What had happened to her during those intervening years to turn her into the wanton sensualist she was now? Why should he care? The sixteen-year-old towards whom he had felt so protective belonged to another life, another Ash.
Even then she’d been sensationally beautiful, with everything about her already hinting at the sensuality to come. Then she had had the promise of a sweet, almost ready-to-ripen peach, yet still a girl compared to his adult-male maturity, and his natural sense of responsibility and moral probity had naturally reacted to that. He had known that he had a duty towards her to protect her not just from herself but from that shock of awareness within himself of the fact that she was becoming a desirable woman.
Ash discovered that there was suddenly a sour taste in his mouth. For himself. For that brief ripping through his moral code, caused by the shocking sexual awareness he’d had of her when he had seen the change in her. Desires he never should have had for that girl given the protective role he had previously played in her life and the fact that he had been about to be married.
Desires he still had for her? He swallowed hard against that question. She was a woman, and available. He was a man, but he could not allow himself to want her. He would not allow it. After all, he had nothing left within him to give to a woman like Sophia, who so obviously brought emotional passion to her relationships along with her sexual desire. A grim wryness filled him. So he was back in his old role towards her, was he, protecting her from his own desire?
‘Ash, please.’ The panic in Sophia’s voice made Ash frown. Twice before he had heard her say his name in that same tone of mingled fear and need and now somehow his body reacted to that memory, instinctively halting him in his tracks.
‘Sophia …’
‘Please, Ash. I need you. There isn’t anyone else I can turn to.’
‘No? What about one of those young men who share your bed?’ His challenge was harsh and acerbic.
This was getting dangerous, Sophia recognised. The conversation was going now in a direction she most certainly did not want.
‘That’s just sex. What I need from you is help.’
Just sex? Ash could almost taste the ferocity of the atavistic emotions surging through him.
Across the years that separated him from those other occasions inside his head he could see the sixteen-year-old she had been, pleading with him for something it was impossible for him to give her. He could almost smell the hot summer fragrance of the small grassy bank on which they’d been sitting. Inside his head he could see a clear image of her in her thin cotton dress. It had shown quite clearly the perfect shape of her high rounded breasts with their eager thrusting nipples pushing against the fabric, just as she had pushed against his chest with small fists when she had begged him to take her and show her what it was to be a woman—and the icy cold shock to his system it had given him to realise that his awareness of her was darkened by the sexual desire. He had wanted to walk away from her there and then, to put an end to the danger he could sense, but before he could do anything she had continued emotionally, ‘I’m the only girl in my class who’s still a virgin, and I hate it. The other girls laugh at me because of it. They say that I’m a baby and …’
He could still remember the duality of the feelings her confession had brought him. Firstly, a desire to protect her and defend her, but beneath that, shockingly and shamefully, a slow awareness of the sweet pleasure there would be for the man to whom she would ultimately give herself for the first time. He had reminded himself that he was too old for her, and that she was too young for him. To even think about doing as she asked would be an abuse of their relationship that could never be allowed, but still there had been, inside his head, that treacherous thought that were she two years or so older and he two years or more younger … He would what? Bed her and then leave her—dishonour her—for the marriage that had been arranged for him since childhood? Never.
And so he had put temptation aside and told her as though it was no concern to him, ‘I’m sure there are any number of boys your own age who would be delighted to relieve you of your virginity.’
‘I don’t want it to be them, I want it to be you,’ she insisted, her eyes dark and stormy with the heat of her need.
Only he knew how tempted he’d been to wish away some of the years that separated them and to give in and take her. Just the smell of her sun-warmed skin had sent him half maddened with aching, longing to lie her down and lick and kiss his way over every inch of her delectable, hotly eager body until he reached those dark flaunting nipples. Inside his head he had already been suckling on them, drawing cries of tormented delight from her whilst his hand covered the wet heat of her sex and his fingers teased an open eager passage.
The secret betrayal of his thoughts and his body had felt to him as much of a betrayal of his duty to protect her as it was of the duty that lay on him towards his future bride and their marriage.
He had been angry. With himself more than with Sophia but it had been on her he had vented his anger, telling her savagely, ‘It can’t be me. You already know that, Sophia. I’m engaged to be married.’
‘An arranged marriage,’ she had reminded him. ‘Not a love match.’
Something in the truth of her words had turned a knife in his heart as sharp and destructive as one of the fine jewelled daggers favoured by his ancestors, cruelly sharp knives that could rip out the heart of a man and still leave that heart beating and the man breathing. For a while.
‘My marriage is my concern, and as for it not being a love match, it will be my duty and my pleasure to learn to love my wife and to teach her to love me. My very great pleasure.’
His words had been cruel. He had seen that in the look in her eyes. He had taken a step towards her, Ash remembered, and then he had stopped as she dashed away the tears she hadn’t been able to control. A child’s tears, and if he had been cruel then it had been to protect that child.
And now as then, Ash wanted to turn and walk away from her, but somehow he couldn’t, just as he couldn’t drag his gaze from her or stop his body reacting to her. His own weakness lashed at him, biting deep into his pride. But still he looked, still he let his senses fill with the pleasure of her.
Her dark curls caressed the bare shoulders revealed by her figure-hugging goddess-style amber-gold silk dress with its diamante waistband, her velvet-soft eyes sparkling, her lips warm and invitingly parted. They would taste of sensuality and promise, and her low-cut gown would be no barrier to the man who was determined to enjoy exploring the soft warmth of her naked breasts. But that man would never be him. Sophia was the sister of one of his closest friends; she was passionate and emotional. To bed her would bring complications into his life that he didn’t want. And why would he need to bed her when he had so many other willing women to choose from who understood that sex was all he required from them? Sex and nothing more.
Oblivious to the turmoil of Ash’s most private thoughts, Sophia looked over at the table where her parents were seated with some of their guests. As always it was her father who was commanding everyone’s attention whilst her mother looked on, her blonde head inclined towards him, her whole manner one of calm, controlled formality. Just as her father demanded. Just as the husband he had chosen for her would demand of her. She was not her mother. Her own nature was far more turbulent and intense. Still focusing on the table, she told Ash with fierce desperation, ‘My father thinks he can argue me into giving way. But I won’t.’
Ash could hear the desperation in her voice. Against his will he found himself thinking that she reminded him of a beautiful butterfly beating her wings against the iron bars of a cage that imprisoned her, her desperate attempt to find freedom destined only to leave her crushed and broken.