perfect touch, and her body glowed and shimmered with the radiance of the desire she couldn’t control “…we both know the truth.”
“Toby,” she whispered, aching, hurting, right down to her fingertips with the yearning for him, for everything.
“Say it, Giulia,” he whispered back. “Say ‘I want you, Toby,’ and I’ll be your friend and lover, tonight and every night.”
His chest brushed oh so lightly against her breasts, and they swelled at the touch, blissful pain. She gasped.
“You don’t know what you’re asking of me.” She ripped herself from his arms and bolted.
Toby froze in the warm, late-summer darkness, feeling it envelop him now she was gone. She’d taken the light and sweetness of hope with her, leaving him bruised, his body battered and in physical pain.
She didn’t know.
Her blindness shocked him, her utter stone-blindness to his love. After ten years of showing her in every possible way how much he loved and wanted her, she didn’t even think he found her pretty or interesting.
The doctor’s words of years ago came back to haunt him.
No matter what you say or do, even you, her closest support person, may never know the depth of damage to her self-esteem or how she sees herself.
He leaned against the bookshelf where she’d been, inhaling the last vestiges of her scent. How had he saved her life, been her best friend so many years, and known her so little? How had she listened to every word he’d said to her for so long, yet never truly grasped their meaning? She’d called his endearments “nonsense.”
At this point, only one thing was clear: he’d shocked her to her core by kissing her today. She honestly hadn’t seen it. She didn’t even see how much he needed her.
If he wanted to win her, he couldn’t take a single thing for granted. He had to start over from scratch, to show her he didn’t just love her, he found her beautiful and desirable—the only woman he wanted.
I’m not a child any more, Toby; I’m a woman!
Ten years dreaming her dreams for her, making her every wish come true, and she’d grown and changed; she’d become a woman before his blinkered eyes. And now she’d gone so far ahead of him he couldn’t see her. Worse, he hadn’t even noticed when she’d left.
The title and tiara were the least of his problems. She loved him, wanted him, but she didn’t love him, and didn’t want him. After half a lifetime of being everything to her, she’d trusted him with the truth only now, when she believed it was too late.
How long had she been hiding this resentment from him? How long had she wanted a woman’s life, and he hadn’t noticed?
I’m a woman! The passionate lilt in her voice as she’d said it had both made him harder than he’d ever been, awakened him from ten years of aching love lost inside a mental fog of fear, and made him smile at last. So Max didn’t see her as a woman? She wanted a man to see her, to want her as a woman?
As ever, half an hour with her inspired him. With two sentences, she’d shown him the way to opening her guarded and locked heart. She’d even shown him how he could stay in Hellenia, at least for now, how to circumvent the King’s suspicions.
If Hellenia needed healing, he had some plans that just might impress the crusty old king.
And if Giulia wanted a man to show her just how much he wanted her, she was about to get it.
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