Toxic Game (GhostWalkers #15) - Christine Feehan Page 0,106
for my looks?” he teased.
“Mmm,” she hedged, her dark eyes dancing at him. “I have to think about that for a minute or two.”
He waited until she rubbed her cheek on his chest and then he nuzzled the top of her head, strands of her hair catching in the stubble growing along his jaw. He liked that. Liked that they were in the same bed. He enjoyed being with her.
“The photograph of that tea set. You still have it?” He knew she did. He could tell the tea service represented family and love to her, things she wanted but had never had.
She stretched her arm out lazily, reaching with her fingertips to draw her phone to her. He watched her put her passcode in and then she found the photograph and showed it to him. Draden had never paid much attention to things like women’s china, or even the ritual of drinking tea, but he recognized a beautiful work of art when he saw it.
“I love that. I can see why they’d keep it in the family.”
She looked at the photograph and lovingly ran the pad of her finger over it. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
The wistfulness in her voice was his undoing. His chest hurt from the need to change her life. As far as he was concerned, she’d suffered enough just being in Whitney’s hands, let alone everything else that had happened in her life. He really did want to give her the world.
“It is, Shylah. I’ve never seen anything like it.” He brushed more kisses on the top of her head, deliberately picking up more strands of her hair so they’d tie the two of them together. “I love that it has peonies painted on it.”
“I do too,” she admitted with some reluctance and then she sent him a smile, her eyes bright again. “How many tea services have you actually seen?”
“You don’t know, it could be thousands. Don’t be judging me.” He gave her a little shake. “You wanted flowers in your wedding and a tradition of some kind. What else? All girls dream of dresses. You must have.”
She turned her face away from him. “Zara smuggled in a catalogue of wedding dresses once. We were oohing and ahhing, being silly, and trying to decide which would look the best on us when Whitney came in with his smirking supersoldiers.”
Draden didn’t like the change in her voice. “What happened?”
“They made a lot of fun of us and tore up the catalogue a page at a time. Zara was beaten and taken to the isolation cell. Whitney hated her so much. She was gentle and kind. She didn’t like hurting others. She really couldn’t take pain, and that made Whitney think she was weak. He inflicted pain on her as often as possible saying it would build up her tolerance, but of course it didn’t.”
“What it did was make her strong,” Draden said. “She was in China. Some of our team went in to rescue her. She’d been horribly tortured, but she didn’t break. Whitney was ridiculous to look down on that woman.”
Shylah looked at him, clearly horrified. “Horribly tortured? What does that mean?”
“I shouldn’t have used that word. She’s all right now, sweetheart. You saw her. Doesn’t she look happy and healthy? Believe me, Nonny fusses over her. She will you too when she meets you.” He said it without thinking because he wanted Nonny to get to know Shylah.
“I wish I could meet your Nonny. She sounds extraordinary.”
“She is. Wyatt is a lucky man having her. But we got off subject. We were talking about wedding gowns. Did you have a particular favorite before Whitney broke up the party?”
“I didn’t have a chance to look closely. I wanted something elegant but with color to it. Bellisia had assured me that there were some dresses that weren’t perfectly white.”
“Why didn’t you like white?”
She shrugged, and clearly sought to try to find the right words to tell him. “I loved the lace and buttons. The beautiful beads. Even the cut of the gowns. But I wanted something that said who I am, and I’ve got way too much blood on my hands to ever wear white.”
There it was, the real reason. He looked at her statement from all angles before responding. Denying it wasn’t even close to the truth, wouldn’t work. She wouldn’t believe him. She had killed, just as he had, in the service of their country, but her feelings were legitimate and he couldn’t ignore them.