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He flinched as he heard the way she said it. As if she couldn’t believe the person she’d been back then. The person who had adored him. Had. ‘I’d never been in love before,’ he said slowly. ‘I’d never been married before. All I knew was that wives were treated with a certain degree of reverence.’
In the darkness, Lexi gave a wry smile. ‘Suppressing someone’s spontaneity and talent isn’t being reverential, Xenon—it’s being controlling. Maybe you should face up to reality and accept that you’re just not the marrying kind—or maybe you should try marrying a more conventional type of woman. One who likes to be manipulated like that.’
He let his mouth sink into her hair and his words were muffled by its silken richness. ‘I’m sorry, Lex,’ he said. ‘Can you believe me when I say that to you?’
Lexi swallowed. The long silence seemed amplified by the darkness and the fact that she sensed he was holding his breath while he waited for an answer. It would be so much easier if she didn’t believe him. If she thought that he was simply saying something because it was convenient for him to do so. But she knew Xenon well enough to recognise his words as genuine—and these were very powerful words indeed. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I believe you.’
‘And can you forgive me?’
Lexi closed her eyes. That was a harder question. Because forgiveness was complicated. When you forgave someone you left a vacuum where all the anger had been, and then what did you replace it with?
But she couldn’t carry on fighting him simply because she was scared of her own feelings, could she? ‘Yes,’ she whispered, but she pulled away from him—not wanting him to interpret her clemency as some kind of sexual green light.
Xenon felt her move away and his body stiffened with the hot stab of frustration. His hand was still at her waist but he sensed she had withdrawn from him in more than a physical sense. Where a few minutes ago she had been warm and—he thought—on the verge of compliance, all that had now gone.
It very nearly killed him but he forced himself to drop nothing more than a light kiss onto her silk-covered shoulder and then to turn over. He had never done this in his life—stopped himself from taking what he wanted to take. What deep down he still considered it his right to take.
Scowling into the darkness, he moved over to the other side of the bed.
But sleep was a long time coming.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE SHOWER WAS icy and Xenon stood beneath the punishing jets as he tried to rid his heated body of a desire so fierce that he felt he might explode with it. Tipping his head back, he allowed the impact of the cold water to power onto his face, but nothing could take away the thought that he had just spent an entire night in bed with his wife.
And he hadn’t laid a finger on her.
He had lain awake as he’d felt the slide of her pyjama-clad body occasionally brushing up against him and the temptation to imprison her beneath him had been overpowering. He’d had to resist the urge to bury his fingers into her thick hair and to open his mouth over hers, kissing her until he had melted away every single one of her reservations.
He uttered a growled curse in Greek.
Would he see any signs of change in her this morning? he wondered. Would the frank discussion they’d had last night under cover of darkness have softened Lex’s stance towards him?
She must have used the second bathroom because when he returned to the bedroom with only a white towel wrapped around his hips she was no longer lying in bed where he’d left her. Wise woman, he thought grimly. It was probably safer to stay away from him when he was feeling like this.
He dressed and walked out onto the terrace to find her sitting at the table, wearing a simple cotton dress with her ponytailed hair hanging down her back. In front of her was a pot of coffee, a dish of Greek yoghurt and a platter of fruit. She looked up as he approached and, although her sunglasses concealed the expression in her eyes, he saw the way that her teeth chewed nervously at her bottom lip.
‘What a touchingly domestic scene,’ he drawled.
‘I went over to the main house and got all this stuff from Phyllida,’ she explained a little defensively, in response to the arrogant rise of his eyebrows. ‘I thought it might be nice to have breakfast here, since the gardens are so pretty.’
He sat down and took the cup which she slid towards him. ‘I imagined my mother planned for us to eat in the main house—but if you’re planning to play housewife, that’s fine by me.’
