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Her head immediately started swinging back and forth. “No, no, no. Apologies are not weak. Apologies are one of the strongest things you can do. That is why they are so hard.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“Or at least that’s what Sloane says.” She paused, her lips pulling to the side for a long second. “Though, honestly, I kind of hate it when she does. Apparently, I also hate to be strong.”
He laughed.
She exhaled a loud sigh, her blue eyes still wide in skepticism. “Are you truly telling me you have never apologized to someone either?”
He shook his head.
“Well…” She shifted her gaze forward, not sure what to think on that. “I don’t know if I should feel sorry for you or if I should…no…I guess I just feel sorry for you. Everybody’s wrong at some point. Everybody should be able to utter an apology now and again.”
“I don’t need your pity, Vic.” The words came out in more of a snarl than he intended and her look shifted back to him, staring at him for a long moment.
“You may not need my pity, so I will try to keep that to myself.” Her lips lifted in a tight smile. “Regardless, you have my apology. I was, well…a brat yesterday and I couldn’t dig myself out of the hole that I found myself in. You came back for me when you didn’t need to and I didn’t deserve it. The least I can do is apologize for my behavior.”
His head angled to the side as he studied her. She actually thought he would have left her behind? The woman didn’t know her own worth.
“I feel too big.”
“You what?” His brow furrowed.
“My emotions. I feel too big. That is what Sloane always reminds me. Well, actually, she says I feel big, she never includes the ‘too’ in the statement. That is my own addition.” Her look had dropped to the passing ground between them. He could see she wanted to broach something but was having a hard time bringing herself to say the words.
He waited in silence, the only sound around them the clomping of the horses’ hooves along the road.
“I didn’t know what to do after the other night. How you couldn’t get away from me fast enough after I was…unseemly.” She cleared her throat, her eyes not lifting to him. “I’ve never done anything like that before and I couldn’t control my reaction, my body. And how you left…” Her shoulders lifted. “Well, the humiliation just kept on expanding in me and then I had to ride on the horse with you and I couldn’t escape what happened or you, so I was…a brat.”
“Wait—what?” She was humiliated? When all he’d thought about in the past two days was how her body had writhed under his hands? How her lips parted in moans that had seared into his brain and wouldn’t let him go?
And she washumiliated?
“I just wanted to explain what I was thinking. That I’m not usually that much of a spoiled terror. I’m stubborn, yes, but that went—”
“No, stop.” His hand flew up. “You were humiliated?”
Pink started to creep down into her forehead from her hairline and her words started to fly. “Again, I’m sorry for how I acted. I don’t know how to take what you”—her hand waved in the air toward him—“did to me. I couldn’t think during it, and what my body did, how it responded, just happened on its own. But it is good information to have. I’ll eventually need to know how to control how my body reacts in that particular situation in the future, so it is not as vulgar as it was. I’m sorry you had—”
“Cease.” His brutal voice cut her off. “If you ever,everthink about curbing your response to my hands on you—in you—I will play your body so brutally you’ll have no choice but to cease all thinking. If you stopped reacting as you do, it would be a travesty against all of mankind. It was beauty. Your body is a bloody masterpiece. How you reacted to my touch, it was like discovering a spring that spewed liquid gold.”
Her jaw dropped, her stare fixed on him.
He shook his head, disgusted at himself that she had been sitting for two days thinking she was repulsive. Thinking that she had to change—had to pull into place the posh façade of a proper princess in the damn bedroom.
He growled, his look whipping forward.
The horses moved on, the silence between them deafening.
He could see out of the corner of his eye that her stare remained locked onto him, her jaw not able to close.
She cleared her throat, her chin lifting. “Well…fine. Count me as mistaken.”
“Damn right.” The words seethed from his lips.
With a hesitant nod, her face swung forward, her gaze settling on the road before them.
What the hell was she doing to him?
