The Rogue Not Taken

And just before she found it, he stopped, lifting his mouth from her, knowing he was the worst kind of ass when she cried his name in frustration. He pressed his lips to the silk of her inner thigh once, twice, as she settled before looking up at her, finding her blue eyes glittering with desire and something more primitive. Something like need.

“Poor love,” he said, the taste of her on his lips, teasing him as much as the feel of his words against the hot center of her teased her.

“King,” she groaned. “What are you doing?”

“I want you to talk.”

Her eyes went wide. “Talk?”

“I want you to tell me all the things you desire.”

“I desire . . .”

“What?”

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

He leaned in and licked, long and slow, and she sighed her pleasure. “Please.”

He lingered over the place where she strained for his touch. “I like it when you beg, love. What more do you desire?”

“That.”

He blew a long stream of air across her aching skin. “What, precisely?”

“Don’t make me say it,” she said.

“Why?” he teased. “Because ladies don’t say such things?”

She laughed at that, a little huff of air that made him adore her even more. “Ladies most definitely do not say such things.”

“Try.”

“I desire—” For a long moment, he thought she might not say anything, even as he hovered there, a hairsbreadth from where she wanted him. From where he wanted to be. And then she did speak, and in four words, she destroyed him. “I desire your pleasure.”

He pulled back, meeting her gaze at the words, seeing the truth there. He couldn’t find the words to speak.

She reached for him, lifting his face to hers. “Whatever you want, King. I want it, as well.” She pressed her lips to his, long and lingering, before lifting her head and saying, “Don’t you see? My pleasure is yours. I am yours.”

And that was it.

The kiss they shared then was nothing short of a claiming, wicked and full of promise. “You’re mine,” he said, as though her words had unlocked him, and perhaps they had. They’d certainly threatened his control. His desire. His need. “You’re mine,” he repeated, taking her mouth even as she took his. “You’re mine.”

“Yours,” she whispered as he released her lips and returned his attention to the core of her.

“You gave yourself to me,” he whispered, desperate for her.

Her fingers guided him to her. “I did,” she whispered. “I am yours.”

And then his mouth was on her, his tongue working at her, and he was pouring everything into the caress—desire and need and frustration and adoration and yes, anger. Anger that he couldn’t have her like this forever, here, open to him. Anger that he hadn’t met her years earlier. Anger that her love was not enough to heal him now.

He kissed her again and again, making wild love to her with his mouth, wanting to reward her for her honesty and punish her for it, as well—for the way she seemed to know that what he wanted was in concert with her own desire. For the way she used him.

For the way he loved it.

His tongue and fingers played over her and she cried out gloriously to the fountain and the labyrinth and the sun and the sky, first his name, and then a single word, again and again, like a litany and a weapon, at once blessing him and destroying him.

“Yours.”

His.

He gave her no purchase, remaining there at the throbbing, aching place where she wanted him most, making love to her until she came apart, crying her pleasure on that one word.

Yours.

He stayed with her until she returned to earth, to the labyrinth, Ariadne to his Minotaur, somehow able to destroy him with her touch.

Yours.

He would hear that word, spoken in her voice, for the rest of his life.

Yours.

Truth and utter lie all at once.

She couldn’t be his, of course. She couldn’t be his, because it would require him to be hers. It would require him to love her the way she deserved. And that would never happen. It was impossible.

He lifted his head to tell her so, finding her sleepy, sated smile above him, tempting him more than he could ever imagine. And then she spoke, shattering his intentions. “What of your pleasure?” she said, the soft words a blow as hard and harsh as anything he’d ever received in the boxing ring. A blow he’d never wanted so much in his life. “Don’t you wish to take it?”

He did, of course. Rather more desperately than he ever had. But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

She deserved better.

“No,” he lied, working hard to keep his words calm and collected, hating himself for saying them. “I don’t.”

If she’d had all the money in Britain, Sophie would have wagered it on his laying her down and taking her there, at the base of the fountain, with only the Cumbria sky to witness it.

She would have lost the wager.

The disappointment that rioted through her was to be expected, of course. She’d been hoping he would agree to make love to her fully, and his refusal was no kind of positive experience. She’d found a magnificent pleasure in his arms, and she wanted more. She wanted to share it with him.

What she had not expected was the desolation. The sense that without him, she was alone in the world. That without his touch, without his companionship, she might not survive the day.

The sense that without him, she might not exist.

The thought terrified her.