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She had told him many lies in the past, but what she had said about her first husband, what she had said about him? That was most definitely the truth, and had somehow worked to lift the self-imposed barrier he had placed between them. Now, though, now there was no turning back.
Even as he stalked the palace hallways towards her room he felt the rush of desire, the swelling of arousal in his groin, the thickening of this band of want and need around his chest and throat. It might not have changed his plans for her, no. He would still have his revenge. But perhaps if he gave in to this insane desire burning between them, then he might finally be able to rid himself of the devastating hold she had over him. No, not him. His libido. He was a man of flesh and blood, and he would not deny either of them a taste of their basest desires.
He flexed his hand as it trembled ever so slightly in the space between him and the door to her rooms, and thrust it back by his side. Instead, he pushed the door open and kicked it shut behind him as he stepped over the threshold and drank in the sight of his prey.
She sat at the dressing table, staring off into the distance, looking as alone and isolated as she had claimed to be only moments earlier. Her golden hair, swept back into a chignon, glistened in the dimly lit room, matched only by the sparkle of the diamonds around her neck, dipping towards the V in her chest, and he stood half mesmerised by the sight of the rise and fall of her breasts, the only outward sign of her distress...
For the first time in years he felt an affinity with her, as he recognised that they were both in thrall to the spell of desire wrapping around them in great swathes of need.
‘Stop.’
‘Stop what?’
‘This,’ she said, gesturing between them. ‘Whatever it is you’re doing, just stop.’
‘I would if I could, Princess, trust me.’
‘You don’t even like me,’ she said, unable to help the smallness of her voice.
‘I don’t have to like you to want you,’ he growled, the admittance rough on his voice. ‘It’s as if it’s ingrained in me as much as my childhood lessons. When I should have been learning algebra, instead I learned the cosine of your skin, the angle of your chin, the circumference of your waist and the weight and feel of your breast. When I should have been learning French, instead I learned the language of the sighs of your pleasure, the rhythm and cadence of your pulse and your desire—’
‘Stop,’ she tried again, but failing to hide the pleading tone in her voice. And that plea called to him, taunting him, challenging him.
‘No, Sofia. Because while I learned all these things, you seemed only to learn self-denial and how to lie.’
‘And you are here to teach me my own body, Theo?’ she asked, incredulity clear in her oceanic eyes.
He couldn’t help the bitter laugh that left his lips. ‘I would teach you how to demand the pleasure you so desperately plead for, beneath your cultured, perfect words. To unearth the truth of what your body craves beneath your mind’s barriers. Theé mou, the Sofia I knew would have not hesitated.’
‘I don’t have to like you to want you.’
The words echoed in her mind. No, ‘like’ was too easy a word for what lay between them. He blamed her for every awful thing that had happened to him since that night ten years ago, and she blamed him for blackmailing her into this farce, for stealing her choice, even as he professed to give her a choice over this.
‘I don’t have to like you to want you.’
As if that one true acknowledgement had the power to unlock the cage she had just placed her inner self, her desires and wants into, need escaped as if his voice, his words were the key, twisting again and again within a lock so secure she had thought it never to be opened again.
‘You want me?’ Sofia said, with a voice raw with desire, turning to stand from the chair and stepping towards him. ‘Take me,’ she demanded.
He shook his head. Slowly. Not once taking his eyes from hers. ‘Oh, no, Sofia. You’re going to have to do better than that. You will not be passive in this, I won’t allow you to hide behind excuses, proclaiming that I drove you to this. No. If you want me...then take me.’
The spell that had bound her from her wants and needs lifted, the challenge he laid at her feet rose into her accepting hands. Hands that tingled with the need to feel his bare skin beneath them.
Could she? Could she really do this? His words were a call to action, but her insecurities held her back. She wanted this. Wanted him with a need that shocked her, scared her even. But she had never done this before, certainly not with her husband... In truth she’d always dreamed of what it would be like with Theo. Fevered dreams, ones that had left her heated and wanting and unfulfilled.
She crossed the distance between them in shaking strides and when she stood before him, a hair’s breadth between them, it was as if she didn’t know where to start. She wanted it all. Years of hunger made her body stronger than her indecision. Her fingers trembled as they reached just beneath his perfect suit jacket to slip it from his shoulders, and leave it discarded by their feet.
They were on fire as they went to the silk tie
around his neck and fed it through the loop that held it secure. She slid it from the collar of his shirt, focusing on the top button and fumbling slightly.
‘Look at me,’ he commanded. But she wasn’t ready yet. She wasn’t ready for him to see the desire and need and...innocence she felt shining from her skin, let alone her eyes. She wasn’t ready for him to see the truth of her need for him, because if he did he would know. Know that she hadn’t the faintest idea of what she was doing.
She slipped the button through its moorings, her thumb tracing a small pathway over hair-roughened skin, the heat from the contact spreading across the back of her hand, up her elbow and straight to her chest. Another button undone, and another tantalising glimpse of the hard planes of his chest...her hands awkward as they lifted the shirt tails from within the belt of his trousers.
Her fingers slid beneath the white cotton onto his deeply tanned abdomen, rippling beneath her touch, causing her to wonder at the evidence of the effect of her caress. His chin nudged her head to the side as he sought access to her neck. But she pulled away from the reach of his lips. He had told her to take him. So she would.
Unconsciously she arched against his chest like a cat, and when he nudged her thighs apart with his own she nearly cried out loud. The thick muscled thigh rubbing the soft silks of her skirt between her own legs was driving her senses wild. The low thrum that had started at her core now roared to life, pulsing with need for satiation, for his touch, for him.
