absence of love hadn’t changed that. It was a sobering realization, just how much Taj still mattered. How much power he still possessed. That he could make her run. She gritted her teeth. No. She didn’t run. At least, she wouldn’t run now. Wouldn’t give him that satisfaction, that level of importance.
She took a breath and her hand turned the door handle before she’d fully processed the action, and she found herself staring into Taj’s obsidian eyes.
“Don’t run from me again,” he bit out.
“Again? Don’t flatter yourself. I was never running from you. I was running to independence. I’m not a frightened child. I don’t run from things.” She crossed her arms beneath her chest.
“Liar. In the hall just now, you were very much running from me. From the attraction that still exists between us.”
“Attraction? Have you been drinking tonight?”
“I don’t drink. You know that. And yes, attraction. It has always been there, or have you forgotten the night we spent in your father’s barn?”
“You make it sound like we…” His gaze dropped to her lips. “We kissed. That’s all.” And they’d cuddled up together, looking at the night sky through a hole in the roof, her hand on his chest, her mouth spilling out all of her stupid dreams for the future. Dreams she’d believed he’d shared in. But while she’d been counting stars, he’d been counting money. The money he would make when he married her.
“There are simple kisses, Angelina, and then there are the kinds of kisses we shared that night. And they are not the same thing.”
No, they weren’t. But the only reason they’d been different was because she’d been barely twenty and had fancied herself in love. They’d felt new and precious, and more exciting than anything else ever had.
“We just kissed, Taj.”
“And if we kissed again? You think you would feel…?”
“Nothing,” she whispered. “I would feel nothing.”
He leaned in and her breath caught. She didn’t back away from him. She couldn’t. “Is that so? You have not thought of me since you left? Not once?”
Always. “No.”
“You lie again,” he said, his voice rough, his eyes glittering in challenge.
If he was trying to intimidate her, it wouldn’t work. Her eyes were open now, to the world, to the people around her. People she’d thought loved her.
She was not a child anymore. And she would not act like one. Wouldn’t allow him to walk into her life and devastate it or think even for a moment that he could. She wouldn’t allow him to have all the control. No. She had control now. She had power.
She put her hands on his face, his stubble rough beneath her palms. Leaning in, she pressed her lips to his. They were hot and hard, immobile. Her stomach tightened, a fierce rush of need flowing through her, the kind of need she hadn’t felt since the last time Taj had held her in his arms.
He didn’t move and she angled her head, sliding her tongue against the seam of his lips. That was when he moved, like a man breaking free from chains. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him, deepening the kiss, his tongue moving against hers.
She could feel his heart beneath her hands, raging hard, out of control. Every bit as out of control as she felt.
He took a step and she took a step back, then he took another and she followed. He released her for a moment to shut the door hard behind him, the sound jarring her back to reality.
“What are you doing?”
“You started it, Angel, shouldn’t you have the answer?” he asked.
“I don’t…” Her pulse thundered in her head and she tried to form a coherent sentence. She had meant to show him she had command now. That she wasn’t so easily manipulated. But all of those intentions had been knocked right out of her the moment their lips had touched.
She couldn’t prove a point, not while she was so utterly lost in sensation.
He took a step toward her, his expression changing, softening. He put his hand on her cheek. “You are real. You must be.”
“I…of course I am.”
“You never said goodbye to me when you left.”
“I was angry at you.”
The corners of his lips turned down. When he made that face, it was easy to imagine him as a sulky, spoiled child. Nothing about that should be endearing, and yet, she found it was. “I surmised as much. I never did find out why.”
“You don’t know?”
He shook his head. “I assumed perhaps you had found a better prospect, and yet here you are, a nanny, so I’m certain now that isn’t the case.”
She laughed. “I did find a better prospect. Independence. Life beyond being your accessory. When I found out my father was promising you my hand in order to cement the merger I…I couldn’t stay. I’m not a thing, Taj, and I refused to be traded like I was.”
“Angelina…”
“Is this the part where you tell me I misunderstood? That you weren’t really going to do it? That you had other motives?” She’d wondered over the years. Wondered if she’d been too quick to run. If she should have stayed and talked to him.
Waiting for the words now was tantamount to torture.
“No. I’m not going to say that. Because I was using you to get the merger. Though, I confess I thought you were complicit in the arrangement.”
Only because she’d imagined she’d meant something to him. That when he’d kissed her, there had been feeling in it.
“I wasn’t.”
“And now what, Angelina? Do I leave you here? Do we never see each other again?”
The idea of Taj turning and walking away, the thought of never seeing him again, made her heart ache. More than that, it reminded her of the ache that had existed since she’d lost him the first time.
He was the man she’d never been able to forget. The one demon from her past left unexorcised. What would it take? What would it take to rid her body of her desire for him? To squeeze those deeply held feelings from her heart? To erase him from her mind.
Her body burned from the kiss. Her heart burned from looking at him.
She hated it. She hated how much he controlled her. Whether he was standing in front of her, or in another country entirely, the man held too much power. It had to end.
He turned away, and her stomach jolted. Leaving, separation, that wouldn’t work. It wasn’t enough. She knew it. And she was desperate. Desperate to make it go away. Her desire for him was beneath her skin, in her blood.
There was only one
