Dangerous Beauty: Part Four: Beautifully Broken (34 page)

Kyle laughed when Reanna reached up, grabbed his face, and pulled him down, slamming her mouth to his.

God she adored this man.

Was there a word for when one
more
than loved another person?

Don’t get him wrong, love was a big word in and of itself, and for a long time Kyle ran away from it. But now that he was in the living room of his luxury cabin, sitting on the floor, and leaning against the front of the large, plush, brown couch; he gazed at the stunning love of his life as she lay naked, in front of the fireplace, on a very comfortable white, shaggy carpet, thinking that love just didn’t seem like enough to describe how he felt for her. He couldn’t even describe what she meant to him because she meant too much.

“No, Kyle,” Reanna laughed, pulling the blanket up and wrapping it around her body as she scooted back to the couch and climbed onto his lap, straddling him. “I don’t think there is.”

Kyle smiled.

Leaning forward, he kissed the dimple on her right cheek. “Well there should be,” he murmured against her skin.

She turned her face, catching his lips in a lingering kiss, and moaning when she pulled back a bit. “Why?” she whispered. “Because you
more than love
me?”

“
Mmmhmm
,” he hummed in response, prolonging the kiss. He lightly nipped her lip, making her pull back from him with a soft chuckle.

“I more than love you, too, Kyle Valente.” After popping one last kiss on his lips, she rested her head on his shoulder.

Adjusting slightly, Kyle leaned back a bit in effort to make the position more comfortable for her, then once he was settled, he embraced her, wrapping his arms tightly around her.

So many emotions. All day, from the moment he woke up this morning in her bed, to this moment, when he knew without a doubt that he loved Reanna Pierce far too much to not be terrified out of his mind …

“What are you thinking about?” He heard her ask, her arms tightening around him.

That was another thing. Talking, questions, sharing things that left him vulnerable. All things that he hated doing … until Reanna. She opened him up more than anyone ever had in his entire life. He trusted her too much to feel comfortable with it, and it left him feeling … naked.

Why was he thinking like this?

“I think I’m afraid,” he answered her honestly.

Only because his thoughts were beginning to worry him. They reminded him of a different time in his life, a darker time, and he feared that if he allowed them to intimidate him, then he’d end up doing something to fuck up his new relationship.

Reanna didn’t sit up; she didn’t even look up. She actually seemed to remain … calm despite his sudden confession. Her finger moved over his chest as she traced the lines of his scars. Kyle had actually relaxed enough to close his eyes for a moment.

Her touch. It calmed the shit out of him every time. For so long, Kyle had never felt a connection like this with anyone. Such touching caused him physical pain, he hated it. The only person who had ever come remotely close to making him feel comfortable with closeness had been Carter, and even with her, he never thought to let her touch his scars. But Reanna was … different. And he still didn’t understand how she did it. It was like she ripped open his chest, took his heart, and just ran with it. It hurt, loving her so much, mostly because he was too fucked up to feel this way about anyone.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Yes
, he answered in his head. Because he did. He actually wanted to talk about it with her. He longed to feel that relief, the peace which poured itself over him every time he told Reanna the truth. Every time he opened up to her she always knew what to say to just … calm him the fuck down. It was what she had done when he’d first told her about his dreams, what she’d done only a couple of hours ago after he’d told her how he felt and expected a fight. She’d surprised him, calmed his nerves, and managed to make him fall even deeper.

Clearing his throat, he ran his hand over his face. His stomach was doing flips; he didn’t really want to say anything, but Reanna loved the truth. She preferred it, required it, and he wanted to be honest with her. “I guess …” he began, finding comfort in running his fingers over a long lock of her curls. “I guess I’m still thinking the way I was before I lost my battle of staying away from you.”

“And how’s that?”

“That you deserve more. That I love you too much. That I’ll fuck things up, make you hate me, make you want to leave me.” He closed his eyes for a moment, finding just the thought of that happening unsettling. “And that I’m not capable of loving you the way you deserve to be loved.”

This time, she did sit up, and her brown eyes locked to his. “Do you see me? Do you see what I’m doing right now?”

Kyle frowned, giving a slight shrug of his shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“I mean what am I doing right now?” she asked again, a smile in her eyes.

Kyle shook his head. “I don’t understand the question, colomba.”

“What am I doing, Kyle?” she laughed.

“I don’t know, Reanna,” he said, a bit frustrated. “Staring at me?”

She brought her hands up to cup his face. “I’m looking you in the eyes, honey. I’m talking to you.”

Kyle chuckled, confused. “Okay …”

She kissed his lips before releasing his face. “Those are two things I can’t stomach doing … ever.”

His brows rose with interest at her words. He hadn’t been expecting that response. Now he wanted to hear more.

Thankfully, his sweet colomba was in the mood to talk tonight.

“I’ve never been able to stand it, looking into someone’s eyes for too long.” She shrugged. “I always believed the saying ‘a person’s eyes are windows to their souls’. They open a person up, make them easy to read. So at a young age I trained myself to keep my eyes low, and my mouth shut.”

“Why?” Kyle asked. “I’ve always seen you as an open book. Your eyes,” he smiled slightly, “they tell me what you’re feeling.”

She nodded. “And I used to hate that about you.”

Kyle snapped back at her words, a frown falling over his face. “What?”

Reanna laughed, nodding her head again. “I did. I really did hate you for it.” She bit her lip as if thinking for a moment, then brought her gaze back to his. “I remember for a long time, after you and I first started talking as friends, I wanted to end it, our friendship, even though I had a little crush on you …”

Okay, that bought his calm back a bit. “So you had a crush on me?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, but that was Carter and Sofia’s fault. How could I not develop feelings for you when your two biggest fans kept talking you up?”

“Really?” he asked, his brows raising. “Well, what did they say?”

She gave his arm a light slap, pursing her lips. “I’m not stroking your oversized ego, Valente.”

Kyle chuckled softly.

“Focus,” she commanded him. “We’re talking about why I hated you.”

Kyle nodded. “Fine,” he sighed. “Explain yourself, woman.”

She shook her head, her nostrils flaring with apparent annoyance. “I hated you because I couldn’t hide anything from you, Kyle. Because every time I tried, you ended up seeing exactly what I didn’t want you to see … what I didn’t want anyone to see.”

“Why not?” he asked, genuinely interested in her answer. “We were friends. I remember how close we got, how quickly it happened. Why would you hate me for seeing you for who you are?”

She sighed, looking down for a moment, her brows knitting together in thought, and her expression now serious. “Because who I am is not who everyone thinks I am.” She lifted her eyes back to his. “And you saw into my heart, and that’s just something …” Her lips pressed together tightly for a moment, right before she gave a light shake of her head. “It’s not something I allow anyone to do. Not even my sister.”

“I hadn’t earned the right,” Kyle whispered, his eyes lowering as he suddenly remembered something Reanna used to say to him all the time. Every time he’d ask her about herself, every time he’d try to get her to be vulnerable with him the way he was with her, she’d say it. “You always used to tell me that I hadn’t earned the right to know your inner pain.” He lifted his eyes back to hers. “You were scared …”

She nodded. “That pain made me who I am, Kyle. Everything I went through, every decision I’ve made, both good and bad, shaped me into the person I’ve become. And to give any bit of that would have meant giving you all of me …” She shook her head. “I’ve never done that before.”

Then there was silence.

Kyle wasn’t sure how long they sat there, but neither of them said a word to one another.

He watched Reanna. Her gaze was lowered, and her face was strained, as if she were battling with herself. She inhaled a stuttered breath, and Kyle felt it when her body lightly shook with it, but he still didn’t move or say a word. He recognized this, recognized what she was doing … She was making a decision, one that would either make them or set them up to fail.

She was trying to find the courage to open up to him, trying to decide whether or not it was something she wanted to do.

He himself had done it when he’d first realized telling Reanna the truth had been the only way to keep her around, the only way to get closer to her. And that was what he’d desperately wanted at the time, to be close to her. He still wanted it, and he wanted her to want it, too. But that was her decision to make. Just like it had been his. She had to decide whether or not this … love they had for one another, this relationship they were building was worth putting her all into.

Was he worth the risk of putting herself out there?

Of course, being who he is, Kyle immediately answered his own question with a no. But it wasn’t long after that Reanna opened her mouth, proving him wrong once again.

With a deep sigh, Reanna looked deeply into his eyes, and finally gave him everything he’d longed for since the moment he’d laid eyes on her.

“I was thirteen years old—Tamara only ten—when the authorities barreled their way through our home while my sister and I were sleeping in bed …” She shook her head. “I remember it as if it were yesterday. I’d gone through our normal routine after school, I picked up Tamara at the elementary school, went home, made dinner as she did her homework. Then we took our baths, read some stories, and I held Tamara as she cried herself to sleep because for a month, we’d been living in our home without our parents.”

Kyle’s eyes widened. “Reanna—”

She nodded. “Yes,” she whispered. “For a full month before the authorities took us from our home and tossed us into the system, Tamara and I had been living on our own.” Letting out a humorless laugh, she shook her head again. “They hadn’t even said good-bye before they’d left either. Never told us they loved us, never even made an excuse for why they’d gone. They just,” she shrugged, “left. Like we were props in a show they’d been putting on, easily discarded when they began preparation for their grand finale. Poof …” She made a disappearing motion with her hands. “They were gone. Just like that. Never to be seen again.”

“And it still hurts,” Kyle stated. “The pain is still fresh.”

She gave him a half smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I think they’ll always feel fresh, raw even. No matter how long ago it happened people will never forget, and they shouldn’t. I won’t allow myself to forget all of the pain my parents caused, how many innocent lives they took, lives of men, women, children, babies. I’ll never let myself remember them as anything other than who they really were, and that’s more than they deserve.” Closing her eyes, she swallowed, then gave another light shake of her head. “But anyway, after we were put into the system they pretty much sent us to whoever would take the left over children of terrorists. Our first home was nice enough, we met Ronaldo, but we were,” she frowned, “constantly bullied by the other kids. And the mother of the home, God bless her soul, tried so hard to make these kids ease up on us, but there’d been no use. They hated us, hated that we were there, not to mention one of the kids there had been orphaned because of what our parents had done …” She sighed. “So that didn’t last longer than it had to. By the time I turned fifteen we were being sent off to another foster home,” she smiled, “one where the adults were the tormentors.”

“What did they do to you?”

She snorted. “What didn’t they do would be the easier question to answer.” Nodding her head, she tapped a finger to her chest. “Hit us,” she said. “That was what they didn’t do. Me getting the crap beaten out of me on a daily basis didn’t come until the near future.”

Yes, of course Kyle wanted to comment on the statement—stop her and make her explain what the fuck it meant—but he knew better than to do it. She was talking. And judging by the breathy, shakiness in her tone, and the way she kept her hands busy, mindlessly tracing the same scar on his chest over and over again, it was more than evident just how hard
talking
was for her. He wouldn’t stop her.

He feared that if he did, she wouldn’t continue, and that was something Kyle did not want.

“At this foster home,” she continued, shaking her head again, “they didn’t allow us to sleep where everyone else slept. They put us in the basement—where it was cold, wet, and the floors were stone—and they made us lie to the social worker about our living conditions … And we did. Not because we were scared or anything, but because, surprisingly, we didn’t want to leave there.” Smiling, she lifted her hand to Kyle before he could ask the question she probably knew he wanted to ask. “And I know what you’re thinking,” she chuckled softly. “Why … why would we want to stay in such conditions? And that is an easy answer.” She shrugged. “It was peaceful down there. Secluded, quiet, and ours. No one following us, no one calling us terrorists, blaming us for the people who’d been killed.” Looking as if a memory flashed through her mind, she smiled again. “No one came down there. They didn’t check on us. They didn’t have to. There was a door down there which led outside. We weren’t allowed in the main house, but we had a small bathroom down there, we took food from school so that we could eat—”