Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 157491 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 630(@250wpm)___ 525(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157491 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 630(@250wpm)___ 525(@300wpm)
“No, my darling. I know you better than you think. I’m the only vice you hide from the world.”
I know a thousand things about her. Because I’ve watched and I’ve waited, I’ve denied myself and I’ve hoped. When I said I wasn’t the man I once was, I meant it. I’ve done things I wasn’t destined for, all so I could have her. I’ve lied and schemed, biding my time, even when my desire threatened to overtake me. I’ve spent too long thinking about her, too long suppressing my need. But no more. She will be mine. Wholly. Absolutely. No more stolen moments. No more secrecy. I will have her in my life and on my arm for all to see.
“I don’t skulk,” she says, turning to me with the hauteur of a queen. “And strictly speaking, this isn’t your bed.”
“Strictly speaking, there isn’t always a bed.” I stretch out, relishing the way her eyes watch the movement of the sheets. “Last time, it was a terrace.” I can almost see those snatched moments play out across her face. “Music, laughter, and conversation drifting out from the open doors, wrapping us in our own little world. The scrape of stone under my fingertips. Your skin cool against my lips, and the absolute heat of you pulsing around my cock.”
“Stop,” she whispers without conviction, whirling away.
“You kept your face from me then, too.” Like I’m a dirty secret she’s trying to ignore. “I remember feeling jealous of the stars as they watched you come.” Isla reaching her peak is a picture of sheer beauty.
She’s discomposed for less than a heartbeat, her mouth twitching yet not curling in profile. “They were probably blushing at the filth you whispered. You have such a dirty mouth.”
“My filth is all for you.”
“I find that hard to believe.” Her tone is a touch harder, but she’d hate for me to notice.
“Is that why you leave?”
“Perhaps it isn’t a habit.” She slides a foot into her shoe, pausing not to deliver an answer to my question but to a previous one. “I might leave because I’m done with you. It would be an appropriate kind of payback, wouldn’t it?”
“Fifteen years is a long time, Isla. I hoped you’d forgiven me.” Hoped you’d give me a chance to make it up to you. Give me a chance, darling. Don’t force me to make you.
Another pause but this time, no answer, though her head shakes from side to side as though she’s the long-suffering subject of my humor. But there is no levity, and the suffering has been mine. Deservedly so, she would say. While she married and created a family, I kept my distance. While she grew and flourished, I was the invisible shadow by her side. But no more.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever forgiven you. But I have moved on.”
Allowing the hint of a smile to rise, I run my hand over the bed linens, each a contradiction. Her eyes glitter, but she doesn’t give in to that flash of anger. Ever the diplomat, my love.
“Moved on?” I repeat with a quirk of my brow. “Then what was tonight?”
“An aberration on my part.”
“And the balcony?”
“Too much champagne.”
“What about London last year?” She’d arranged her brother’s birthday, despite it being her birthday as well. I was probably the only one at the table happy he didn’t turn up because it was the first time I’d been in Isla’s company in more than a decade. She was just as lovely as ever, and just as concerned for everyone’s enjoyment over her own. When it became clear Alexander wasn’t coming, his guests began to dwindle, and we were left staring at each other over a candlelit table. I couldn’t help myself. And it seems she couldn’t either. It was like the world stopped the clock for the night, and everything was right. She was mine. Until the morning when I’d found my bed empty. She’d made it clear she had no intention of coming back to me.
“That was a weak moment,” she murmurs. She’d caught her husband in a compromising position, she’d said. When I hadn’t heard from her after that night, I’d worried she’d taken him back. That spending the night with me had been her retaliation; tit for tat. I should’ve known better because Isla does everything the right way. Except falling for me at a time I couldn’t have her.
“Look,” she adds, tamping down her frustration, “you’re reading too much into this. It’s almost tradition that the best man sleeps with one of the wedding party. Why not you?” She throws out her arms, unconcerned. “Better the devil you know.”
“Or better the devil that knows how to ride you. To hold you. To bend you in the shapes you so like, to make you come again and again.”