She’d intrigued him from the first, promising passion to lighten boredom and weariness. This affair, like all his others, offered mutual sexual gratification. That was all he asked. So how had it become so much more?
His devastation when she didn’t contact him, his happiness on seeing her again, and now the way she bypassed a lifetime’s defenses made him realize he risked something deeper. Something that would leave him in tatters when it finished.
Perhaps it finished now.
Perhaps that was a good thing. No more vulnerability. No more uncertainty. No more emotional turmoil.
No more Diana…
As a man waited for a death sentence, he waited for her to go. To flounce out that garden gate, never to return.
Even over the furious pounding of his blood, he didn’t hear her shift. Clearly the foolish chit meant to stay.
Why? Surely she couldn’t want any more vapid revelations from her lover.
Tense as a drawn wire, he prepared to endure some inane remark. Something about knowledge he’d lived with all his life being untrue. Sentimental pap about his family loving him all the same.
She kept silent.
For a long interval, the air between them thickened with everything spoken and unspoken.
Gradually, curiosity stirred, warred with shame. He turned, expecting to read derision or, even worse, pity in her beautiful face.
Diana was so still, he wasn’t even sure she was breathing. She stared at him out of eyes mysterious in the darkness. He couldn’t mistake her expression.
She looked utterly desolate.
Could she care so much?
She looked as though he’d broken her heart. He stifled the betraying words that welled up, begging for her comfort, begging for her regard. He’d made enough of a fool of himself for one night.
He was an adult, not a sniveling child.
This woman had come to him for sensual experience. That he could give her. So much sensual experience that she’d forget this difficult moment where he felt he’d sliced open his veins and bled out every mortifying secret.
“I want you,” he growled, prowling closer.
“Ashcroft…” she faltered, sidling back. The desolation lingered.
He couldn’t bear to see her so open and defenseless. It made him yearn to be a different man, a better man. The kind of man who could offer her forever and not just a tawdry affair. A man she’d respect instead of just desire.
Although desire offered its own rich bounty.
“Enough,” he said in a guttural voice. Without giving her a chance to flee, he swept her up into his arms, turned, and strode toward the open doors facing the fragrant garden.
As he hoisted her high against his chest and climbed the shallow steps, she trembled with need. It had been like this from the first. Ashcroft touched her, and she was lost. But for once hunger wasn’t paramount. Anguish was.
His reluctant, excruciating confession had stabbed her to her sinner’s soul.
And not just because he proved her instincts right. In spite of his own unruly life, he’d never forgiven his wayward mother for breaking her marriage vows. If he discovered how Diana deceived him, he’d never forgive her either.
But compared to what he’d suffered and overcome, that hardly counted.
“I’m too heavy,” Diana protested without force.
“You’re a feather.” His breathlessness gave the lie to his gallantry. In a commanding motion, he shouldered the door wider and carried her inside.
She smothered a creaky laugh against his shirt. “Hardly.”