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Of course he wouldn’t. ‘What’s going on, Ettie? Was I too rough?’
‘No.’ She wiped her eyes and turned away.
Not good enough. He turned her back towards him and gazed into her eyes. ‘Then what?’
Her colour mounted and she seemed to be holding her breath. ‘That other night you couldn’t seem to get enough...but if you don’t really want me any more, we don’t have to...’
If he didn’t really want her?
‘Ettie,’ he huffed out a relieved laugh, ‘I thought you were exhausted. I didn’t want to be too demanding...’ He lost his train of thought as he saw the shadows shift to smoke in her eyes. ‘Glykia mou.’
‘Sorry,’ she muttered, colour flooding her face.
‘Why?’ He pulled her closer. ‘I’m not sorry that my new fiancée is a nymphomaniac.’
He laughed at her gasp of outrage and thrust back the coverings so he could satisfy his need to see her naked beauty all over again.
‘We do have to, Ettie.’ He bent over her uncompromisingly. ‘We damned well do.’
He angled her so he could see right into her eyes as he swept his hands over her soft curves and watched the ebb and flow of her tension. To his relief and pleasure, her smile returned. A more feminine, more feline one than he’d ever seen on her. He growled and surged into her—slower this time, tormenting them both to the point of madness. And it was utter bliss.
‘I didn’t know it could be this much fun.’ She almost laughed a long while later.
Fun? Had she thought that was fun?
He’d thought it was devastating. But he cleared his throat and pulled his brain back from its fanciful, post-orgasmic superlatives. ‘It’s supposed to be fun.’ And now he was looking, he couldn’t tear his eyes from the satisfied glow enveloping her. ‘You look better than you have in days.’
‘I feel better.’ Her cheeks were rosy and there was a relaxed softness in her expression. She was stunning.
But he cocked his head and aimed to tease them both back to lightness. ‘Orgasms for medicinal purposes?’
‘Who knew, right?’ She giggled.
‘What happened with your ex?’ The question just slipped out at that most appalling moment. He hadn’t meant to ask it—not ever. But the idea that she’d cared for another man enough to want to marry him had grated on his deepest-set nerves. What had been so special about the jerk? Why had he let her go?
Leon gritted his teeth—why did he even want to know? But he did. Desperately.
Ettie was too quiet. He rolled to his side and propped his head up on his hand, studying the return of those shadows. They flickered across her face—resistance, sadness. He hated that some guy had hurt her. He didn’t mean to hurt her more by asking about it now. Were the memories that painful? Had the bastard mattered so much she could barely bring herself to speak about him?
‘He jilted me just before our wedding,’ she finally answered.
‘At the altar?’ His skin tightened.
‘Almost.’ She seemed to shrink deeper into the mattress. ‘His family had arrived. My friends. Ophelia was so excited about being bridesmaid...it was so humiliating...’
‘Why did he do it? Was there someone else?’ He couldn’t fathom it. What man wouldn’t want Ettie in his life? She was sexy, she was funny, she was sweet.
She looked away from him.
‘We hadn’t been intimate,’ she said huskily. ‘I’d wanted to wait.’
Leon’s brain malfunctioned for a moment. Not intimate? Wait? ‘You hadn’t been intimate at all?’
She shook her head. ‘We’d kissed but...’ She shrivelled lower into the mattress and tugged the sheet higher. ‘I wanted to wait.’
‘For your wedding night?’ He stilled as a bubble of something hot and fierce and frankly savage bubbled in his gut. That she’d wanted to do that—gift the guy her virginity—made his innards twist.
‘I know, it’s quaint, right?’ She wouldn’t look at him.
He shook his head. ‘Sweet,’ he corrected gruffly.
‘I should have known it wasn’t right.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It wasn’t hard for me to want to wait.’ She lowered her chin and all but talked into the sheet covering her. ‘I thought I had a low sex drive. That it was just me.’
His eyes widened. The woman didn’t have a low sex drive. She was the hottest, most insatiable lover of his life. ‘But your fiancé didn’t want to wait any more?’
‘He said it was so close to the wedding...that we should.’
He’d applied pressure and manipulated her innate desire to please. Leon tensed. ‘And how was it?’
Her face burned red again. ‘He didn’t stick around for the wedding, so I guess it wasn’t that good.’
So it had been just the once? He had to snap his mouth to keep his jaw from hitting the floor. ‘And there’s been no one since?’
Her blush built to beetroot, making it easy to read the deep embarrassment and insecurity all over her expressive face. She thought she wasn’t sexy, that she didn’t know what she was doing. That she’d not been able to satisfy her selfish ass of a fiancé. So there’d been that one let-down of an experience followed by appalling betrayal and rejection after.
And then there’d been him.
‘That’s why I was
so reckless when you... It was so different...’ She fell silent, that mottled rosy pink slowly washed from her skin.
He was savagely proud it had been so different. ‘Poor Ettie. You finally let go enough to have some fun, and then—’
‘I end up pregnant,’ she mumbled.
One night. Massive consequences. It wasn’t exactly fair.
‘I guess mindless, meaningless, fantastic sex just isn’t for me,’ she attempted to joke.
‘No, it is,’ he replied, utterly serious. ‘It just needs to be with me.’
She flushed deeper and her smile faded. ‘Is it good for you?’
Was she seriously worried about that? He couldn’t keep his hands off her. But that jerk had hurt her, striking an insecurity within.
‘There’s nothing wrong with you,’ he whispered. ‘Nothing wrong with what you do, how you respond...’ He ripped back the sheet from them both. ‘Look at what you do to me.’
She turned her face away but he tenderly cupped her chin and made her look. And then he kissed her—long, deep and lush—and felt that fire between them crackle.
‘He was a jerk, Ettie,’ Leon muttered, filled with protectiveness.
‘He was. I just wanted to please him.’
He hated the bastard who’d had no idea of the treasure he’d had in his hands. He hated the damage he’d done to her. But he had to ease up on releasing that rage. She was more vulnerable than her ultra-efficient, all-smiling concierge persona revealed. ‘You left school early and had to work?’ He talked, trying to contain his anger and ease the tension gripping his muscles.
‘Initially I left because Mum got sick. I needed to care for her and Ophelia.’
But she’d been a kid herself—just a teen. He hadn’t wanted to listen earlier, but now he wanted to know everything. ‘There was no one else?’
‘She was young when she got pregnant with me. She was estranged from her parents—I never had a relationship with them or my father. Ophelia was the result of another doomed-to-failure fling. She’d wanted it to work out with him...’
‘But that didn’t happen either.’
