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She dropped her head, not wanting to see his face. Not being able to bear it right then.
“Look at me,” he commanded, as if he’d read her mind and was truly bothered by her thoughts.
She considered denying him, but what was the point? This conversation had to happen so they could have the one she’d come for. Rhea’s happiness depended on it.
And Rhea deserved to be happy. In her own way, she’d sacrificed more than Chloe ever had because she’d never walked away.
Chloe lifted her head, and whatever Ariston saw in her face made his crease in a frown. “What hopes?”
“They don’t matter anymore.” They never had, not to him … not to her father.
“I would still prefer to know what they were.”
“No,” she said with absolute implacability. She’d shared all the confidences she was going to with this man.
His look assessed her. “You have changed.”
“Yes.”
He stepped closer. “In every way, I wonder?”
Shock paralyzed her as his nearness brought a wholly unexpected reaction. She’d thought her libido had died with her marriage, but her body was telling her just how wrong she’d been.
She wanted him.
She managed to move back, but somehow she gained no distance between them as he matched her step for step until she stood against the window. His scent and the heat of his body surrounded her, bringing back memories that haunted her dreams, that made her body ache with a longing she’d thought gone forever.
Long masculine fingers curved around her nape, his thumb brushing the sensitive flesh behind her ear. “There was a time when this drove you crazy. Does it still, I wonder?”
She shook her head, but not to deny it, simply to try to clear her mind enough to speak. To tell him to let her go, to move back. For heaven’s sake.
Only the words didn’t come. Couldn’t come.
Because no matter what her mind screamed she should say, she desperately wanted to beg him to do more, move closer, touch her … give her what she’d once had the right to every night.
Ariston’s head lowered. “I wonder,” he said again. “Will your lips taste as sweet as they did two years ago?”
She had no answer for him, but a reciprocating question spun round and round in her mind as his lips covered hers. Would he taste as good? Would he taste like love, even if he didn’t love her—like he’d used to?
Would this kiss hurt or heal?
Would it make it harder or easier for her to continue in her quest to move on? Cutting herself off from him without any sort of closure certainly hadn’t worked.
Only risking it would give the answer to that one, and something Chloe had never been was a coward. She let the kiss come.
It was not tentative, but sought to determine her susceptibility. She wondered what he found even as her mind warred with her heart over the wisdom of letting this melding of lips continue. He kissed her as if he had every right to do so, as if they were still married.
As if she was his.
It was strange and horribly wonderful and wholly unexpected.
And she let him, trying to determine if in that moment he still felt as if he was hers, and coming to the abrupt and almost awful revelation that he did.
His lips moved over hers, his tongue gliding along the seam of her mouth, gently demanding entrance.
Chloe’s mind screamed for her to protest this assault on her senses. It was too dangerous, she realized perhaps too late.
Finally her mouth opened to do it, but that only gave him the opportunity he wanted.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s exactly what she’d intended after all.
His tongue plundered, his lips moving against hers, and drew forth a response only this man had ever engendered. Desire like liquid fire pooled deep inside her and she moaned against his lips. He made a harsh sound of approval, deepening the kiss—if that was possible.
The one outcome to this meeting she’d never expected would be that Ariston would kiss her, or that his nearness and touch would reawaken the sexual hunger within her.
It was too much and not enough.
His free hand pressed against her back, so their bodies came into full, glorious contact. It electrified her.
And made her see a truth she’d hidden from.
For two years she’d craved this very thing, but with a gut-wrenching certainty that it would never again be hers. So she’d suppressed her desires to hold the pain of unrequited need at bay.
Now he was offering to assuage that need and her body was letting her know she’d gone too long without. After three years of a marriage that had included a steady diet of truly mind-blowing sex, she’d cut herself off completely.
And her carefully suppressed libido wasn’t happy.
