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He took theIon board and his eyes glittered with amusement. ‘All right, my ego has been known to get ahead of me...untilyoulose interest?’ For the first time it crossed his mind that she might say no.
‘I’d love to do that again, but only—’
‘You have conditions,’ he said, sounding astonished at the role reversal.
‘I don’t want anyone to know. I don’t want people to look at me and think the things they do about Rosa.’
‘People respect—’
‘To her face,’ she interrupted, ‘they show respect. I know what people think because,’ she admitted, shamefaced, ‘I did, a bit anyhow.’
He shrugged. ‘So, you want to sneak around? That could work, in fact it might add a frisson.’
‘I don’t need a frisson. I just need you, and ifyouneed a frisson, I don’t want you.’
‘Come here,’ he growled. ‘And I’ll show how much I don’t need a frisson.’
A bike ride with the Queen, a woman forty years her senior? Kate had assumed she could take it in her stride. It was actually a relief to fall off and be excused the rest of the ride.
Kate dabbed some antiseptic on the graze and flopped down on the sofa, happy to enjoy a little downtime. Freya was on a play date with her new little friend and she had the afternoon to herself.
In theory.
She had enjoyed about three minutes’ alone time when Marco appeared, or, more correctly, exploded into the room.
‘You have had an accident!’ he accused, seemingly annoyed to find her with all her limbs intact and a chunk of chocolate halfway to her mouth.
‘No...well, not really. I came off my bike before I actually expired from exhaustion. Your mother is a very fit lady. A few scratches is all.’
‘Oh,’ he said, losing some of the high-energy tension that had accompanied him into the room and looking almost self-conscious.
‘I thought you had meetings all afternoon.’
‘I did, I cancelled. Where is Freya?’
‘A play date.’
‘So, we are all alone.’ He looked at her curled up like a kitten and felt the need rise up in him, the need to lose himself in her. The craving was like a flood tide rising.
The moments when it was possible to satisfy the hunger she evoked in him were infrequent enough to frustrate him. Without realising it, he had fallen into a pattern of planning his weeks and days around moments like this, scheming, plotting to have time alone... The subterfuge had lost its appeal.
The knowledge that she was ashamed to have anyone know of their affair, that she was in some way ashamed of him, was really eating away at him.
It wasn’t as if he wanted to take out a full-page ad to announce they were having sex, or shout it from the rooftops. Her obsession with secrecy was making a big thing out of something that wasn’t... It was just sex.
Just sex.He recognised his rationalisation was becoming increasingly difficult to make, because thisjust sexhad nothing in common with anyjust sexhe had ever experienced before. With Kate he was feeling things he had never experienced before, that he had never allowed himself to feel before.
This should have been the ideal situation. Great sex, a beautiful woman who made no demands, but he wanted more. He didn’t have a clue what more he wanted, but he did. There was a secret corner in his heart that craved something he refused to name, something that he felt he was close to when he was in her warm tight body, when he felt whole for the first time in his life.
He pushed away the thoughts. Need for her overwhelmed his disquiet that this was dangerous territory, an emotional minefield.
He bent over, kissing her as he slid a hand under her shirt and up over the warmth of her stomach until he found a breast. He weighed it in his palm, and stroked the peak with his thumb. It fitted perfectly in his hand.
‘Did you lock the door?’ she whispered, pushing her fingers into his dark hair but holding back as he bent in to claim her mouth.
They had been very careful but if she was honest the appeal of the illicit-thrill thing had worn off very quickly. Not so the great mind-blowing sex. Fear of when he would get tired of that lurked in the edges of her mind, unacknowledged but revealing itself more and more often of late.
She had taken great pains not to be seen as a royal mistress, but wasn’t that what she was?
