But you left me. And I thought I would forget. But I couldn’t. When I saw you again, standing in the balcony at the palace in Santina, I thought only of satisfying my desire for you. Of having you. Possessing you. Exactly like the first time.”
Angelina crossed her arms beneath her breasts, tightening her hold on herself. She would stand upright. She would not dissolve. “And now what? You’ve decided you want to return me?”
“Then I had you. And you left,” he said, continuing as if she hadn’t spoken. “I swore I wouldn’t chase you. I swore to forget you. Still I could not. And when you told me you were having my baby…the chance at last to tie you to me forever. To bring peace to my world. I was happy. Happy because you could not leave me. Because this time you had to stay.”
He shook his head, a sudden flash of disgust curling his lip. “But something changed. I found myself wanting to give to you. And as I did, I realized how much your happiness meant. How much more it meant than my own. How could I be happy when you were so miserable? How could I hold you prisoner and call you mine?”
“But…but… Does my father have anything to do with this…has he?”
“Nothing,” he said, his voice fierce. “I rejected his offer of a partnership after I lost you. It was I who rejected it, not him. Because I couldn’t face having a connection to you without having you.”
“You said you kept in touch.”
His expression turned bleak. “I called sometimes. To see if there had been word of you.”
“You did?”
“I love you,” he said. “I love you more than I love myself, and I don’t think I have ever felt that way. I’m certain I haven’t. I want…I want your happiness so much more than I want my own. So you must promise me, Angelina, that you will be happy. And then I will let you go with a smile.”
Angelina’s breath caught, her hands shaking. “You…love me?”
“Yes,” he said.
She shook her head, tears stinging her eyes. “I…I can’t do what you asked just now. I can’t go and be happy.”
“What do you need?” he asked, his eyes shining. “What do you need and I will give it to you.”
“You,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face. “I need you.”
One of his arms curved around her waist and he lowered his head, pressing his forehead against her shoulder. “Why did you wish so badly for things to be different, then?”
“Because you didn’t love me. I wanted your love and knowing I couldn’t have that…that’s why I was sad.”
He raised his head, his eyes meeting hers. “I did love you. I didn’t know what to call it. And I did not love you in the right way. I know with certainty that I’ve loved you since the first moment I saw you. But now I’m ready to love you right.”
“What changed?” she asked.
“I did. I think it’s because of you. No, I know it is. You have changed me. You have humbled me. And I needed it, badly.”
“I love you, Taj. I loved you then. But I couldn’t stand the thought of marrying you just because you wanted to strengthen your nation’s economy. I wanted to be more to you than that.”
“You are,” he said. “Though I could not have said it then. I was foolish.”
“Maybe we both were.”
“Maybe we will be again,” he said.
“But we love each other. And that’s why we’ll stay together.”
“You’ll stay with me then? Be my wife?”
“Yes,” she said, pressing a kiss to his lips, her heart swelling with emotion, tears sliding down her cheeks.
He kissed her deeper, tightening his hold on her.
“I’ll get a procession of camels, right, sugar?” she whispered, nipping his earlobe.
He chuckled. “Nothing is too grand for you.”
“On second thought, I don’t need the camels.”
“You don’t?”
She shook her head, raised her hand and traced a line of moisture on his cheek. “No. I only need you.”
* * *
Penny Jordan
‘ASH.’ Sophia Santina, youngest daughter of the King and Queen of the island of Santina, breathed the name silently to herself, almost reverentially. Just the feel of the nearly silent breath that whispered his name and caressed her throat was enough to raise erotic pinpricks of desire within her flesh. Ash. How the whispering of his name was enough to unleash within her an aching echo of the tumultuous teenage desires he had once aroused in her. The very air was electric with the reckless sensual excitement that wantonly flooded her, even though she had sworn she would not, positively not, allow herself to experience it.
She had known, of course, that he had been invited to her eldest brother’s engagement party here at the castle that was their family home, but knowing that and actually seeing him with that strikingly sensual maleness of his that she remembered so well were two very different things.
She would have recognised him anywhere, just as she had done now merely from her brief glimpse of the back view of him as he walked into the ballroom and then turned to refuse a glass of champagne. Just the turn of his head, just the thick dark sheen of his hair and the way it curled into the nape of his neck, was enough to conjure up old memories. Memories of longing recklessly for the right to bury her fingers in its softness, curl them around its strands and then urge his mouth down to her own. A shudder of sensual awareness jolted through her. Some things never changed. A certain kind of need, a certain kind of desire, a certain kind of love.
First love? Surely only a fool believed that first love was an only love, and she prided herself on not being that. No, Ash had killed that tremulous, tender love when he had rejected her, telling her that she was a child still who was putting herself in danger by offering herself to a man of his age, that she was fortunate that his own sense of honour and the repugnance he felt at the very thought of taking what she offered meant that she was protected from him taking advantage of her naivety. Telling her that even if she had been older he would not have wanted her because he was wholly committed to someone else.
She had promised herself then that in future her love would only be given to a man who was worthy of it and who valued it and her. A man who loved her as much as she did him. And because of that promise to herself, she needed Ash’s help now, no matter how much her pride reacted angrily against that need.
Putting
