AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘No.’ One syllable, delivered so curtly it would be believable if her plump lips and chin weren’t trembling.
He dropped his voice into a caress. ‘You expect me to believe the desire you feel for me has ended overnight?’
She lifted her trembling chin with a hint of defiance. ‘I didn’t say that. I said I was ready to stop acting on it, as per the rules we agreed on our wedding night. Rulesyouimposed.’
Ah.Nowhe understood where this was coming from. Elsbeth was afraid he was going to enforce the rules himself and end the intimacy between them. If she only knew how hard he’d already tried to wean himself off her, her fears would evaporate.
He palmed her cheek, marvelling as he always did at how soft it felt against his skin. He inched his face closer still and whispered, ‘Rules that can be tweaked if we are both in agreement.’
They’d tweaked the rules already, to their mutual satisfaction. Why not carry on as they were when things were so good between them?
‘But I’m not in agreement.’ Oh, God, Elsbeth hadn’t meant to sound so tremulous but it was so hard holding onto her resolve when her body thrummed so madly from being held in his arms. And Amadeo heard it too. She saw it in the way his eyes gleamed.
His lips brushed against hers. The hand caressing her cheek gently drifted down her neck. She shivered at the tingles it set off.
‘You are really willing to give up such pleasure?’ he murmured sensually. ‘To never feel our naked skin as one again...’
Lower his fingers dragged, over the swell of her breast, his thumb encircling her puckered nipple, sending a strong bolt of need straight into her pelvis.
Stop it, she begged with her eyes.Don’t do this to me. This needs to end now.
‘To never feel my tongue where you like it the most...’
His fingers drifted down and over her abdomen. His breaths, hot against her mouth, were getting heavier. Elsbeth’s breaths were getting heavier too. The sensations he was evoking...
His fingers tiptoed to the band of her skirt. God help her, she was trembling with desire. ‘To never ride me the way that makes you lose yourself so...’
A finger slid beneath the band and pressed into the skin of her belly. The shock of electricity from his touch was strong enough to bring her to her senses by injecting a huge dose of humiliated rage to the fire in her veins.
Grabbing his hand, she shoved it away from her with a, ‘Getoff,’ and clumsily jumped to her feet.
For the second time in as many minutes, he looked as if she’d punched him.
‘Howdareyou try to seduce me when I’ve just told you I don’t want your seduction any more?’ she cried. ‘Which part ofI’m not in agreementdid you think you could just ignore?’
Amadeo stood, palms raised, staring at her like a zoo keeper whose placid charge has just turned rabid. He’d wanted to see colour back in her cheeks but not this angry stain.
‘This isn’t you talking, Elsbeth,’ he said steadily. ‘This is the hormones from the pregnancy.’ Hadn’t he seen how pregnancy hormones affected his sister in the early stages, making her cry easily when she’d so rarely cried before?
‘Don’t you patronise me!’ she snapped. ‘The only thing the pregnancy has to do with my decision is that it’s forced me to think clearly. I’m your wife but I’m not your partner, and you’ve made it perfectly obvious that what we have now is as far as you’re prepared to go. You’ve reached your limit and now I’ve reachedmylimit. I’d rather spend the rest of my life celibate than share a bed with a man who only wants me to slake his lust. You’re the one who made me see that I’m not on this earth to be a vessel for your pleasure and that I have the freedom to live my life within these castle walls however I choose. Well, I’ve made that choice and I choose to live it without you.’
Her words sliced through him, landing in his chest with icy, jagged barbs. ‘I have never treated you like avessel.’
‘That’s exactly how you’ve treated me. It’s how you’ve treated me from the moment we married. I could have been anyone lying there beneath you.’
‘You can’t tell me you didn’t get pleasure and satisfaction from it,’ he retorted, breathing heavily.
‘Physical pleasure but no emotional pleasure. No affection. Nothing to make me feel you saw me as a human being with feelings. And I notice you don’t deny it.’
‘What is there to deny? I’ve never hidden that I married you for the sake of my nation and the monarchy. I did my best to be gentle with you and leave you satisfied and I know damn well I achieved both those things, but you know too how I felt about you back then. How could I fake affection for a woman whose very name left me cold?’
‘I was a stranger in a new home and you left me alone!’ she cried, her voice rising. ‘That wasn’t cold, that was cruel, but I was so terrified of being sent back to the man whose name is responsible for your coldness towards me that, even if I had recognised your cruelty for what it was, I would never have spoken out. Not then.’
‘I was never intentionally cruel,’ he raged, furious at this character assassination. ‘I did everything I could to give you a home you would feel happy and comfortable in, and you know damn well too how much more of an effort I made once I was aware of your loneliness. I’ve given you every support in everything you’ve done or wanted to do.’
‘Give yourself a pat on the back then and tell yourself what a great man you are. And in many ways youarea great man and I know it’s unfair of me to throw things in your face that are in the past, but they’re things that still affect us today. They affectme. I know you made an effort with me because I could see it. I know you hated your desire for me because I sensed you fighting it. Things have been so good between us this last month but still I sense you fighting and trying to pull away and dropping hints to push me away. Whether it’s because you will never accept the blood in my veins or because you’re so used to thinking you’re right about everything that you can’t admit to yourself that you were wrong about me, or because you really do think yourself so damn superior to human emotion... I don’t know! The only thing Iamsure of is that you’ve never given us a chance. You will never give us a chance. You’ve fought your feelings for me every inch of the way and now I’m sick of the fight.’
The vein in his temple was jumping, the only sign of life on features that had turned to granite. Elsbeth refused to let it sway her from what needed to be said.
