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He made her feel that way now and she hated it. Because it was a lie. He hadn’t protected her, and he hadn’t saved her. He’d taken her to heaven and back, then delivered her straight to hell.
It wasn’t all his fault. You ran away. Then you signed those papers, remember?
But she didn’t want to remember. Not about how she’d run after their encounter or about the papers his representatives from Kalithera had thrust at her that first night out of hospital. Papers that she’d signed, giving up her maternal rights to her own child.
Sheneverwanted to remember that, or the black hole of postnatal depression she’d fallen into after they’d taken her baby away, a bleakness that had taken hold of her soul. She’d had no one to talk to, no one to tell her she’d done the right thing giving her baby away. No one to reassure her that eventually the horrifying guilt over what she’d done would one day go away.
No, she was stronger now, she was in charge now, and she wouldn’t let herself get overwhelmed by anything or anyone ever again.
Except then he closed what little distance remained between them, crushing her against the wall, and the steel inside her fractured a little more.
Oh, she remembered this. How he was so hot, like iron, and how glorious he’d felt. He was so much bigger than she was, so much more powerful. He could protect her from harm. And he was so hungry.
All for her.
She’d grown up in a dozen foster homes and apart from Katherine, the one foster mum who’d ever taken an interest, no one had looked out for her, no one had even noticed her. No one had cared.
Now you have a king desperate to have you.
Her senses reeled. His mouth was hot, exploring her with a rough mastery that left her trembling even harder than she had been already.
She’d thought she’d be ecstatic that he’d come after her, and she was. But she was also afraid. Afraid of what she felt and how easily he could overturn her conviction if she let him.
So? Don’t let him.
Solace put a hand on his chest and pushed at him, her breath coming in short, hard gasps.
He lifted his head instantly, the expression on his perfect face taut and hungry, but he didn’t move away. The look in his hot blue eyes burned.
She’d done her research. She’d watched as many videos of him as she could, at official events and with his subjects, or the occasional, rare interview, and he was always cool and polite and courteous. There had been a distance to him, as if he was keeping himself apart, but there was no distance at all to him now.
Just as there hadn’t been any distance fifteen months earlier.
He was not the King now, he was a man, and he burned for her.
She felt dizzy. His warm, woody scent was all around her, and the feel of his hard chest pressed against her sensitive breasts made the low pulse of desire pulse even harder.
‘Do you want me to stop?’ His gaze was fierce, demanding. ‘Because if so, you need to tell me immediately.’
‘No,’ she forced out, trying to get some air into her lungs. ‘I just needed a...a moment.’
He stared at her so intently she felt as if he were seeing inside her head. ‘But you don’t need one now, do you?’
She did need one now. She needed more than one. She needed to get out of here, get away from him before she lost herself again, yet running wouldn’t get her what she wanted.
Besides, you want a taste of him again, don’t deny it. A taste of how good he can make you feel.
‘No,’ she made herself say, both to him and to the voice in her head. ‘No, I don’t.’
Without a word, he bent, his breath warm on her skin as he brushed his mouth along the line of her jaw. Then he kissed her again, hot and raw and deep, making her go up in flames once more.
Making her remember that night again, and how, when he’d kissed her, she’d lost her mind. She’d never been kissed before, never been touched, or at least not by a man and certainly not for pleasure, and she’d had no idea how good it would feel. That precious half-hour she’d had with him had been...incandescent.
It was incandescent now.
She moaned, the taste of him dark chocolate and sin, the good Scotch she used to steal from that one foster father’s drinks cabinet, the flavour of the forbidden, all the delicious things she could never afford to have for herself. It was wrong to want this, especially given who he was and the trap she’d fallen into the last time, but she was finding it difficult to remember why resisting him was so important in the first place.
Because it nearly destroyed you the last time and you can’t go through that again.
