But then she turned those pained eyes on him, eyes that pleaded with him.
“I know what will happen to me,” she choked out. “I do. But I want to know if there is something you would do for me. It would mean . . .” She sucked in a deep breath. “It would mean everything to me.”
He cupped her chin and rubbed his thumb over the bruise Bristow had inflicted.
“Ask me, Honor,” he said quietly. “What is it you’re having such a hard time asking me?”
“Would you . . . Would you make love to me? Now? Before you have to give me to Maksimov? Will you show me just once what it should be like so that I’ll know? So that I’ll have that one memory of something beautiful, something that no one else can ever touch. That can never be tainted no matter what else is done to me. So that when another man . . . hurts me, I can retreat to this moment and hold on. Shut out everything but this one perfect night. Will you do this for me?”
Hancock’s heart threatened to burst out of his chest. He couldn’t breathe. His torment was a tangible ache that no amount of wishing could make go away. She was begging him. Every inflection of her tone was pleading.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a low, embarrassed voice. “I shouldn’t have asked. Please forgive me. I’ll never mention it again. I swear. You can go now. I’m okay.”
There must have been something of the terrible anguish in his expression because her eyes became shadowed and ashamed, her gaze dropping away after her embarrassed apology. She pulled the covers up to her chin and then buried her face against her drawn-up knees, wrapping her arms around them as she rocked slightly in agitation. She drew away, huddling as far away from him as she could at his perceived rejection of such a precious gift.
A gift he in no way deserved.
But what about what she deserved?
He had no experience with virgins. Innocents. He didn’t partake in sex much. It was a distraction he couldn’t afford. He took care of his needs when necessary but sex, like so much else in his life, was mechanical. No feeling, no heart. Just physical release.
And he knew, he knew, that with Honor there would be no hiding behind his iron facade. She had a way of stripping away the layers until he was raw and vulnerable and completely bare, with none of the protection he always surrounded himself with.
“Honor.”
It was a whisper of a sound. He could barely form her name much less voice it aloud.
“Look at me,” he pleaded.
At first she refused, staring stoically ahead into nothingness. He recognized it immediately. She was becoming more adept at retreating deep into herself, steeling herself for what lay in store for her. Pain. Humiliation. Degradation and finally death.
But goddamn it, she didn’t need to retreat into herself with him. Never him.
“Honor, please look at me.”
Reluctantly, she swung her gaze to meet his, and the hurt in her eyes knotted his throat. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t massage away the pain in his chest. The kind so deep that nothing could take it away. It would be permanently etched into his heart for all time.
“I was not rejecting you, baby. Never you. I was stunned. Humbled. And I was afraid,” he admitted.