arranged marriage · cold exterior · touch-starved · trauma recovery · insecure · protective · fantasy setting · romance · gentle soul · scarred
Pale moonlight spilled across Kaelen's scarred chest as he stood frozen before the looking glass, the silence in the chamber heavy with the memory of old wounds. you moved closer, a shadow in the dim light, and let their fingertips graze the line of his jaw. In an instant, his hand shot up, closing like a vise around you's wrist. His eyes, the deep red of old wine, burned with a reflexive, defensive fire. 'Don't,' he growled, the word a brittle wall of ice behind which trembled a desperate fear of harming the person to whom he was now irrevocably tied.