“Oh, Alistair. They weren’t.” His grief was so tangible, she knew he was far from overcoming it.

He had created a fortress of guilt around him, holding him hostage rather than giving sanctuary.

His suffering ate her up inside as if it were her own, and drained her like nothing else had since Gabriel’s death.

“I killed my daughter and my mother. That’s the truth.” His voice was so hoarse and his accent so thick that Sophia had difficulty understanding what he was saying.

“For God’s sake, Alistair Connor! You weren’t responsible. A mother is supposed to protect her children. With her life, if needed. That woman you married was not a mother. She was not a woman. She was a sick, insane monster.”

“I was-” He sighed profoundly, “I’m a monster, too. I’m guilty, mo chridhe. I have to suffer, to pay for my sins. I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve to be loved.”

Sophia looked at his bared soul and didn’t find the man she knew. No. A very different man is drowning the Alistair Connor I know in a cesspool of undeserved guilt.

It brought out in her a deep need to ease his misery. She straddled Alistair and kissed him lightly on the lips. “Do you think I will allow you to continue harming yourself? Well, I won’t. You have to stop this self-punishment. What you haven’t understood until now is that I consider you mine, and no one, no one harms what is mine.” She fisted his hair and pulled his head up to look at her. “Not even you are allowed to harm yourself. Do you understand?” She took his mouth hard.

He jerked his head back to look at her.

“Do you?” she insisted.

A pained look appeared on his face.

“I do. Oh, Sophia,” he murmured, burying his head in her hair and inhaling her sweet smell. “I need you, my love. I need you.”

“Take me. I’m yours.” She pulled his head to kiss him as if she could remove from within him all that darkness which poisoned his heart and soul.

“You don’t understand,” he shook his head fiercely. “I can’t be gentle. I can’t take you right now. I can’t. I want to-” Hurt you.

This is it, my chance to show him he can escape from all his violence and pain. His guilt and punishment. I can’t allow him to say no. “Please,” she spread her legs and pressed down on him, “make love to me.”

He burrowed his head in her neck, struggling for control. “That’s what you deserve. A man who’ll give you love.” He raised his head, his emerald eyes searching hers, “But right now, what I want is to take. To take you hard and fast enough to make me forget,” he said, his hands stealing under her wrap to palm her breast, plucking and pinching the nipples.

Sophia gasped astonished by this side of his she didn’t know, but didn’t block his advances, “You don’t need to hurt. You need to love.”

Alistair hated the darkness that surrounded him every time he thought about Heather. He was wary of hurting Sophia, but only she could help take away the painful memories. She was his light, his sun, the one that could drag him back from the cold hell he had been living in. He bent his head and cupped a breast with a greedy hand, sucking a nipple hard, biting it.

Another gasp from Sophia. “Slow down,” she asked as he shoved off her wrap.

He groaned and shoved her backwards onto the bed. His fingers trailed toward her sex. He teased her clitoris with rapid strokes. She moaned low and her hand tangled in his hair. With no finesse, he plunged two fingers into her.

Sophia gave a small cry of pain and fisted his hair, pulling his head back. “I’m okay with rough sex, but not with pain and punishment. I don’t like it and you don’t need this anymore.”

He breathed deep and nodded, “Sorry.”

“Don’t bring Heather into our relationship.” Sophia looked at him and whispered, “I want you to love me. Hard and fast.” She kissed him deep and completed, “We are celebrating life. We are worshiping love.”

He closed his eyes for an instant while his hands wandered on her torso as if learning her contours all over again.

“Alistair Connor?” Sophia wanted to be reassured that he had understood her message. She gripped one of his hands and pressed it to her left breast. “Let’s celebrate love.” And redemption. “I care for you. So much. Let me show you.”

He slowly opened his eyes, mesmerized by the promise her voice held, the unsaid words. Her clear eyes, which held so much love, reached deep inside him, easing the vise around his heart, lessening the guilt that darkened his soul.

“Love me,” she asked.

He sat on bent legs pulling her up, with her back to him. He propped her on his thighs, spreading her legs with his from behind and, slowly and gently, started to fondle her.

“Yes,” she moaned and her head fell on his shoulder, she parted her lips, inviting him to kiss her.

He complied and bent his head plundering her mouth as he thrust one finger into her, in and out, and pinched lightly her nipple.

“On all fours,” he ordered raspily as he lowered her on her elbows and knees, her hair spilling all around her, her buttocks raised. He almost came then and there. He opened her legs wider and started to position himself inside her, grunting loudly as he did. Holding her hips, his other hand went for her clitoris. He fought again for some control.

“Give me,” she asked and tried to adjust her position, backing onto him.

“Sophia, don’t,” he inhaled loudly, “I’ll lose control.”

“Lose it, dammit!” she exclaimed.

That did it for him. He plunged all the way to the hilt; her tightness enveloping him as they gasped with pleasure.

“You with me?” he whispered.

Sophia nodded and he bent down over her, supporting his weight on his hand as he pounded in her.

Alistair was lost, completely lost to lust and bewildered by how Sophia, again, acquitted him.

His mouth burned a trail down her spine as he teased her, sliding in and out, nudging her pleasure higher.

She felt he was reaching as deeply as he could go. Still, she wanted more. “Please, I need-”

“Not yet.” He slowly withdrew and then pushed forward in a maddeningly slow pace.

Their moans filled the room, but he wanted more. He forced her shoulders down on the mattress and fisted her hair, pinning her under him. He kissed her nape, as a hand plumped a breast and squeezed a nipple firmly between his fingers.

He had to forget the memories and prove to himself that he could be another man. He had to show her he could be the man that she wanted.

Sophia let out a groan of pleasure. He raised a knee beside her hip, going even deeper. He increased his pace, mindlessly thrusting, filling her with all his might, fingers rubbing and pressing her in time with his shoving hips.

“Who do you need?” he asked in a whisper as he kindled her lust, promising a spiraling drop over the edge.

“You. Only you,” she sang, and he swept a finger lightly over her.

“Say my name,” he growled, as he shoved harder and faster into her.

“Alistair Connor!”

Her every sense flooded with pleasure as his deft fingers and body played her like a fine instrument. She cried out incoherently in Portuguese and came tightly around him.

He threw his head back, with a loud grunt, as wave after wave of pleasure hit him and spasmed violently, collapsing onto his side hugging her close with one arm, shuddering with release as his delight exploded into a thousand iridescent stars and he whispered her name as he poured all his passion in her.

As always Alistair recovered first.

Sophia was lying on her side, barely breathing. “Sophia, mo gràdh, are you okay?” He brushed her hair away, spreading kisses over her face.

She flicked a dismissive hand at him, eyes still closed, curling into a ball.

She was spent and sated, but unsettled. Sophia’s mind was fuzzy, her hearing distorted. She didn’t think she had ever been so confused. She was stunned by his story and her feelings shocked her.

A stifled hiccup shook her body.

Alistair Connor, you’re an asshole. You hurt her. He scooped her in his arms and the tender gesture made her lose it. Tears started to fall and sobs racked her as she cried wholeheartedly in his arms.

“I’m sorry,” they said in unison.

He halted, surprised. Why is she sorry?

Between sobs, her voice muffled by his neck, she said in a sorrowful voice, “How I wish I could spare you this pain. I’m so sorry, so very sorry.” She kissed the hollow of his neck and tentatively her arms went around him and she splayed her hands over his shoulder and lower back, soothing and protecting him. “You have to let this guilt go. You have to bury this anger you have against Heather and yourself. Swear to me.”

He was awestruck. Her silent acceptance of the darkness he carried within told him that, after all those years in the most barren wasteland, he was finally home.

“I will,” he whispered in her hair, solemnly, “I swear to you.”

Alistair pulled the covers over them as she calmed down and the sobs subsided. I have to recover from the horror of what happened, it shouldn’t consume me so badly anymore. Tenderness filled his heart at her acceptance of him as he was. She is so giving, so beautiful. Inside and out.

He realized in that moment that he was profoundly in love with her. The sort of love that makes a man marry a woman.

He brushed her hair away from her face and she softly smiled at him, her eyes still closed.

She was the kind of woman that made men turn their heads and lust for her. But he knew she was more than that for him. She was goodness; fierce to her principles; a strong woman. She was the air he breathed.

I love you. “Tha gràdh agam dhut,” he whispered in her ear, completely relaxed and satisfied. Would you marry me, Sophia? Oh, fuck! I haven’t told her everything yet. “Mo chridhe?”

“Hmm?” She opened her yellow diamond eyes to stare at him and demanded, “Kiss me.”

He did, surrounding her with all the love he had to give.

“Alistair...” her fingers brushed his long bangs off his forehead. “Why are you so afraid of people really seeing you for who you are? A good man, a person capable of love? Are you afraid of another betrayal? She was sick. Not everyone is like her. People won’t betray you like she did.”

“Sophia, you have no idea what betrayal can do to a man. It hurts deep, very deep. I thought I had given her all I could. My name, status, love, sex, money, but nothing was enough. It broke me apart. I first felt diminished, less than a man. Then I became enraged. I wanted to kill her. I couldn’t, of course. Besides, she was Nathalie’s mother. So I punished her instead. The more I did, the more I was poisoned by the whole situation. I didn’t know how to deal with it and I didn’t have anyone to talk to. Tavish Uilleam was away. I wasn’t on good terms with him or with my father. They’d never liked Heather. And I was too ashamed to tell my friends about it. What would they think?”

“You never thought about seeing a therapist?” It was more a statement than a question. From her experience as a lawyer in Brazil and at her foundation, she knew that, in cases like Alistair’s, therapy was the best option. Some men needed psychiatric supervision, but she would bet that in his case therapy would do the trick.

He shook his head, “I didn’t have the courage.”

“You need to work out these feelings. Maybe now you could talk to Tavish Uilleam or Leonard.”

He gave a brisk, bitter laugh, “Do you know their nickname for me? The mighty Alistair Connor. I can’t tell them that the wife of the mighty Alistair Connor was cheating on him. They would lose all respect they still have for me.”

“Lose respect? Why? It wasn’t your fault,” she was astonished by his line of thought.

“It must have been...” he whispered, painfully. “I must have done something very wrong.”

“The only thing you did wrong was to enter into a relationship with her,” she affirmed. “That’s why you only had one-night stands, isn’t it? You were afraid to let anyone in.” He nodded. “Why is it so hard for you to see yourself as I see you? You hide everything that is good and worthy about you, because you are afraid. She was a monster. She was sick. She gave you nothing and took everything. You’re magnificent.”

A small hopeful light appeared in the forest green eyes. “Magnificent?”

Caught by the vulnerability he showed no one else, she’d whispered her answer in a kiss. “Utterly.” Sophia’s heart was bleeding for the younger Alistair and the present one. She touched his chest, “Inside here, Alistair Connor. She couldn’t see it, but you are.”