She wished she could summon the anger that had once stirred in her, but she could feel only her body’s helpless response to him, as if it wanted him in ways she was afraid to face. She wanted to shake off his hands, but she was too captivated by his expression to do more than shift against him.
And of course, when she moved, she felt him—hard and hot so deep inside of her—and she felt her own melting, shivering response.
“That was but a taste,” he said, that near-smile flirting with his mouth. “It has been a long time.”
Her head spun, and then the world spun too as he swung her around, moving her with an effortless might and grace, rolling them both over on the blanket. He settled himself between her thighs and looked down into her face.
He never broke their intimate connection, and she told herself that was what made her heart hammer even harder against her ribs.
“Since me, you mean?” she stammered, gazing up at him, her eyes wide with a kind of desperation.
Why did she feel the overpowering need to run from him, to put any distance between them she could? But he was everywhere—inside her, above her—and there was no escape.
“You don’t mean a long time over all—you mean since me? Since you and I …?” Her voice trailed away.
The laughter faded from his expression, and an enigmatic light gleamed in his dark eyes. She shivered, and he was still inside her, growing harder by the moment. She shifted, but it only drew him in deeper, closer, and she caught her breath as sensation arrowed through her, bathing her in heat and light.
“I mean that it has been a long time since I touched you,” he said, his eyes pinning her to the ground as surely as his body did, offering no quarter, no compromise. “Which also means that it has been a long time since I have touched anyone.” His eyes rose, challenging her. Shaming her. Reading her secrets and laying her bare. “I take my vows very seriously, Bethany. I did not break them.”
Bethany felt dizzy. Her heart fluttered wildly in her chest and she thought—she hoped—she might faint. But instead one moment dragged into another, and he simply waited. Watched and waited, when she wanted to thrash and scream and howl out her reaction, no matter how little sense that might make.
She felt lost to herself. A stranger.
“Leo …” She could only whisper his name. She could not identify the emotions that swelled in her, rolling and pitching as if she were a tiny boat adrift in a great sea. “You should know …I mean, I never …”
Who had she become? she wondered in a mix of shame, panic and something else, something far deeper and more dangerous. She could not make it through a single sentence.
She felt her eyes fill and was horrified to think she might weep. Not now. Please, not now!
Still, Leo merely waited. He only watched her, propped up on his elbows, his expression unreadable, though she could feel the great, humming power of him as if he connected her to some immense electrical storm—as if he was the storm, just barely held in check by the iron force of his will.
“I thought if I claimed to have a lover you would hate me,” she said, forcing the words out, though her lips felt numb and she knew on some deep level that she could not understand, that there was no going back from this admission. This was new ground, shaky and insecure.
And still she continued on, face to face, more naked and more terrified than she could ever remember being before though she still wore her clothes.
“And I thought if you hated me,” she managed to say, “You would let me go.”
Something seemed to shimmer between them, bright and sharp, and he very nearly smiled. He moved closer to her, pulling a curl between his fingers and tucking it behind her ear. She was sure she saw something sad and resigned move through him before he laid a trail of soft kisses along her jaw.
He does not believe me, she thought in a dawning kind of horror, and it broke her heart.
“I never had a lover,” she confessed, desperate that he hear her, that he listen, that he believe her. She was as desperate he believe this truth as she had been that he believe the lie, and even as she spoke she could not quite face the reasons she was so distraught. She only felt it, deep within, like a great abyss she had been pretending for years did not exist at all. “I made it up.”
He looked up then, his eyes gleaming with a bone-deep satisfaction, bright and hard and triumphant. His mouth curved into a stark, male smile that made her shudder deep within.
“Believe me,” he said, a ruthless heat in his voice, his gaze, his skin against hers, “I know.”
“But …” she breathed, her voice catching in her throat, her mind a sudden tumult of ‘how?’ and ‘when?’ and ‘why?’ but he only laughed. It was a resoundingly wolfish sound, and she could not help the way she shuddered around him.