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Something had been unleashed in her that night when he’d finally made love to her.
And not just their respective, long-suppressed libidos, she thought now with a faint smile. It also wasn’t discovering that the chemistry they’d shared that one weekend eight years ago was even more combustible now. Not just that their bodies had learned each other’s wants and rhythms so well that every kiss felt like a conflagration.
Every touch made tension bubble up in the air around them. Every caress felt like a new beginning. And when he was inside her, when he moved inside her in that mind-blowing way that he did... Words shimmered behind her lips, begging to be spoken, to be released.
But she didn’t dare. Because she still wasn’t sure if he was ready for them.
He...hadn’t exactly withdrawn from her in the last few days, but it felt as if he’d made some kind of decision today. Even if her instincts about that were wrong, there was the matter of all the hours he’d spent in the last week on phone calls. She’d been desperate to know what they were, but he’d said it wasn’t anything to do with the company. Yet it was definitely something important to him. Which meant it was important to her.
She didn’t know how long she stood there, warming her hands around a cup of tea.
“You look very serious,” said Christian from the blanket he’d spread on the ground.
“Do you have eyes in the back of your head, then?”
“No. I turned around and looked and you were so deep in thought that you didn’t notice me.”
The blanket looked inviting and she waited for him to pat the space next to him in invitation. To demand she do her conjugal duty as she’d demanded of him one night. She was a little sore between her legs, but she had no doubt he’d go gentle on her. He’d take it slow this time, seduce her with that wicked mouth and that clever tongue until she was unraveling again. Until she was begging for him to come inside her, despite her sore muscles.
Seconds piled into minutes and she felt that strange rushing again. As if time was determined to cut short their last night.
She took a deep breath and wandered over. But instead of joining him on the blanket, she sat down on the chair Jayden had dragged around earlier.
“We’re leaving tomorrow,” she said lamely. “Is that what has you so tense?”
He shook his head. His dark blond hair gleamed in the moonlight. She was used to his silences and his sudden changes of mood, but this wasn’t that. “I don’t want to talk about this. But I think I have to. You were right. We’re never ready for the future without facing the past. Without facing the shadow of the man we both loved.”
She searched his face, something in the tone of his words escaping her comprehension. It was always there these days when their discussions drifted toward the topic of Jai. Even Christian’s initial reaction on learning what she’d named their son... “Is this about why you avoided me when...we were first married? Why you went away after we slept together?”
He dipped his head in a nod. “Ask me.”
Priya took the time to arrange her thoughts into some kind of order. But there was no neat way to do this. The past was still a tangle between them. Though she thought she’d figured it out recently for herself. He’d given her enough pieces of the puzzle over the last few weeks. She’d just been too blind to see them clearly enough to put them together. “Did you avoid me because you...you wanted me?”
His answer was a long time coming. When he spoke, he addressed it to the sky or the stars or the quiet, beautiful world around them. As if he was finally releasing it to the universe. “Yes. As much as I do now. As much as I ever did. I hated myself for it, but I’ve never stopped wanting you. Not since the first day Jai brought you to our lab and introduced you as his girlfriend. Not since your smile turned from full and wide to reticent and wary when you looked at me.”
She swallowed, feeling what? She couldn’t name one thing. Each piece fell into the bigger puzzle, and her breath hitched. His memory of her on that day they’d met had been perfect in his words.
“But I never planned for that weekend at the Alps to happen the way it did. I didn’t...” He thrust a hand through his hair roughly. “It’s important to me that you know that.”
Priya frowned, feeling her way through the minefield that suddenly lay between them. “It’s important that I not think you used some nefarious wiles and your sexy charm to seduce me into bed? Is that it?”
“I know it sounds ridiculous put like that. But—”
“It is exactly that. Ridiculous.” She sighed. He was hers now. The past didn’t matter. It couldn’t. “It happened because we were both consenting adults who couldn’t keep their hands off each other, and for no other reason.”
She saw his throat move and then he nodded.
“You had a thing for me when Jai was alive.”
Long lashes shielded his expression before he raised his gaze and let her see him. “Yes. But it wasn’t just a thing.”
Her heart was in her throat now, thudding away. Her knees shook again. Her entire body, it felt as if she was standing outside reality. Outside herself.
He looked away then. “I was in love with you. I had everything—looks, fortune, brains, a girlfriend... And all I wanted was you, my best friend’s fiancée. And being near you and not having you was... What do they call it? Character-building.” A harsh laugh. “But I couldn’t stay away from you, either.”
The silence between them grew and grew... And Priya didn’t know how to break it. She looked down at her palms as if she could find appropriate words written there. There was no chance of laughing it off because his every word rang with truth. She’d seen the anguish she heard in his words now, in his eyes. “Loving someone is never a bad thing, Christian.”
The words felt trite, like a sop to his conscience.
