She was rocking against him, trying to ease her own need, her fingers curled in his shirt. Kissing him back so hungrily and so desperately.
Yet all the hunger and the desperation in the world wasn’t a match for the ice that wrapped itself around his heart, and before he knew what he was doing, he’d pushed himself away from her.
Her eyes were wide, her cheeks flushed with the effects of their kiss. She blinked. ‘Ares? What’s wrong?’
He took a breath, fighting his growing sense of disquiet.
That all the things he wanted to give her wouldn’t ever be enough. That she should have more than that, that shedeservedmore than that.
She deserves to be treated as a true wife should. With love.
He turned away from her suddenly, striding back to fire and grabbing the tumbler off the mantelpiece. He went over to the drinks cabinet where the vodka bottle sat and opened it, splashing some more into the glass.
‘Ares?’ Rose’s voice was full of uncertainty.
He took a swallow of the vodka and glanced over to where she stood. She looked half ravaged; her pretty mouth was full and red from his kiss, a flush creeping down her golden skin and under the creased silk of her dress.
Theos, how he wanted her. Had he wanted Naya this badly? He couldn’t remember.
You know it’s true. You know that’s what you should give her.
He didn’t want to acknowledge it, not any part of it, but it crept through his brain all the same. Somehow, at some point in this past year, the heart he’d thought had died with Naya had started beating again, and Rose was the one who’d restarted it.
And now she mattered to him, which was not what he’d wanted or planned for.
His heart was supposed to stay dead along with his wife.
But he could feel the pull inside him towards her, the need to cross the distance between them once again, to have the pleasure of her silken skin beneath his hands, and the hot clasp of her sex around his. Her breath in his ear and her touch on his body. And it wasn’t just physical, because if it had been, any woman would have satisfied him right then.
But he didn’t want just any woman.
He wanted her and her alone. And he had from the first moment he’d met her.
But why should you be allowed to have her? You had a woman once before, remember? And you killed her. You do not deserve a second chance.
‘Ares?’ Rose was closer now, the firelight gilding her gorgeous figure. ‘What’s the matter? Did I do something I shouldn’t?’
‘No,’ he said roughly. ‘Tell me, what are you going to do about your brother?’
The change of subject was so sudden Rose just stared at him. She was still trembling from the effects of that kiss, her mouth hot and sensitive, the place on her thigh where he’d touched her burning. She wanted more of that, more of his hunger meshing perfectly with hers, not this anger. Because that’s what it looked like to her. He was angry and she didn’t know why.
When she’d appeared in the doorway and he’d turned from the fire, the look in his eyes flaring silver, she’d thought their earlier tension had been put behind them. Then he’d shocked her with an apology before kissing her and every thought had vanished from her head. She’d thought they were okay, that they’d gone back to what they’d had back in the Cotswolds...
Until he’d pushed himself suddenly away from her.
It didn’t make any sense. Had it been her? Had she done something wrong? Had he had second thoughts? What?
‘My brother,’ she echoed, the words not making any sense to her immediately.
‘Yes, Castor Xenakis.’ Ares sounded impatient now. ‘You need to contact him.’
Rose struggled to process what he was talking about, her head still wrapped around his kiss. Then it penetrated.
Her brother. Whom Ares had found. Castor Xenakis.
She took a breath. ‘Oh, I... Yes, I will contact him.’
‘Tonight,’ Ares said flatly. ‘You need to tell him tonight.’