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Unwanted.Just as she’d been all her life. The words were spoken with a hint of irony, so she couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, but, either way, it didn’t lessen the sting. It wasn’t his fault, so much as almost a decade of conditioning. She cleared her throat, furrowing her brow as she tried to get a grip on things. ‘Anyway, I came here to discuss the wedding, not my personal life.’
‘And yet I find myself thinking a lot about your personal life,’ he responded immediately, the words growled, his expression showing that he resented that.
‘Oh.’ She swallowed past her knotty throat. ‘Do you?’
His nod was just one movement of his head.
‘What sorts of things do you wonder about?’
‘Are you single?’
She lifted both brows towards the heavens. ‘Do you think I’d let what we did happen if I had a boyfriend?’
‘I don’t know anything about you,’ he said slowly, each syllable spoken with care.
‘You know some things.’
‘Such as?’
‘You know that I’m honest, remember?’
He nodded slowly, an intensity in his gaze that spread like wildfire through her belly.
‘Also, you know that I can be pushy when something’s important.’
His eyes seemed to spark with hers. ‘And I know what you sound like when you are coming,’ he added with a husk to his voice that made her pulse spin wildly.
‘Thirio...’ His name emerged as a gravelled admission—but of what?
‘You are so beautiful.’
His words jolted her, because she knew they weren’t the truth. ‘You don’t need to say that.’
His eyes narrowed, his thumb lifted, of its own accord, to her lower lip, rubbing across it, and his eyes hungrily chased the gesture, showing how badly he wished that it were his mouth in his finger’s place. ‘Why shouldn’t I? It’s the truth.’
Her eyes fluttered shut. True or not, his words were magical, weaving through her, so she tilted her head back slowly, just a little, swaying forward without intending to.
‘I swore this wouldn’t happen.’
She blinked, trying to focus on his face, but it was too close, so close that there was only a hair’s breadth between them. ‘Why?’
The simplicity of the question didn’t change the fact the answer was complex and knotty. He hesitated, his face so close, his breath fanning her cheek. ‘Does it matter? Apparently, I have no intention of taking my own damned advice.’
Adrenalin pumped through her, filling her body with steel. But she held her ground, pulling away ever so slightly, even when every fibre of her being was drawing her closer, making her want him with unmatched desire. ‘It matters to me. You pushed me away last time. I think I deserve to understand why.’
Her insistence seemed to connect with him, and he straightened, a muscle twisting at the base of his jaw, the subtle action catching her attention, so her eyes dropped to it on autopilot. ‘Did I hurt your feelings?’
He asked the question without a hint of sarcasm. In fact, there was genuine concern in his eyes, something that slowed her heart almost to a stop. ‘Yes,’ she said honestly, tilting her chin defiantly. ‘Like I said that morning, I wasn’t looking for a marriage proposal, but you totally shut me down. It made me feel...’Unwanted. Cast aside.But to admit that was to reveal too much of herself, and so she simply shrugged. ‘Immaterial,’ she finished eventually.
He made a small sound, rich with disbelief. ‘If I thought you were “immaterial”, I would have had sex with you.’
‘What does that even mean?’ she whispered.
‘You’re obviously sweet and kind and relatively inexperienced and I am not the kind of man who can be the Prince Charming you deserve.’
She furrowed her brow, even as his compliments ran through her like treacle. ‘Who says I want Prince Charming?’ She shook her head. ‘Who says I evenbelievein such a thing?’ After all, she’d learned the hard way that fairy tales were solidly the provenance of children and make-believe.
‘Everything about you,’ he ground out, but he moved closer again, putting a hand on her hip. It was nothing. The lightest touch, but it seared her skin and at the same time there was such sweet respectfulness to the contact, that her chest heaved with the weight of her heart’s fullness.
