Such a remarkably subtle thing.
So very deliberate.
So absolutely devastating.
A quicksilver rush of heat poured from the nape of her neck right down through the center of her and pooled between her legs in a shocking, sharp pulse of lust.
She was fairly certain her nipples were erect.
She stared at him, stunned.
Her skin seemed to be humming softly, as though he’d called it to life like a choir director.
And that’s when she realized that he must have been noticing those minute changes in her sensual awareness of him, too, blooming in her like her own secret spring.
And now...
Was he testing her?
Or testing himself?
His eyes were so dark now: all pupil. His face was somber and taut.
Her mind flashed to the first moment he’d seen her. That remarkable stillness, as if he needed to brace himself to accommodate the fact of her. His stillness last night, when she’d emerged from her room. That compliment.
Looking at him now, she had a sense for thefirst time of the sheer force of everything he kept leashed. It waited there, just below his surface.
And all at once she was suspended between exhilaration and fear.
“Did you love him?” His voice was low. A little gruff.
The question shocked her so thoroughly her mind went momentarily blank.
He asked it as though this was a continuation of that conversation they’d held in the semi-dark garden years ago.
Then again, in many ways, that conversation had never ended. It was the undertone of every word they said, in every single moment they’d spent together since then.
It had been, in many ways, the thread which had wound through her entire life since her wedding night.
And now her heart was rabbit-kicking away in her chest.
She stared at him. Stunned at the astonishing quality and timing of the ambush. Then of course, he was the strategist.
She could have sworn his breath was held.
There was so much she hadn’t known or even anticipated about this man. But of the things she felt she instinctively knew about him, none astonished her more than the conviction that, in some ways, he was more vulnerable than she was. Hence her instinct to protect him from pain.
Another thing she knew for certain was that,whether or not he believed her, she could not and would not ever lie to him. Regardless of the cost.
“Yes. At the time, I felt as though I did love him.”
She revealed this delicately. She would not apologize for something that had been true and that she did not regret.
He took this in.
“Do you still?” The words sounded measured. The tone was almost gentle.
But his voice was a little hoarse.