Bought By Her Husband. Sharon Kendrick

down to just the space of one face. His face.

      And, oh, it was impossible not to drink in all its hard and arrogant beauty. The luminous olive skin and the lush mouth, with its curved and slightly full lower lip. Lips which had kissed every single bit of her body and taken her to paradise over and over again.

      But it was the eyes that drew her in, more than the memory of those sensual pleasures. Black and glittering, they had once stared at her with love—but now they studied her with nothing more than contempt, their cold ebony light raking over her.

      Her heart-rate only increased. How could it not? She could feel it crashing loudly against her ribs and was surprised he couldn’t hear it.

      Alexei, she mouthed, though no sound came from her lips, and suddenly she was having difficulty focussing.

      Her vision blurred and then became clear again—and her head spun as her mind wickedly played tricks on her, dragging her back into that painful place she had vowed never to visit again.

      But sometimes you had no choice, because the past had a pulling power all of its own.