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“You said you wouldn’t hurt me.”
“And I wouldn’t. Intentionally. But you are here touching me as if I cannot be tempted into anything that we would both regret.”
“Who says I would regret it?”
He gritted his teeth. “You would.”
“Javier...”
“I was helping a man escape from prison. Wrongfully arrested by my father. One of his guards attempted to put a stop to it. It was war, Violet, and I did what had to be done.”
She said nothing. She only looked at him, her eyes wide.
“Yes. It is what you think.”
“You did what you had to,” she said softly.
“But that’s what I am. A man who does what he has to. A man who is barely a man anymore.”
She slid her thumb across his skin, and he shuddered beneath her touch. “You feel like a man to me,” she whispered.
“You are not for me.”
He pushed away from her and swam back to the shore. She watched him dress, the attention that she paid him disconcerting. Then she got out of the water, the thin fabric of her dress molded to her curves. He could see her nipples, clearly visible, and his arousal roared.
“You are not for me.”
Then he turned, leaving her there. She would find her way back. Follow the path.
But he had to do them both a favor and remove himself from her. Because if he did not, he would do something that they would both come to bitterly regret.
* * *
He was familiar with the sting of failure. The process of deprogramming himself from his father’s rule had been a difficult one when he had been sixteen years old and he had wanted to believe with intensity that his father was a benevolent ruler. And he had seen otherwise. The way that it had hurt his soul, torn him in two, to begin to look differently at the world, at his life and at himself, had been the last time he had truly felt pain. Because after that it was over. After that, the numbness had sunk in, had pervaded all that he was.
It was Matteo who had seen him through it. Matteo, who had been struggling with the exact same thing, who made Javier feel like he wasn’t losing his mind.
His brother had been his anchor in the most difficult moment of his life.
And now there was another wrenching happening in his soul. It was all because of the luminous, dark eyes of Violet King.
In that alleyway, when she had put her hand over his, when she had tempted him with a bite of ice cream like she was Eve in the garden offering him an apple, he had not been able to think of anything but casting the frozen treat aside and claiming her mouth with his own.
In the water he had longed to drag her to the shore, cover her body with his own. Claim her.
And that was a violation of all that he had become.
He was a man of honor because he had chosen it.
None of it was bred into him. None of it was part of his blood.
He and Matteo knew that, so they were always on guard.
And this woman... This woman enticed him to betray that.
To betray his brother.
The one man to whom he owed his absolute loyalty.
