Beauty and the Dark by Georgia Le Carre

People say there are things worse than death. They are right. Death would have saved me. The things broke me.

Sofia:
So I locked my heart away and swore I’d never have another man in my body again. You see, I thought, I knew everything there was to know about men: deceitful, cruel, and heartless. I thought I hated them all. Naively, I believed I could live hidden away in my brother-in-law’s castle forever.

But Fate put me under a mistletoe with a man called Jack Irish. How can I describe him? Tall, dark and handsome wouldn’t even begin to cut it. Mesmerizingly magnetic with charcoal hair, eyes bluer than the bluest marbles, and tattoos that curl out of his rolled up sleeves, he stood in front of me. When his lips brushed mine the ground under my feet shook, and everything I believed about myself smashed into a thousand pieces.

But I am not the girl he thinks I am. He wants me in his bed. He doesn’t know I am damaged beyond repair and dirty. If he knows how filthy I am he will run a mile.

Jack
I know all about pain. How it reaches into you, rips out your heart, and crushes it while you fuckin’ watch. I’d vowed that was in the past. I was going to get drunk on one night stands and casual sex.
But then fate put Sophie Seagull in my path.

She is damaged. She is fragile. She is broken. And she is beautiful. Not in the cold, hard way of a sparkling diamond throwing its flashy light all over the place, but in the secretively, mysterious way of a pearl glowing in the moonlight. I look into her eyes, as huge and hauntingly soulful as that of a slow loris and the world doesn’t seem to be so bleak anymore.
She fights me, but this is my vow.

To repair her. To protect her. To take her. To make her mine forever…