Page 36 of His Ring Is Not Enough

“Are you going to play obtuse?”

He nodded slowly. “Perhaps.”

“Don’t.” She crossed to him, until she was standing close enough to him that she could feel the heat radiating from his body. “It doesn’t suit you. You’re not the kind of man who can pull it off. You’re far too experienced.”

“Experienced? I don’t know if that’s the word I would use,” he said, his expression like granite. “Jaded? Maybe.”

“Either way, playing dumb isn’t your game.”

“Perhaps not, but you do make it hard to think.”

“Do I?”

Ajax stood, his hands at his sides, fighting the urge to pull Leah into his arms, to strip off the chains that held him, once and for all. To say to hell with control and simply take what he wanted, what he was starving for.

Somehow, in all of this, Leah had started to become an obsession. A desire he couldn’t shake or ignore. Somehow, the feelings he’d had for Rachel on what would have been their wedding day had been consumed by the flame of need he felt for Leah.

Sweet Leah. Who had grown into a sharp-tongued temptress with curves that called to fantasies pushed into the darkest corners of his soul. Fantasies that had never been given the chance to play in his mind, not completely. They’d hovered around the edges of consciousness, a mist that he’d kept from creeping in. But now he was overtaken by it.

It was easier to simply let it flood in now, block the path. Block the view of everything behind and everything ahead.

He’d never felt like this. Had never been a slave to his desires in the way he was now. He’d experienced sexual arousal—of course he had. But the truth was, he hadn’t had sex in seventeen years. And desire, adult desire, a man to a woman, was utterly foreign to him. He’d ensured that it was.

Because he’d always believed, since he’d been awakened to the reality of who he was, what he was capable of becoming, that he had to wait until he could be sure he would have control. That it was in the right context.

That the woman was not simply there, allowing herself to be used in exchange for something. That the woman wanted it.

But in this moment nothing mattered. Because there was something about Leah that made the past feel not just foggy, but nonexistent.

He wanted to drown in that feeling. Be baptized in it. Come out clean and new.

An illusion, he knew it, but he wanted to cling to it. Just for a while.

She reached up and traced his cheek with her fingertip, her whiskey eyes on his. Tempting him in a way alcohol never had.

He wanted it. Wanted to taste what he’d denied himself for so long. To let the memories of the women in his father’s mansion burn so that there was only this. Sweet, heady and clean. He wanted everything, and suddenly he felt like he couldn’t get it fast enough.

Seventeen years of self-denial, and on his worst night, with need, repressed and hot coursing through him, he had never felt this close to the edge. Had never felt anything this urgent. But now he was shaking, felt like he needed her more than air. He tried to look at her and see the girl she’d been, tried to look and remember why there was a time he hadn’t wanted her. Now he wasn’t certain if there had been a time.

How could he have ever not seen this? How could he have ever not wanted?

A whisper of something, desire, fear, washed over his skin. And a memory. A memory of a girl who always left him gifts. Who told him everything that was happening in her life. A girl who had made his heart, a heart he’d put on ice years ago, feel warm in a way no one else had.

Not even the woman he’d thought he’d loved.

He touched her face, softly, then traced her lower lip with his thumb. He had never touched a woman like this before. With reverence. With respect.

The memory of past encounters left him ashamed. Women in his old world, in his father’s world, had been treated as objects. Some men had, too. But it was the women he’d had experience with. Women who had probably only said yes to him because he was the boss’s son. Because they didn’t want to find themselves thrown out of the mansion with no access to drugs. Or worse, sold off to another corner of the world with a “master” who would be less kind.

And his last encounter with a woman...it had been so rough. Horrifying in the end. The haze of drugs clouding him badly. He’d had more that night than he’d had before.

And why not? His father had given them to him. A birthday present. And it was so rare that his father ever paid any attention to him.

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