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‘Why would you leave now?’ he growled, still taunting me, that dark gaze roaming over my features and down to the towel I had clutched to my breasts. ‘When we both know the chemistry is still there.’
My nipples tightened, the adrenaline rush becoming hot and fluid and firing over my chilled skin.
The comment was insulting, his purpose clear. But there was something about the way he said it, the naked need I could see in his eyes, and the tension in his jaw that beckoned to the foolish girl. And made me believe that one thing had changed most of all... Now we were equals.
The need tightened like a vice in my abdomen. I should have stepped away from him, broken the live-wire connection, but I couldn’t, the yearning in my chest sharp and brutal.
I shook my head, trying to shake away the drugging effects of his nearness and the desire which tugged at my insides.
‘I... I can’t,’ I said.
I couldn’t make this mistake again, this wasn’t why I had come here...
Or was it?
The voice in my head goaded me, as I wrapped my arms tightly around my waist, trying to hold in all the wayward emotions which wanted to spill out. Emotions I thought I had conquered years ago.
‘Then why did you come back to me?’ he asked, his eyes still bright with desire and determination. But his voice was low with barely leashed anger. ‘Did you pity me,Principessa? Did you come to gloat at my downfall?’
‘What?No. Of course not,’ I protested, shocked he would even think such a thing.
‘Then why are you here? And why did you lie about who you were?’
I opened my mouth, to tell him about the pregnancy, the baby I had lost? The babywehad lost? But the words got trapped inside me. I didn’t want his pity either.
It occurred to me, I didn’t really know this tortured, taciturn man—any more than I had known the careless playboy. Even after five long weeks of cooking for him, of watching him work so hard to heal, I still didn’t know who he was. But—god help me—I wanted to.
I couldn’t find an answer for him. Because I wasn’t even sure what the answer was myself anymore.
My bare feet sank into the sand, the feeling of vulnerability as scary as the potent heat scalding my insides.
The moonlight made his features look saturnine as he frowned.
‘I don’t know why,’ I admitted at last, because I couldn’t tell him the truth, couldn’t even acknowledge it myself. Because it would be a betrayal of the woman I had worked so hard to become. The woman who would never have fallen for the slick charms of a man like him again. A man who could discard her so easily and leave her broken without a backwards glance.
Except was he still that man? What ifhehad changed too? What if there could be more between us now than there ever had been before?
He let out a rough laugh.
‘You say you don’t know,Principessa. As if the answer is not simple.’ He captured my shoulder in one hard hand, making heat sweep to my core. Then glided his thumb under the edge of the towel, to touch my cleavage. Possessive, demanding, but with a sense of entitlement that was strangely beguiling.
His touch was electrifying, calling to all those foolish needs he had triggered so easily once before. But when he spoke, the words were rough and husky with the same need I felt.
‘This is what we both need,’ he said. ‘Do you know I recognised you, the first time I saw you again—even though I refused to admit it—because I could still feel this need.’
The whispered confession seemed somehow important to my dazed mind, while the pheromones fired through my system triggered by his confident touch.
‘I realise now, you are why I have worked so hard to become a man again. Instead of a pathetic excuse for one.’ The resentment in his tone, the self-loathing shocked me, but not as much as the sense of stunned validation when he added, ‘You are the only woman I have truly desired since that night,Principessa.’
Before I had a chance to question the logic of what he was saying, or my reaction to it, I let go of the towel. Offering myself to him. Wanting to finally feed this incessant hunger too.
The cove was warm, the night air sultry, but even so I shuddered as the protective layer dropped onto the sand. I couldn’t deny the swell of euphoria in my chest. At the thought that I did matter to him even if I knew it was a layover from that little girl whose mother had abandoned her, and whose father had never wanted to know her. The little girl who had always yearned for affection—yearned to belong to someone.
‘Why should I believe you?’ I asked, forcing myself not to get swept up in those emotions again.
‘Let me show you,’ he said, then he wrapped his arm around my waist, to tug my body against the hard line of his—and I felt the press of his erection against my belly.
His mouth hovered close enough for me to see the purpose in his gaze as he whispered, ‘If this is not what you want, you must tell me now.’
