So unutterably distant... Because how could he be anything else?
She made herself say the words that proved it. ‘I get the picture, Bastiaan. You seduced me to safeguard Philip. That was the only reason.’ There was a vice around her throat, but she forced the words through.
She started to turn away. That vice around her throat was squeezing the air from her. She had to get out of here. Hadn’t Bastiaan Karavalas done enough to her without jeopardizing everything she had worked to achieve?
‘No.’
The single word, cutting through the air, silenced her.
‘No,’ he said again. He took a step towards her. ‘It was not the only reason.’
There was a vehemence in the way he spoke that stilled her. His eyes were no longer veiled...they were burning—burning with an intensity she had never seen before.
‘From the moment I first saw you I desired you. Could not resist you even though I thought you were Sabine, out to exploit my cousin. Because I thought that it gave me...’ he took a breath ‘...a justification for doing what I wanted to do all along. Indulge my desire for you. A desire that you returned—I could see that in every glance you gave me. I knew you wanted me.’
‘And you used that for your own ends.’ The bitterness was back in her voice.
He seemed to flinch, but then he was reaching for her wrist to stay her, desperate for her to hear what he must say—must say.
‘I regret everything I did, Sarah.’ He said her name with difficulty, for it was hard—so hard—not to call her by the name he’d called her when she was in his arms. ‘Everything. But not—not the time we had together.’
She strained away from him. ‘It was fake, Bastiaan. Totally fake.’ There was harshness in her voice.
‘Fake?’ Something changed in his voice. His eyes. His fingers around her wrist softened. ‘Fake...?’ he said again.
And now there was a timbre to his voice that she had heard before—heard a hundred times before...a thousand. She felt a susurration go through her as subtle as a breath of wind in her hair. As caressing as a summer breeze.
‘Was this fake?’ he said,
And now he was drawing her towards him and she could not hold back. The pulse in her veins was whispering, quickening. She felt her breath catch, dissolve.
‘Was this fake?’ he said again.
And now she was so close to him, so close that her head was dropping back. She could catch the scent of his body, the warmth of it. She felt her eyes flutter shut and then he was kissing her, the softness of his lips a homage, an invocation.
He held her close, and closer still, cupping her nape to deepen his kiss.
Bliss eased through her, melting and dissolving. Dissolving the hard, bitter knot of pain and anger deep inside her. He let her lips go, but his eyes were pouring into hers.
‘Forgive me—I beg you to forgive me.’ His voice was husky, imploring. ‘I wronged you—treated you hideously. But when I made those accusations at you—oh, they were tearing me to pieces. To have spent those days with you, transforming everything in my life, and then that final day...’ He shut his eyes, as if to shut out the memory, before forcing himself to open them again, to speak to her of what had haunted him. ‘To think myself duped—because how could you be that woman I’d feared you were when what we had was so...so wonderful.’
His voice dropped.
‘I believed all my fears—and I believed the worst fear of all. That you were not the woman I had so wanted you to be...’
He gazed down at her now, his hand around her nape, cradling her head, his eyes eloquent with meaning. And from his lips came the words he had come here to say.
‘The woman I love—Sabine or Sarah—you are the woman I love. Only you.’
She heard the words, heard them close, as close as her heart—the heart that was swelling in her breast as if it must surely become her very being, encompassing all that she was, all that she could be.
She pressed her hand against the strong wall of his chest, glorying in feeling her fingers splay out over the hard muscle beneath his shirt. Feeling the heat of his body, the beat of his heart beneath her palm.
Wonder filled her, and a whitening of the soul that bleached from her all that she had felt till now—all the anger and the hurt, the fury and the pain. Leaving nothing but whitest, purest bliss.
She gazed up at him, her face transformed. He felt his heart turn over in his breast, exultation in it.
‘I thought it impossible...’ she breathed. ‘Impossible that in a few brief days I could fall in love. How could it be so swift? But it was true—and oh, Bastiaan, it hurt so much that you thought so ill of me after what we’d had together.’