caught my breath.’ His fingers moved to the backs of my thighs, stroking me there before moving back up to my spine again, then further, to my shoulders, tracing every line of muscle, every curve. As if he was committing every part of me to memory. ‘It wasn’t your beauty that mesmerised me, Poppy, though you were amazingly beautiful. It was the look on your face. I’d only ever seen you angry and sulky and hating me, never anything else. But that day you were looking out over the sea and you had the most mysterious smile on your face. The slight hint of one. And I wanted to know what you were thinking. I was desperate to know.’
I should have been relaxed, he was touching me so gently, and yet I felt nothing but exposed. As if his touch was stripping me bare, taking away layer after layer, leaving me with nowhere to hide.
He shifted again and I felt the heat of his body come closer. The cushions dipped on either side of my head and I realised he must have put his hands there, because then I felt his breath feather lightly over the back of my neck.
I shivered, my heart squeezing in my chest yet again.
He kissed me, the softness of his mouth brushing the top of my spine before moving lower, kissing his way down the curve of my back. ‘You looked like a mermaid, so beautiful and mysterious, and I wanted you in that moment,’ he murmured against my skin, his voice my anchor. ‘I wanted you so very badly. But most of all I wanted to know what you were thinking.’
I screwed my eyes shut behind the blindfold, a weird emotional tide flooding through me as he kissed me, as he said those words, and it frightened me. I didn’t know what was happening, why I was feeling so...afraid and raw, like my innermost self was somehow lying there beneath him and he could see it.
He could see me.
I tried to concentrate on something else, the linen beneath my cheek and the press of the blindfold on my forehead, but my attention kept being drawn back to him by the light brush of his mouth on my skin. By his dark, deep voice, telling me things I didn’t want to hear.
That I was beautiful. That he’d wanted to know what I was thinking. There was something about that and the way he was touching me that made me feel as if he was ripping my heart out through my chest.
Why had he wanted to know? When I’d been so awful to him for so many years. And why was he touching me like that? As if I was precious. Because I wasn’t. Surely if I had been, my father wouldn’t have taken himself from me.
You know why he took himself from you.
‘I wasn’t thinking anything.’ I cringed at the hoarse note in my voice. ‘All I was doing was imagining that the house was mine and I was living there by myself. Nothing earth-shattering.’
He was silent for a moment but his hands didn’t stop stroking me, caressing me. ‘You didn’t want anyone around, did you? You wanted to be alone.’
‘Yes.’ I shuddered as he shifted again, trailing his mouth over the small of my back.
‘It’s lonely, though, isn’t it? That’s what you told me about my childhood, and it sounded like experience.’
Oh, shit. That was right. I had. In the shower, when he’d told me his father used to keep him isolated. And how he’d always wanted a little sister...
And you threw it back in his face all those years ago.
My eyes burned and I was glad I was blindfolded because I had a horrible feeling that I was going to start crying at any moment. Which was ridiculous. He wasn’t doing anything to me that hurt. He was only being gentle.
You don’t deserve gentleness.
‘I wasn’t lonely,’ I said both to him and to the thought. ‘I was fine.’
He only made a non-committal noise then his hands were on my hips and he was turning me over onto my back.
I didn’t want to go. At least face-down I had some protection, but there was none while I was on my back. Oh, there was the blindfold hiding my eyes, but he’d be able to read my expression anyway. He was so good at reading people, and me in particular.
I flung my arm across my face—not that that was any barrier—shivering as I felt his fingers settle at the base of my throat.
Oh, God. He was going to stroke me again, wasn’t he?
‘Of course you were fine.’ He trailed his fingers lightly down my torso. ‘That’s what you always say. But you’re not fine, Poppy. If you were, you wouldn’t mind me touching you like this.’
I shuddered as his fingertips brushed over my breasts, feeling my nipples get tight and hard. Feeling my soul curl in on itself, trying to protect itself from him and his maddeningly gentle touch.
‘I don’t mind.’ I had to force out the words. I had to force myself not to say another word too, the one that I’d never said the whole time I’d been with him.
Seven.
‘Yes, you do.’ His fingers stroked my breasts, tracing their curves, brushing lightly over my nipples and moving down, following the lines of my waist and hips, trailing over my stomach. More flames on my skin, burning.
‘Why not, bad girl? Why don’t you like being touched like this?’
I began to shake, half in helpless desire, half in fear. The blackness behind my blindfold lit up with flashes of pleasure as he stroked down my thighs and I wanted him to take me; to use me hard; to spank me and make me hurt. That was what I wanted. Not this...gentleness. Not this softness I didn’t deserve.
Because that voice in my head had always whispered the real truth and I had to accept it.
I didn’t deserve his kindness. I didn’t deserve his gentleness. I’d treated him with nothing but anger and contempt, and I’d done nothing at all to make him change his mind about me.
Nothing but have sex with him.
‘Is that what this is?’ I demanded. ‘This is all about sex, isn’t it? Just because I had sex with you—’
‘Hush.’ The word fell across the darkness with so much authority that I fell silent immediately.
My heart thumped; my breathing was fast. I was a mass of exposed nerve-endings and raw emotions and I’d never felt so vulnerable in all my life.
‘It’s not about the sex,’ he said at last. ‘This is about you. You’re hurt, Poppy. You’re wounded. And when a creature is wounded and hurt, they protect themselves. But I’m trying to tell you that you don’t have to protect yourself from me.’ His hands ran down my legs, softly, gently. ‘You’re beautiful, yes, but that’s not all you are. You’re passionate and you feel deeply. You’re protective too. Of your mother and how she’s survived.’
‘That’s not true. Not about Mum—’
‘Of course it’s true.’ His palms slid back up, long, stroking touches. ‘Why else would you get job after job to help her?’
I shook my head, denying it. I had to do that for Mum. She was my mother. She didn’t have anyone else. And I owed her after Dad...
‘It
