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Ellie discovered that Sandor had booked them into the same room at the hotel when he followed her into it and closed the door behind them. She noticed his suitcase as well as hers had been delivered from the plane and stood against one wall side by side.
“We share a room?” she asked.
“Always.”
She nodded and Sandor went very still. “What did that little nod mean?”
“What did the oblique references you’ve made to love today mean?” she countered.
“That I love you,” he replied without hesitation.
“No. You can’t.”
“I assure you, I do.”
“But you don’t believe in love.”
“Belief is not always necessary for a state of being. I learned quickly enough how much I love you when you refused to come back to me, or talk to me about our future.”
“Not before then.”
“I was slow, but what I lack in speed to the mark I make up for in longitude.” He pulled her into his arms. “I will love you forever.”
She buried her nose in his chest, breathing in the beautiful scent she associated only with him. “I thought a man loved me once, but I was wrong,” she whispered against him.
“Your other lover?”
She tilted her head back to see his face. “You’re so sure there has only been one?”
“Yes. Your heart is connected to sexual intimacy for you. You would not allow a man you did not love into your body and if you had loved another after him, you would have married.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive. Only a fool would let you go if you loved him.”
“You are so sure another man would have loved me back?”
“I am positive it is a foregone conclusion.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “You are irresistibly lovable.”
“He didn’t think so.”
“The first lover?”
“Yes.”
“He was an idiot.”
She nodded, having come to the same conclusion but for different reasons. “I was nineteen. He was my bodyguard. I mistook sexual pleasure for the love of a lifetime until I overheard him talking about what a score he was going to make marrying me. He wanted a piece of my dad’s empire and wasn’t above using me to get it. He had it all planned. He wasn’t even normally a bodyguard. He was trained in business, but took the job to get close to me. Apparently everyone knew how my dad ignored me and he thought I’d be lonely and easy to seduce. He was right. He even had sex with me without protection in hopes of getting me pregnant. Thankfully it didn’t happen.”
Sandor’s arms tightened and anger radiated off of him with palpable force. “That bastard.”
“Yes, he was. He taught me a valuable lesson, though, sex is not love.” Would he understand what she was asking without her actually asking anything?
“No, it is not.” This time he kissed her temple and then her lips, oh so softly. “Sex is something a person can live without, but if you take your love from me, I will wither and die.”
“You did not just say that,” she choked.
“I did.”
She shook her head.
He nodded. “Oh, yes. What happened to the bodyguard?”
“I told my dad I thought he was sexually attracted to me. That he’d made advances. He fired him. He never knew it had already gone way beyond mere attraction to final follow-through.”
Sandor pulled her to bed and tumbled them both down onto it without letting her go. They remained facing each other, lying on their sides. “I am sexually attracted to you, Ellie. More than is comfortable in any sort of clothing.” He illustrated by pressing an unmistakable hardness against her. “But I love you, too,agape mou .”
“What does that mean?”
“My love.”
“Oh.” He’d called her that before.
“Is it my crazy man behavior before you realized you had a sister? You forgave your father far worse, can you not forgive me for accusing you of being with another man?” He really seemed agitated about it.
She cupped his cheek. “I know the pictures were damaging. If I’d argued with you, I would have convinced you it wasn’t me and to help me find out who she was. I knew that. I was much angrier about your deal with my dad.”
“You use the past tense. You are no longer angry?”
She shook her head with a sigh. “What would be the point? Holding onto anger just leads to bitterness and that twists a person’s soul.”
He didn’t look appreciably comforted by that statement. “But you still do not wish to marry me?”
