as she chewed, and his groin went tight under the drape of the white tablecloth. Fuck. Had he really thought he could watch this sensual woman eat a decadent meal without it making him think how hungry he was to put his mouth on her?
“I’m sorry I kept you waiting so long at the museum,” she said after a moment. “I’m working on an American painters exhibit and I really needed to get it wrapped up before I left.”
Rune smirked. “Here I thought you were punishing me for yesterday.”
“Maybe some of that too.” She glanced down and picked at some of the fancy vegetables with her fork. “Is this date your idea of an olive branch? Wine and dine me at one of the hardest restaurants to get into in the city?”
“I was hoping it could be a start.” He reached across the table to settle his hand over hers. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the club.”
She shook her head. “That wasn’t it, Rune—”
“I’m saying I don’t want to lose you, Carys.” He swore under his breath. “I’m saying I want to try again. Can we do that?”
When she didn’t answer right away, a coldness began to infiltrate his chest.
“You have to be willing to let me in.”
“You are in. You were in before I even knew what hit me.”
She smiled, but he could see that she was also wary of him now. Damn it, he could see that she was afraid to get hurt again.
Part of him wished she didn’t care so deeply for him. But a stronger part of him couldn’t deny how his blood roared through his veins, knowing that this extraordinary woman wanted to be with him when she could have her pick of any man she set her eyes on.
“I’m willing to start again, but I’ve got questions, Rune.” She exhaled a dry laugh. “I’m not even sure that’s actually your name.”
“It is,” he said.
“Your first, or your last?”
A tendon pulsed in his jaw. “My only name.”
“But not
always.” She stared at him, and he knew she saw the tell.
He forced himself to hold her sharp gaze, even when she seemed to look right through him. “No, not always. But it’s the only name I’ve used for a very long time.”
She didn’t say anything. Her silence measured him, and he knew he owed her more than that.
“I was given a different name at birth, but when I left my father’s Darkhaven, I left behind everything he gave me.” And he would never utter that man’s name again, unless it was to curse the bastard to hell as he took his hideous life. “My name is, and will always be, Rune.”
Tenderness softened Carys’s gaze as she listened to him. She sat very still, compassion written across her face. “It must’ve been difficult, being on your own at such a young age.”
A young age? He’d been a grown man by the time he had finally cut ties with his past, not a child. He frowned, unsure what to say. Not quite certain where she was going.
“I’ve heard a bit about your background from the other fighters, from things I’ve picked up here and there. You know, how you grew up on the streets here in Boston, all alone. Doing whatever you had to in order to survive. It couldn’t have been easy for you.”
Rune felt himself nodding absently. He’d told a lot of different stories about his past over the years, some of them more or less true. But leave it to him to get tangled up in one of those tales with a woman gifted with photographic memory.
“I never expected life to be easy,” he murmured, and that much was the truth.
As he spoke, the group of guys from before circled back and began to approach the table.
The one in the lead awkwardly cleared his throat. Rune ordinarily might have scattered them with a glower, but given the uncomfortable path of his conversation with Carys now, he was actually grateful for the interruption.
When he glanced their way, the three young men gave him eager looks. “Excuse us, uh . . . We just wanted to say, uh, really great match between you and Jagger the other night.”
Another nodded enthusiastically. “You were awesome, man.”
Rune smiled blandly and murmured his thanks, but they weren’t leaving. “We know you’re kinda busy here, but, uh . . . could we maybe get a picture with you real quick?”
Carys grinned over the rim of her wine glass as Rune nodded and waited for the men to crowd in with him and snap the photo. He made sure to turn his head at the last moment, a subtle dodge of the camera’s eye.
Or not so subtle.
Carys’s knowing stare held his gaze as the fans finally moved on. “You don’t like the attention, do you?”
He grunted. In fact, he hated the attention. “I didn’t get into fighting for the fame. Not for the money either.”
“Then why did you?”
A dozen different answers rushed to the tip of his tongue, every one of them a lie. Shit he’d casually tossed out to deflect interest or get rid of anyone who started digging around in his past.
But Carys wasn’t just anyone. He hadn’t set out to deceive her, no more than he wanted to now.
“First time I ever took a real punch, I was eight years old. My mother had died that spring. I didn’t take it well. Not long after, my father started bringing me to the pit. To toughen me up, he’d said. To teach me how to be a man.”
Just speaking the words brought the memories back in vivid clarity. The cold stone of the old circular fighting pit. The soft dirt floor beneath his small, bare feet.
The sudden, unexpected crash of an adult Breed male’s fist connecting with his child-sized jaw.
He could still smell his own blood, then the sharp, pungent stench of his own vomit as the pain had rocketed through him and turned his stomach inside out. He could hear his father’s laughter above him, followed by the stern command for him to get up on his feet and take the next blow like a man, not a whimpering little girl.
“I learned quickly under the old man’s training. Pain didn’t frighten me. My gift made me impervious to it. In the beginning, that’s how I withstood it. After a while, I didn’t need to rely on that ability. Injury could slow me down, but it didn’t stop me. I became fearless, relentless. Merciless. By the time I was ten, I was handing my adult Breed cousins and uncles their asses in the pit. That’s about when my father decided to make things interesting. He started bringing in opponents from outside to fight me in the pit. A few of them came willingly. Stupidly. Others weren’t so willing. My father’s message to me before each match was plain enough: Fight to the death. He didn’t care who came out on top.”
Carys had stopped eating now. She’d stopped moving at all, her gaze riveted on him with a look hovering somewhere between horror and heartbreak. “Rune . . . my God.”
“I fought to stay alive,” he said, pushing on, before her softness made him retreat behind the lies and remoteness that had long been his shield. “I got brutally good. Lethally good. I survived. Then, eventually, I left. And I never looked back.”
Her brows knit, pain swimming in her gaze. “Wasn’t there anyone who was there for you during all that time?”
“To do what? Save me?”
“Yes. Or, I don’t know,” she murmured. “To show you some kindness. To give you some kind of hope, or . . .”
He shrugged, about to deny there was. But the unbidden image of an impish face framed in pale blond hair sprang into his mind, refusing to let him erase her with a lie. A face that still haunted his memories more than he cared to admit. “There was a little girl. My father and his second mate adopted her many years after my mother had died. She was . . . sweet. She was the only innocent thing in that place.”
“What was her name?”
“Kitty.” He shook his head on a low curse. “She didn’t know about the pit. And I’d have killed anyone who brought her down there to see that, to see the monster I had become.”
“What happened to her?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and it was hard to keep the regret from his voice. “I left in the middle of the night. I didn’t tell her I was going, or that I would never be back.”
He didn’t want to be forced to explain it to her. Or shatter her innocence by letting her see the monster he’d become. So, he’d simply gone.
“I regret the way I abandoned her like that,” he murmured quietly. “She deserved better. She must’ve hated me for abandoning her the way I did. For a long time afterward, I wondered if I should’ve gone back for her, or taken her with me. Not that I could’ve provided a better life for a child. Hell, in those early years, I hardly provided for myself. But maybe I should’ve tried.”
Carys was studying him in silence now. She reached out to lace her slender fingers through his larger ones, then drew his hand to her and pressed her lips gently against his knuckles. A kiss to each one, whether to heal or absolve him, he wasn’t sure.
He didn’t tell her how those early years in his father’s fighting pit had nearly devoured every scrap of his humanity. He didn’t tell her how he’d hardened himself to the violence, until it became just another facet of his life. Just another condition of his existence.
He didn’t tell her how he struggled, even to this day, to imagine being anything but what his father had conditioned him so ruthlessly to become.
He didn’t have to tell Carys any of that. Her tender gaze said she could see it all without the words.
Rune stroked the pad of his thumb over her soft skin. He intended to keep his voice low, private, in the middle of the crowded restaurant. But when he spoke his words came out clipped, almost strangled. “My past is behind me, Carys. I don’t talk about it. Not to anyone. Not until you. I can’t change what I’ve done or who I am. There’s blood on my hands that won’t ever wash clean.”
She nodded faintly, blinking hard. “It’s okay, Rune. I understand.”
No, she didn’t. Not fully. And for now, that was how he preferred it. He’d already seen the sympathy in her eyes tonight. He didn’t think he could bear to see her pity.
The waiter came by in the heavy silence that followed, asking Carys if her meal was to her liking. She’d only eaten half of it, and since her brief glimpse into Rune’s past, she’d barely picked at the dish.
“Dessert, perhaps?” the waiter asked hopefully. “We have an incredible strawberry flambé prepared tableside this evening.”
Carys shook her head. “No, thank you. Everything was delicious, but I’m finished.”
“The check, please,” Rune said. After the human scurried off, he tightened his grasp on Carys’s fingers and leaned forward. “I have something sweeter and hotter in mind for my dessert. What do you say we get out of here?”
She smiled, tenderness and compassion backlit by a flicker of desire. “Yeah. Take me out of here, Rune.”
CHAPTER 18
They hailed a taxi and Rune gave the driver the penthouse address. Carys hadn’t told him that’s where she wanted to go, but he seemed to understand as well as she did that the club and the weight of what it represented to Rune would not be allowed to invade any more of their time tonight.
She was still trying to process everything he’d told her. His past, his childhood, the trauma he’d been subjected to by the father who was supposed to love him. Her heart broke for the boy who’d endured that kind of hellish upbringing, and for the strong, complicated man who still carried the wounds, even if he did so stoically, unbroken from everything that had been done to him.
His remoteness made sense to her now. His walls were steep for good reason, yet he’d allowed her to peer through a tiny crack tonight. She saw darkness and pain on the other side of Rune’s walls, and a solitude that would have wrecked anyone weaker than him.
I survived, he’d said. And, yes, that much was true. But would he ever be able to leave his past behind when he couldn’t let go of the cage that still confined him?
Carys knew the answer to that, and as she walked out of the elevator on the top floor of the apartment building with him, she hoped that, in time, Rune would see it too. Either way, she intended to be at his side. But tonight, there would be no more talk of his past or the club.