His mouth moved on hers, and as he pulled her against him, he knew he should turn and walk away. Some voice in his head saidGo! Leave! Release her!
Her hands were flat against his chest, warm, and she pressed, resisting. His hand gently cupped the back of her head and he softened his mouth, gave her sweet small kisses, his lips on her hers, sipping, before pulling back, kissing her again, and pulling back, so she knew he would not force her.
Yet his intent was clear; he knew he was seducing her. Only his wants drove him. No minute slip of lost conscience miraculously appeared. Getting closer was his goal, inside of her. There was one truth in all of the desire and want. Some truth in his head told him if he could get inside of her heart, she could save him from himself.
Then she surrendered to him and kissed him back, linked her arms around his neck; she was warm and fluid, melting into him. The longer he held her and kissed her, the closer he grew to her, the more he understood he was a doomed man. The taste of her mouth was all he needed for the rest of his life. Thoughts ran rampant in his head, fighting with the powerful emotion of what he was feeling.
The precious daughter of the king? She was the farthest thing from safe, so why did his instincts tell him she was his salvation? He was mad…mad…mad….
His mind reeled backwards to another time, another woman who had jumped from a tower to escape his desire. Although everything that was right in the world shouted for him to cease this insane act now, his passion flared like oil on fire, blinding him with its intense light and burning through his doubts and whatever handful's worth of conscience and honor he might have had left.
There was nothing but her soft mouth open and yielding, nothing but his need to get inside of her innocence. There was her tongue against his, her scent swirling around him as if the air held nothing but her.
The time for his salvation was past. He was too far gone to save. But for the sweetest of moments, he found a taste of the life he could never have.
Just one more moment, he told himself.
The passion, brilliant and golden, began to wane and a heart-crushing sound, pitiful and innocent, made him freeze.
She was crying.
As recognition cracked through his senselessness, he broke the kiss. His kisses, gentle though they were, had made Isobel cry. He stepped away, needing some distance between her soft body and his.
She cried out softly on a breath, and her moist eyes flew open. Her expression told him she was unable to understand what had just happened. Bewilderment, the same confusion he felt, pain and something close to horror ran across her expressive and lovely face. And it was like watching someone crush a perfect rose in their fist. Tears fell from her eyes. Her hand went to her mouth and she looked up at him with honest desire and something else he wished he did not see there.
Her heart was on her sleeve, and his heart was in the way.
Lyall wished he were capable of love, of believing he could put himself in someone else’s hands, but he might as well believe that if he held very, very still, a bee would never sting him.
“Do not look at me like that,” he said gruffly. He was a man who could never love. His love would be pure destruction and he would take down with him any poor female soul who believed he was worth loving...worth saving.
As she searched his face he forced himself to look passive, unwilling to give anything, afraid if he did he would take her to hell with him. He could never let her see he had almost given into everything he was feeling. So he grew tense, and she looked down—shamed by him. He had taught her that with their first kisses—to be ashamed. Proof of the bastard he was.
She turned her back to him, a sorrowful cry escaping into the air.
He stepped forward, his hands on her shoulders and he pulled her back against him, resting his chin on the top of head, closing his eyes against all that was going through him.
She was quivering like a frightened hare when she said, “I am supposed to feel ashamed. I am ashamed this time.”
“No, Glenna. You are innocent.”
“But you do not understand. I want you to kiss me. I want you to touch me. Oh, how I regret what I feel!”
He turned her around and she would not look up at him. He lifted her chin with his knuckle. “You have nothing to regret or be ashamed of. Your heart and what you feel is pure. ‘Tis not you, but me.”
She gave a quick and humorless cry and shook her head. “I do regret what I am feeling because of how you look at me when we stop. As if this is horrible, what I feel. It consumes me and I cannot stop myself.”
He laughed bitterly then because her words were the same as his thoughts.
She stepped out of his arms and faced him.“You can stand there, as I bare every thought in my head and feeling in my heart and still laugh at me?” She stared at him in disbelief. “I unfold the deepest of my secrets and you mock me?” She was truly angry and her face crumpled as surely as if he had crushed it in his fist. “I think at this moment,” she said. “I truly, truly hate you.”
Perhaps hate was the best thing between them, at least he could let her believe that she hated him. It was not true. And if nothing else, she deserved some truth in this whole tangle of lies.
Lyall took a long breath but his chest was so tight he could barely fill his lungs. When he spoke, the words were the most honest he had ever spoken in his whole miserable life. “What we feel is not hate.”
He turned then and walked away. He had said all he could. ‘Twas not hate he felt, but the opposite, yet there was no possible way he could ever say the other words to her.
***
