She had needed that for herself. She wasn’t a failure in the bedroom after all. Okay, the lounge, she allowed with a smirk.
Her hand trembled as she removed the pins from her hair, pride quickly giving way to sexual frustration and embarrassment. Even a hint of desolation. If she wasn’t such a freak, if she wasn’t afraid she’d lose herself completely, they could have found release together.
Being selfless was satisfying in other ways, though. He might be thanking her for breaking up the wedding and saving him a few bucks, but she was deeply grateful for the way he had acknowledged her as worth saving, worth protecting.
The bathroom door that she’d swung almost closed pushed open, making her heart catch.
Mikolas took up a lazy pose that made carnal hunger clench mercilessly in her middle. The flesh that was hot with yearning squeezed and ached.
His open shirt hung off his shoulders, framing the light pattern of hair that ran down from his breastbone. His unfastened pants gaped low across his hips, revealing the narrow line of hair from his navel. His eyelids were heavy, disguising his thoughts, but his voice was gritty enough to make her shiver.
“You’re taking too long.”
The words were a sensual punch, flushing her with eager heat. At the same time, alarm bells—anxious clangs of performance anxiety—went off within her, cooling her ardor.
“For?” She knew what he meant, but she’d taken care of his need. They were done. Weren’t they? If she’d ever had sex before, she wouldn’t be so unsure.
“Finishing what you started.”
“You did finish. You can’t—” Was he growing hard again? It looked like his boxers were straining against the open fly of his pants.
She read. She knew basic biology. She knew he’d climaxed, so how was that happening? Was she really so incapable of gratifying a man that even oral sex failed to do the job?
“You can’t... Men don’t...again. Can they?” She trailed off, blushing and hating that his first real smile came at the expense of her inexperience.
“I’ll last longer this time,” he promised drily. “But I don’t want to wait. Get your butt in that bed, or I’ll have you here, bent over the sink.”
Oh, she was never going to be that spontaneous. Ever. And for a first time? While he talked about lasting a long time?
“No.” She hitched the shoulder of her dress and reached behind herself to close it. “You finished. We’re done.” Her face was on fire, but inside she was growing cold.
He straightened off the doorjamb. “What?”
“I don’t want to have sex.” Not entirely true. She longed to understand the mystique behind the act, but his talk of sink-bending only told her how far apart they were in experience. The more she thought about it, the more she went into a state of panic. Not him. Not tonight when she was already an emotional mess.
She struggled to close her zip, then crossed her arms, taking a step backward even though he hadn’t moved toward her.
He frowned. “You don’t want sex?”
Was he deaf?
“No,” she assured him. Her back came up against the towel rail, which was horribly uncomfortable. She waved toward the door he was blocking. “You can go.”
He didn’t move, only folded his own arms and rocked back on his heels. “Explain this to me. And use small words, because I don’t understand what happened between the lounge and here.”
“Nothing happened.” She couldn’t stand that he was making her wallow in her inadequacy. “You... I mean, I thought I gave you what you wanted. If you thought—”
He didn’t even want her. Not really. He would decide if and when, she recalled.
Good luck with that, champ. Her body made that decision for everyone involved, no matter what her head said.
Do not cry. Oh, she hated her body right now. Her stupid, dumb body that had made her life go so far sideways she didn’t even understand how she was standing here having this awful conversation.
“Can you just go?” She glared at him for making this so hard for her, but her eyes stung. She bet they were red and pathetic looking. If he made her tell him, and he laughed— “Please?”
He stayed there one more long moment, searching her gaze, before slowly moving back, taking the door with him, closing it as he left. The click sounded horribly final.
Viveka stepped forward and turned the lock, not because she was afraid he’d come in looking for sex, but afraid he’d come in and catch her crying.
With a wrench of her hand, she started the shower.
* * *
Mikolas was sitting in the dark, nursing an ouzo, when he heard Viveka’s door open.
He’d closed it himself an hour ago, when he’d gone in to check on her and found her on the guest bed, hair wrapped in a towel, one of his monogramed robes swallowing her in black silk. She’d been fast asleep, her very excellent legs bare to midthigh, a crumpled tissue in her lax grip. Several more had been balled up around her.
Rather than easing his mind, rather than answering any of the million questions crowding his thoughts, the sight had caused the turmoil inside him to expand, spinning in fresh and awful directions. Was he such a bad judge of a woman’s needs? Why did he feel as though he’d taken advantage of her? She had pressed him into this very chair. She had opened his pants. She had gone down and told him to let go.
He’d been high as a kite when he had tracked her into her bathroom, certain he’d find her naked and waiting for him. Every red blood cell he possessed had been keening with anticipation.
It hadn’t gone that way at all.
She’d felt threatened.
He was a strong, dominant man. He knew that and tried to take his aggressive nature down a notch in the bedroom. He knew what it was like to be brutalized by someone bigger and more powerful. He would never do that to the smaller and weaker.
He kept having flashes of slender, delicate Viveka looking anxious as she noticed he was still hard. He thought about her fear of Grigor. A libido-killing dread had been tying his stomach in knots ever since.
He couldn’t bear the idea of her being abused that way. He’d punched Grigor tonight, but he wished he had killed him. There was still time, he kept thinking. He wasn’t so far removed from his bloodline that he didn’t know how to make a man disappear.
He listened to Viveka’s bare feet approach, thinking he couldn’t blame her for trying to sneak out on him.
She paused as she arrived at the end of the hall, obviously noticing his shadowed figure. She had changed into pajamas and clipped up her hair. She tucked a stray wisp behind her ear.
“I’m hungry. Do you want toast?” She didn’t wait for his response, charging past him through to the kitchen.
He unbent and slowly made his way into the kitchen behind her.
She had turned on the light over the stove and kept her back to him as she filled the kettle at the sink. After she set the switch to Boil, she went to the freezer and found a frozen loaf of sliced bread.
Still keeping her back to him, she broke off four slices and set them in the toaster.
“Viveka.”
Her slender back flinched at the sound of his voice.
So did he. The things he was thinking were piercing his heart. He’d been bleeding internally since the likeliest explanation had struck him hours ago. When someone reacted that defensively against sexual contact, the explanation seemed really obvious.
“When