the bed. Ever since he’d led her from the dinner table she’d tried to find a way to tell him the truth, that she wasn’t a virgin. His obvious assumption made the need for disclosure all the more vital, yet somehow the words wouldn’t come. And when Leo had kissed her, and undressed her, and touched her...
Then she’d had no words at all.
She didn’t remember how they ended up lying on the bed, Leo sliding off her underwear and then his own so they were both completely naked. It had all happened so quickly, yet she felt as if she’d been waiting for this moment for ever.
And still she hadn’t told him. Maybe later, she thought hazily as Leo bent his head to her breast and she raked his shoulders with her nails, her body arching off the bed as he flicked his tongue against her heated, over-sensitised skin. After. She’d tell him after.
She felt Leo’s hand between her thighs, his fingers sliding deftly to the damp warmth between them and her hips arched instinctively as he found her centre.
‘You’re lovely,’ he murmured as he touched her, brushing kisses across her mouth, her jaw, her throat. ‘So lovely.’
‘You are too,’ Alyse answered, her voice uneven, and he laughed softly.
He slid a finger inside her and she felt her muscles instinctively clench around him. A wave of pleasure crashed over and drowned out any possible attempts at speech or thought. Leo’s touch was so knowing, so assured, and her fingernails dug into the bunched muscles of his shoulders as he rolled over her, his clever fingers replaced by the hard press of his erection.
Alyse arched her hips, welcoming this glorious invasion, the sense of completeness she ached to feel with every fibre of her being.
‘This might hurt just a little,’ he whispered and she closed her eyes against a sudden, soul-quenching rush of shame.
She couldn’t lie to him, not even by her silence. Not now, not about this.
‘It won’t, Leo,’ she choked, her anguish all too apparent to both of them. ‘I’m—I’m not a virgin.’
She felt him poised above her, could feel the heat and strength of him so close to her; another inch or two and he’d be inside her, as she so desperately wanted. She arched her hips reflexively, but he didn’t move.
Alyse let out a shudder of both longing and despair. Clearly she picked her moments well.
Leo swore under his breath and eased back. ‘What a time to tell me,’ he said, his voice coming out in a groan.
‘I didn’t—didn’t know how to tell you,’ she whispered miserably.
Leo rolled onto his back and stared up at the woven-grass roof of the hut, his chest heaving with the effort of stopping at such a critical moment.
‘Obviously it’s a distressing memory,’ he said after a moment, his eyes still on the roof. ‘You must have been very young.’
‘It was.’ She took a breath, hating that they were talking about this now, in such an intimate moment, a moment that had seconds ago promised tenderness and pleasure and perhaps even the first fragile shoots of a deeper and more sacred emotion. ‘And I wasn’t that young. I was twenty.’
She felt Leo still next to her, every muscle in his body seeming to go rigid. Then he turned his head to stare at her, and everything in Alyse quailed at the sight of the cold blankness in his eyes. ‘Twenty?’
‘Yes—at university.’
‘You slept with someone at university?’ he repeated, sounding so disbelieving that Alyse flinched.
‘Yes—do we have to talk about this?’
‘I don’t particularly relish the conversation myself.’ In one fluid movement Leo sat up and reached for his boxers.
Alyse felt her throat thicken as disappointment and frustrated desire rushed through her. ‘Leo, I’m sorry. I suppose I should have told you earlier, but we never had any remotely intimate conversations, and frankly I just wanted to forget it ever happened. That’s no excuse, I know.’ He finished sliding on his boxers and just picked up his shirt. ‘Are you—are you angry? That I’m not a virgin?’
He let out a bark of humourless laughter and turned to face her. He looked as cold and remote as he ever had—only worse, because she’d seen his face softened in sleep or with a smile, his eyes warm with laughter and then hot with desire. Now he was reverting once more to the icy stranger she knew, the man who made her despair. ‘You think I’m angry that you’re not a virgin?’
‘Well—yes.’
He shook his head, the movement seeming one of both incredulity and contempt. ‘That would be a bit of a double standard, since I’m not one.’
She swallowed, surprised. ‘I know, but it’s always been different for men, hasn’t it? And the whole princess thing...’
‘This has nothing to do with the princess thing,’ Leo answered her shortly. ‘And I don’t believe in double standards. If I seem angry, Alyse, it’s not because you’ve had sex before. It’s because you had sex while you were engaged to me.’
And, before she could even process that statement, he had yanked on his trousers and was heading out into the night.
LEO STRODE ACROSS the beach, knowing that, just like last night, he had nowhere to go and hating it. Damn this island. Damn Alyse. Damn himself, for caring about what she’d done—and who she’d done it with.
He didn’t feel merely betrayed, which was what made him so angry. He felt hurt.
Stupid, because it had happened years ago, and it wasn’t as if they’d actually loved each other. So what if she’d loved someone else? Given herself to someone else? What did it really matter?
And yet it did.
He knew he was overreacting; knew he should be at most surprised, and a little annoyed, perhaps, by her infidelity during their engagement, but he shouldn’t actually care.
Not like this. Never like this.
‘Leo?’
He turned and saw her slender form framed in the doorway of the hut, now clothed in one of those ridiculously frothy robes, the candlelight silhouetting her slight yet still lush curves, curves he remembered the feel of under his palms. Leo turned his face away.
‘Please don’t storm off,’ she said, the desolation in her voice reaching him in far too many ways. ‘Talk to me.’
Leo didn’t reply. He didn’t want to talk to her, didn’t want to explain the feelings that churned inside him, the feelings he wasn’t sure he understood—or wanted to understand—himself.
‘Please, Leo.’
Wordlessly he stalked back to the hut, his back to Alyse and the all-too-tempting image she presented in her ridiculous robe. Fine.
