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He allowed himself to relive that sizzling moment of eye contact when all the pretence had been peeled away. He had to do something about it... Two people who wanted sex should be a straightforward thing, and to hell with the consequences, mocked the voice in his head.Very mature.
The simple pleasures, Kate thought with a sigh as she enjoyed the squish of the cool grass between her toes, were underrated. She rubbed her upper arms as a cooling breeze all the way from the ocean made her shiver. She found herself at one of the viewpoints scattered around the grounds. This one the nearest to the nursery wing. Eyes trained on the ocean, a dark strip beyond the glitter of the illuminated walled city of St Boniface.
A dark strip that represented miles and miles of emptiness...vast. And...she slowed her breathing, trying to emulate that emptiness, conscious of the tension loosening its grip on her body.
When she closed her eyes could she hear music or was it simply the gentle breeze in the trees? She didn’t care as she let herself sway to an invisible rhythm, her dress floating around her as she dipped and whirled, head back, eyes closed. At the end of the silent melody she paused and curtsied to the invisible audience until she realised it wasn’t invisible, at which point she pulled herself upright in a jerky motion, and, heart pounding, faced her audience of one.
‘What are you doing here?’ she snapped spikily, thinking goodbye relaxation, goodbye common sense.
‘I live here. That was very pretty.’ But she was not pretty. She wasbeautiful, and never more so than at that moment. He ate up the visual, committing to memory her eyes, enormous in the pale oval of her face, as she stood there looking like some sort of sexy sacrificial virgin in that dress.
Then he saw her feet and a slow smile spread across his lean face.
‘To lose one shoe, Cinders, could be considered a misfortune, but to lose two...?’
She responded to his taunt with a defensive, ‘I haven’t lost them. I know exactly where they are.’
Pity the same could not be said of my mind, Kate mused despairingly as she struggled to remove her hungry stare from his mouth.When was the last time I actually felt in control of my life...?At least when she had arrived she had still had the security of knowing what was right and wrong. Now exposure to this man had blown that out of the water.
It was wrong to want him, but she did. Did that mean she was wrong about other things too?
Feelings she hadn’t known she possessed had been awoken and they hurt. The constant confusion, the constant questioning, the constant yearning that made herfeel...Feel as if she were walking on the edge of a cliff. She glanced towards a very real cliff in the distance. It didn’t seem nearly as precarious as the one she was balancing on.
No wonder her nerves were shredded.
‘Have you come to say goodnight to Freya?’ she asked, thinking,Have you come straight from the blonde’s bed?A question that came straight from her newly discovered jealous streak.
She silently listed the reasons she shouldn’t feel jealous: firstly she had no right, and secondly... Actually, firstly was enough.
‘I’m afraid she’s asleep.’
‘As all good girls should be at this hour...’ he drawled, his voice dropping a seductive octave as he delivered a skin-tingling, ‘Are you a good girl, Cinders...?’
Kate moistened her lips and swallowed, fighting the childish impulse to cover her ears to cut out the insidious sound of his beautiful voice, all honey warmth and sinful suggestion.
‘I am not agirl, I’m a woman, and it will be a cold day in hell...’ She paused, discarding the analogy. No analogy was strong enough to convey how much shedidn’tneed a prince to save her. A miracle...now that was different. If there were one of those on offer she’d definitely be a taker!
Shaking her head, she walked over to a gentle mound in the grassy expanse some feet away from where he stood and sat down, her eyes directed at the distant sea view. Regaining that little window of peace she had enjoyed was, she suspected, a non-starter, but at least it was breathing space.
After a pause, Marco came over to where she sat. ‘Can I join you?’
‘It’s a free country,’ she retorted childishly, and then sighed because it washiscountry. Lucky his shoulders were broad because the idea of that much responsibility was daunting in theory, but for him it was a reality.
She stared ahead, resisting the temptation to turn her head when her tingling senses told her he had come to sit beside her, not close enough to shift her defences into the red-alert zone, but enough to make her...twitchy.
‘I was just getting some fresh air,’ she said when the silence became unbearable.
‘Me too.’ He held up the bottle he carried, tilting the tip before, with an expert twist and a gentle pop, he released the fizz.
‘You’ve done that before.’
‘Like to join me in a toast?’
‘To what?’ she asked, feeling as though this conversation of nothing was just a prelude...Or foreplay, suggested the voice in her head.
What she knew about foreplay could be written on a postage stamp.
‘To fresh air?’ he suggested, his eyes going from the bottle to her face. Confessing with a lopsided smile, ‘I haven’t got two glasses. In fact, I haven’t got one.’
