“Over the years, his contempt for me only grew,” she said.“He did flaunt his affairs in front of me, of course.You guessed correctly at that.Though I didn’t mind so much.If he was off with another person, then at least he wasn’t home tormenting me.But I could never please him.Never make him happy.And eventually I stopped trying.”
“I was right there,” Callum breathed.“God, I was right there and I never knew this.It is worth very little, but I’ll say it again: I’m sorry, Valaria.Sorry I was blind to his shortcomings.Sorry I didn’t stop him if I might have had the power.”
She stared up at him, her expression almost confused.Then she lifted a hand and wiped away a tear he hadn’t even realized had slid from his eyes.“It seems you suffer enough for this news.I don’t think you have to be sorry.”
He shook his head.“It’s like a death all over again.His death.The death of what and who I thought he was.”
She nodded as if she understood that.Then she took his hand in hers.A comfort for his pain, which made him a selfish prick of the highest order.
“I was miserable with him,” she said softly, her blue-gray gaze holding his, drowning him in her.“But I’m free.And now you needn’t feel guilty anymore about kissing me.”
He couldn’t help but snort out a scoff at that idea.“How so?”
She shrugged.“Because I kissed you back.And I did that because I wanted a little…goodness.Something sweet just for me.That’swhat you did for me that night, Callum.Even though I shouldn’t admit that.”
She leaned up at she said those words, her gaze becoming hooded and heavy.The hand that didn’t hold his brushed along his jawline and he felt her breath against his lips before she kissed him.
* * *
Valaria had suggested to Fanny the idea of exploiting Callum’s desire for her.But when she pressed her lips to his, there was nothing aboutcontrolthat was any part of it.And perhaps she’d always known that.Perhaps control was an excuse so she could just…touch him again.Feel him want her the way no one else in the world had ever wanted her.
She’d told him the truth, or at least as much as it as she could.Seeing his genuine reaction to her pain, seeing his guilt over his part in it…she had wanted so much to lean up into him.To wrap this man’s warmth around her and let it pierce the places where she had frozen during her loveless, horrible marriage.
Even though she shouldn’t.
But for that tiny moment, she pushed aside the shoulds and the fears and the doubts and sank into his touch.His tongue slid past her lips, gentle at first, tracing and taunting.Then probing and promising.Heat spread through her at his touch, achy, wanton need that she had told herself shecouldn’tfeel.But she felt it, oh how she felt it, in the steady embrace of this man.
And she would have done anything and everything to stay there.Would have sacrificed so much to never lose the quivering need that coursed through her.But she had no choice in that because he pulled away first.
He didn’t remove her from his arms.No, he kept her there, pressed to his chest, staring down at her with a slightly dazed expression.Like he didn’t know what to do with her now that he had her here.
“I-I still shouldn’t,” he finally murmured, his deep, rough voice barely carrying even though they were so tightly pressed against each other.“Whatever he was, it’s wrong to want this.To want you, Valaria.”
“Probably that’s true,” she agreed.“If anyone else knew it, they would judge me so harshly.And yet you do want me.And I want you.I wish it wasn’t you, Callum.If I’m honest to my very soul, I will tell you that I wish it wasn’t you that haunted me with these thoughts I shouldn’t have.”
His brow wrinkled.“Yes.”
“But when you kissed me on the terrace last week, it woke something in me.Something I thought I could not have.A desire that I believed would never exist for me.So it is you, and it is me.We’re here.And I…I don’t want to walk away.”
“Then what do you want?”he whispered, lowering his mouth back toward hers.She felt the brush of it to her lips and shivered with pleasure that seemed to pulse in every single sensitive part of her body.
“I want something that ismine, only mine, for even the briefest moment.”
“God’s teeth,” he murmured as his lips found hers again.This time the pressure of him was less gentle.She felt a shift in him, a drive that called to her in a primal way.A focused way that was unlike anything she’d ever felt before.
He backed her toward the settee and they sank down on the cushions together.She was pressed against the arm of the couch, him leaning over her, his mouth seeking and driving and tasting her like he could do just that simple act forever.
But no kiss had ever been so complicated as this one.When he kissed her, it was like he was lighting every inch of her body on fire.Like he was somehow touching her everywhere, because she felt the tug of him everywhere.His kiss was in her veins, it made her fingertips tingle, it hardened her nipples and it made her stomach feel fluttery.It made her thighs shake and her toes curl and between her legs she felt the beginnings of a specific kind of pleasure she had only ever found with her own hand.
There was a moan in the air around them and she realized with a start that it had come from her.She was lifting against him, her hands clenching at his forearms like she was some cat arching in heat.
He lifted his head and looked down at her.She waited for the judgment.The censure for wanting like she clearly was.But instead he smiled, a very wicked expression on what she had only ever seen as a rather serious face.But right now he looked like a rake who would well-pleasure a woman.
Which was exactly what she wanted in this fog of need.
“I want to give you so much pleasure, Valaria.I don’t want to take anything at all.Just give you so, so much pleasure.May I?”
She blinked, utterly confused at the idea of a man giving pleasure without demanding something in return.Did that exist?Her experience had been entirely the opposite, honestly.
