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“Right.”
“Have one,” he said.
She didn’t make a move. So he set his cupcake down, and selected one for her, holding it out.
She came forward slowly, and she surprised him, not by taking the cupcake from his hand, but by tilting her head and taking a small bite off of it.
The proximity to her mouth caused him to feel an electrified sensation that shot down his spine and radiated out toward his groin.
Desire nearly overwhelmed him. He wished to pull her in his arms and have her on the floor. He wished to...
He saw a spark of something in her eyes. And he remembered what she said about being sensitive. To changes in mood. About the way it had been a survival necessity for her.
And he wondered if she felt this. The change in him. The depth of his desire. His arousal.
Or maybe...
Maybe she just felt her own.
“It’s delicious,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he agreed.
“Thank you.”
“You are going to eat the whole thing.”
“Well. Not out of your hand.”
“Take it,” he commanded.
And the way that she obeyed him so beautifully only tightened the desire within him yet more.
She licked the frosting off the top, and he was held rapt to the movement of her slick pink tongue. She was so beautiful.
It was easy for him to forget about Ariel, even though they were talking about his past. Even though his memories of Cairo were tangled up in memories of her.
He had never wanted her.
He had certainly never loved her.
A good thing. For if he had... She would not know what to do with the man he was now. Because he was not a man who could offer those feelings.
He once had been. He might’ve even come to love Ariel. Like his parents had come to love one another.
But that part of him had been so neatly excised when the light had gone out from his mother’s eyes.
That moment had robbed him of a great many things. Then his captivity even more. But that ability to love. To care. To feel anything half so intensely... It was gone. In many ways, he was grateful, for it had ensured his survival. If he had been left a wailing, grieving boy down in that cell, how would he have ever come out of it? How would he have ever survived? It would not have been possible.
But he did not know what the years had done to Ariel. Her father had betrayed him.
“Ariel’s father betrayed mine,” he said. Because now that the thought was in his head he wished to speak of it.
“Cairo did explain some of the things to me... He was supposed to be seeking an alliance with us. Through the marriage. But instead he was paid off by the men who wished to take over the country. Who killed my family. He traded us for money.” He paused for a moment. “Some might say she should be punished for the sins of her father.”
“And you?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t decided what I will do when she gets here.”
