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Which meant what? That she was bad in bed? Great. It was a silly thing to care about in that moment. A thought not worthy of her, so she relegated it to the back of her mind.
‘I should have seen the signs. Perhaps I did, and chose to ignore them.’
‘What signs?’
‘Your inexperience, your innocence.’ He shook his head, as though he were angry at himself. ‘I knew you were out of your depth and I ignored that because it suited me, because I wanted you, and now we must both pay the price for that.’
Something like pain clenched her heart, because his regret was heavy in the tone of his words, but, more than that, she could feel it emanating off his frame. ‘You don’t want me here.’
He shifted his gaze to hers without speaking.
‘You wish this hadn’t happened, that we weren’t married.’
A muscle jerked in his jaw and he regarded her silently. When the air between them was unbearably thick with tension, Daisy took a small step backwards, intending to leave, but his hand on hers stilled her.
She froze, her body screaming at her for something she couldn’t fathom. ‘Don’t you wish that, Daisy?’
Wish what? She swept her eyes shut for a moment, gathering thoughts that had been scattered by his simple touch. As she stood there, his thumb began to move slowly over her inner wrist, sending pins and needles scuttling through her veins.
‘I...’ She darted her tongue out to moisten her lower lip at the same moment she opened her eyes, so she saw the way his attention was drawn to her mouth and the flame of desire began to spark harder.
‘This marriage is the last thing either of us wanted.’ The words were soft, and yet they cut something deep inside her. ‘When we met in New York, I was in a deep state of grief.’ Her heart softened. ‘I was weak, where you were concerned. I wanted someone to take the pain of loss away, and you did. When you came to my bed, it obliterated everything besides my need for you.’
She stared up at him, her heart thudding in her chest. Her head and her emotions were at war with one another. Everything she knew she felt about men and love and sex demanded that she pull away from him, but instincts and feelings were holding her right where she was, a flash of sympathy making her want to comfort him and reassure him even when she doubted he deserved that.
‘I wanted to be with you,’ she said quietly, absolving him of the guilt of feeling that he’d overruled her in some way. ‘Believe me, if I hadn’t, I would have been perfectly capable of shutting down your advances.’
He lifted his other hand, reaching it around behind her head to the pins that kept her style in place. ‘You had to do so many times, I suppose.’
Pain shifted inside her. ‘The articles aren’t true.’
‘We’ve covered that.’ Each pin he removed, he dropped to the ground, so there was a quiet tinkling sound before he moved on to the next. ‘That doesn’t mean you weren’t the object of interest from many guests before me.’
A hint of heat coloured her cheeks, because he was right. ‘From time to time. But I’ve always found it easy to deflect unwanted attention.’
‘To fade into the background,’ he remembered, moving to the fourth pin, loosening it so a braid began to fall from her crown.
‘As my job required of me.’ Why did her voice sound so husky, so coarse?
‘And you tried to do this with me.’ Another pin dropped.
It shouldn’t have been biologically possible, but somehow Daisy’s heart had moved position, taking up real estate in the column of her throat. ‘Not hard enough.’
His eyes narrowed by the smallest amount. Another pin dropped. And another. When he spoke, he was so close his breath warmed her temple. One braid fell completely. His gaze moved to the side as his fingers worked at freeing it completely, so half her hair hung loose about her face. ‘Do you think you could have done anything that would have put a stop to what we shared?’
It was hard to speak with her heart in her throat. ‘Are you saying you wouldn’t have taken “no” for an answer?’
The other braid fell. ‘I’m saying you weren’t capable of resisting what was happening between us.’
She wanted to defy him, to deny that fiercely, but there was a part of her that knew he spoke the truth. ‘You’re wrong.’ The words were feeble.
He ignored them. ‘So step away from me now.’ He loosened the braid. She held her breath, staring up at him, fierce needs locking her to the spot when her brain was shouting at her to draw back, to show him that he was wrong about her, that she was very much in control of her responses to him.
But she wasn’t and never had been, and she hated that.
Challenge lay between them, sharp
like a blade. The air was thick and nothing could ease it. Breathing hurt.
