AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Then what kind of future can we have? What kind of future are we going to give our son?’
She was so definite. So certain. The only woman who’d ever confronted him like this—the onlyperson. And he could feel his grip on his temper loosening, the hot, suffocating emotions that had always lurked too close to the surface all boiling up.
He was so tired of having to keep a grip on them. So tired of lying, of having to protect a secret that wasn’t even his. So tired of trying to be better than a man who hated him and who hadn’t wanted him on the throne.
So tired of trying to put his past behind him in order to be a good king.
There was only one way to deal with his anger and that was to turn it into pleasure and let it burn the way he’d so often done at Oxford. But it wasn’t some random woman he wanted to burn with him, he wanted Solace.
He’dalwayswanted her. Even when he hadn’t known anything about her, not even her name, he’d wanted her. Those silvery eyes behind the mask, the way she’d looked at him, not knowing he was a king. The way she’d wanted him just as badly as he’d wanted her...
She’d haunted his dreams for over a year and he’d thought at first it was just physical. But it wasn’t. It never had been.
She’d seen something in him that no one else did, maybe the hot-headed, restless, stubborn boy he’d once been, and she’d matched him.
She was as passionate and stubborn as he was, which would have made it a marriage made in heaven if her blunt honesty hadn’t cut through the web of lies he’d surrounded himself with.
He wanted to close the space between them, wanted to hold her down and restrain her, feel her melt against him in total acceptance, because that was what she’d always given him. She surrendered to him as he was, not a king, but a man.
But there was no surrender in her now.
He could make her, render her incoherent with pleasure. But it wouldn’t mean anything if he had to take it from her. She had to give him her surrender willingly.
Abruptly the expression on her face changed, and she was the one coming to him, crossing the space between them, the look in her eyes full of a compassion he’d never seen before.
She lifted her hands and laid them on his chest, her silver eyes glittering as she looked up at him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to force anything from you. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.’
The apology went through him like a sword. He was used to digging in, to being stubborn, to resisting, and, used to the fight, he stared down at her, for a second lost.
But he saw the flames in her eyes suddenly leap, the heat between them building, and he didn’t think.
He lifted his hands, plunged his fingers into her hair and took her mouth as if it were water and he were a man dying of thirst.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SOLACEHADTAKENone look at the rigid lines of Galen’s face and had known that one of them had to give in. At least in this moment. Because whatever secret he was keeping it had clearly trapped him and was torturing him.
There had been fury in his eyes and yet he’d been so still, as if frozen, rigid as a board while a volcano of emotion erupted behind his eyes. And all she’d been able to think about was how, if she wanted his trust, forcing him to give her something he’d told her he couldn’t wasn’t the way to go about it.
Trust was slow to earn, and she knew that all too well. He’d taken some steps to building it with her, but she needed to take some steps too. It wasn’t all on him, no matter what had happened with Leo, and it couldn’t be, not if she wanted this marriage to work.
Plus, while fighting him was exhilarating, that couldn’t be the whole of their relationship. Someone had to take the first step towards a compromise, and it was clear to her that he either wouldn’t or couldn’t. Whatever this secret was, keeping it was hurting him, she could see it in his eyes, and it wasn’t until this minute that she realised she didn’t like that. His pain mattered to her. In fact, it made her hurt too.
His father and his ‘unpleasant’ childhood, for example. Because she knew what it felt like. His upbringing might have been a thousand times more privileged than hers, but that didn’t make it a happy one. And it was clear it still affected him on some deep level.
He’d always been kind to her, right from that first encounter, and, despite the pain involved with Leo being taken from her, she couldn’t keep throwing that in his face. They had to move on from it somehow, and he was trying to make it right. He deserved her kindness as much as she deserved his.
So, she’d crossed the gap between them and laid her hands against his chest, told him she’d never force anything from him that he didn’t want to give, and in that instant she’d seen shock leap in his eyes, then a wild, rushing heat.
Then he was kissing her, his mouth on hers hot and demanding and feverish, and she could taste the need in him. Some part of her recognised it. The need for connection, for closeness, and she understood. His childhood sounded as if it had been as barren as hers, so of course that was what he wanted.
But he’d done so much for her already and it was time for her to reciprocate.
Solace tore her mouth from his and pushed him back over to the couch. He went without resistance, dropping down on it. Then she went to her knees in front of him, leaning forward between his powerful thighs, reaching for the buttons of his suit trousers.
His fingers wove their way through her hair. ‘I promised myself I wouldn’t touch you,’ he murmured. ‘I promised myself I’d be good.’
‘You don’t have to be good.’ She undid the zip of his trousers, her fingers already shaking as blind need began to rise. ‘I want to do something for you, Galen. You’ve done so much for me, now it’s my turn.’
