Burning into her.
For one endless moment they stood, frozen in time.
Then she spoke again: ‘Let me go.’ It was a halting, faltering whisper. A plea.
Slowly, infinitely slowly, her gaze agonising, she watched him shake his head.
‘I can’t.’ A rasp broke from him. ‘I can’t let go of you—’ he said.
And yet his hand dropped from her shoulder and she felt her body sway with the release of his grip. She must turn away—walk away—shemust...
But she did not move. The world had stopped—so had her breathing, her pulse, the very beat of her heart. All had stopped. And still she could not move. His eyes were burning into hers, with a dark, dark fire in their bottomless depths. She could not wrench hers away. Could do nothing...
She heard him say her name. A hollow husk. Saw his hand lift to her waist. Felt weakness drown her...
His hand moved around her waist slowly, infinitely slowly, and she knew with what was left of any consciousness within her that she must step back—that stepping back, leaving, was the only sane thing to do...
But there was no sanity any longer. No sense, no consciousness...no rage or scorn or anger or fury. Only the flame beating up in her, burning all her senses, possessing her...
He said her name again, low and hoarse and broken. He stepped towards her, drawing her to him, his hand splaying out over her spine.
She was pliant, yielding...
Yielding to what was possessing her. Consuming her.
Even as her mouth, lips parting, lifted to his...
CHAPTER EIGHT
HERMOUTHWASVELVET. Velvet and silk and honey and nectar. He could only gorge on it. Everything dissolved around him. All sense...all shame. All purpose but this.
Somewhere he heard the sound of words shredding in his head like torn rags. This was not what he’d intended...
She was supposed to have come here—supplicant, desperate—and I was to have let her come, let her believe that I would allow her to do what she thought I was offering her. And then, when the moment came and she offered herself to me, I would thrust her from me—cast her aside. Show her that she had nothing that I wanted! Show her she had no power over me. Show myself that she has no power over me...
The very thought was a searing mockery to him now. She was in his arms, her body pressed to his, her mouth opening to his. His mouth was devouring hers and hers his. Desire—urgent...desperate—was leaping in them both. Desire that was impossible to deny. To defeat...
Her breasts were cresting against him and he could feel his arousal spearing him, widening his stance, could feel her hips crushing into his, feel the blinding flame of desire flare up in her as it did in himself. Unquenchable...consuming everything. His will, his reason, his conscious mind.
All evening he had fought it—from the moment she’d walked in, so incandescently alluring, just as she had been that first fatal evening when her lush, wanton beauty had inflamed him. But he had steeled himself, exerted his iron strength to see this through to the end. To the moment when he would complete his destruction of her.
By rejecting her.
Rejecting who she was and what she had done to him. What she would never do to him again.
What she was doing now...
Blindly he lifted her into his arms, felt the ripe lushness of her body pressing against his as he carried her into his bedroom.
Into his bed.
His whole body was aflame for her. Consuming him in its fire.
Light was filtering through shuttered windows. Light that burnt.
Ariana opened her eyes.
Luca was standing there, looking down at her. He had on a bathrobe. His jaw was unshaven. Eyes like granite. For an endless moment he simply went on looking at her, nothing in his eyes, in his face. Nothing at all.