AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He was surprised the ancient city of Cambridge still stood.
But she did not stop. She seemed utterly heedless, and that only made the current of need in him pull tauter. “You have not mentioned one thing that isn’t about you. Not one small thing that isn’t entirely centered onyou, you, you. And yet you think I should marry you? So I can take up what appears to be a kingdom-wide delusion that you are anything but a narcissistic disaster? Why would anyone do that? WhyshouldI?”
“I flatter myself that there are some compensations,” Paris Apollo found himself saying, in a kind of low growl that hardly sounded like him at all.
Madelyn scoffed. “Name one.”
He wrapped his hand around that pointing finger of hers. He jerked her into his arms.
Then he bent his head and kissed her.
And her taste slammed into him like a sledgehammer. The instant heat of her mouth, the way her lips fit his.
He kissed her deeper, wilder, the demonstration he’d intended lost almost before he started because all he could think to do was pull her closer, kiss her deeper.
And as he did, he stopped pretending.
Because he’d still been telling himself stories, hadn’t he? About his ruin, but always tempered by the years in between...
But her taste was the truth.
It was his true ruin and always had been.
He had been stunned by this woman at first sight, in a grotty little pub he’d long since forgotten why he’d ever gone to in the first place. And it had been overwhelming and intense, just like this, from that very first instant.
It had been like a searing wildfire summer after a long, cold, stricken winter that had gone on forever.
It still was.
Paris Apollo had always been a man of enthusiastic appetites, but she had made him feel as if he was no more than an untried boy, turned inside out for the very first time.
She had become his obsession.
And he had lost himself in her. Completely.
His friends had despaired of him.
How could he blame them? He hadn’t. He had become a stranger—not that he’d cared.
Because she was his earthquake, a pretty little seismic disaster, and Paris Apollo had been perfectly prepared to walk away from his carefree life forever. For her.
He had thought Annabel was lying to him about Madelyn. He’d told her so.
Then by all means, wait to see how quickly she calls you, his friend had invited him.If you’re more to her than a memento of her little trip, she should keep in touch, shouldn’t she?
He had never told anyone how long it had taken him to stop hoping she would call. How many years it had been before he’d stopped reacting to any unknown number even though, after she’d gone, Paris Apollo had committed himself wholeheartedly to oblivion in all forms. He had never spoken Madelyn’s name again.
And now he understood that the deepest lies he’d ever told had been to himself.
Each and every time he’d pretended that he could handle this.
He wrenched his mouth from hers and stood back, appalled.
She was the very last woman he should have permitted to come here, much less become his queen. She was the worst possible choice to be the mother of his child. Madelyn Jones was a distraction. A driving, consuming obsession when he could ill afford any such thing.
The only thing he needed to concentrate on—or would allow himself to concentrate on—was making certain his parents were avenged. That justice was finally served.
Something he could not do with this woman clouding his judgment.
