‘For God’s sake, Sabrina, I want you in my bed, not in my head!’ he blasted, then saw her expression and stopped, a curse of frustration escaping his clenched teeth. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’
‘Yes, you did.’ She sat there looking frozen, offended and so incredibly sexy with her honey tumbled hair and pink mouth still partly swollen from their kisses from the previous night that he experienced the tsunami of all hormone surges. It struck with no warning and the results on his brain function was devastating—a white-hot, brain-melting blast.
Endurance was the only response. Waiting for it to pass, Sebastian closed his eyes, the muscles of his throat working as he fought for control—this should not be happening. Sex should have smoothed the path; the absence of love should have meant this was easier, not more complicated...yet another occasion when theory fell well short of reality!
He took a deep breath and tried again to breach the chasm he could feel forming between them. ‘Look...’ Their eyes connected and the silence stretched, only interrupted by the discordant sounds of their individual jagged breathing.
‘Marriage does not have to conform to any set pattern. We need to set out our own rules, not conform...and we must be flexible.’ She had been beautifully flexible last night.
‘What are you saying?’ she whispered, unable to tear her eyes away from his hot, scorching stare. Her insides were melting.
Good question, he thought. ‘I really don’t know...’ he said, because this was very much outside his experience. ‘I can’t promise anything, Sabrina. I know you have dreams and...’ He gave a short laugh, hating himself and the system for all that she had been robbed of. ‘Maybe you never had any, but anyway I’m sorry that this is your life, the politics, the scheming. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t want us to be warring factions, sending notes to one another through a third party. You deserve more than that.’ And more than me, he thought.
His driven words penetrated the warm sexual whirlpool that was drawing her inside, a weird but oddly seductive experience. ‘That won’t happen,’ she managed faintly.
‘It could. I’ve seen it in action...my parents...no matter what, we will never be them.’ Kill me first, he thought. ‘I’d tell you about it but maybe in the long run it will just get easier when this chemistry wears off.’
Did the fact his deep voice was actually shaking with need make his prediction any the less painful? The rampant hunger glowing in his eyes made this a question for later; right now all she wanted to do was feel him inside her.
‘But in the meantime let’s enjoy it?’ he growled.
The hungry intent stamped on his lean face made her insides quiver with helpless desire.
Sebastian was fighting his way out of his jacket as he levered his long length onto the bed beside her.
Sabrina helped him.
* * *
It was the following day before he saw her next.
In that time, he had been able to gain some perspective, and a little sympathy he had previously lacked for people who actually convinced themselves that a hormonal response was something spiritual and everlasting. It was an easy mistake to make, he now appreciated.
Of course, there was more involved with his situation with Sabrina. They were two people in a unique arrangement that very few would ever experience; the affinity, the sense of understanding, when combined with a physical attraction had, when you viewed the situation logically, been almost predictable.
Then he saw her, and the smug, comforting conclusions slipped through his fingers like sand.
‘Hello, there.’
Sabrina started guiltily, looking from him to the heavy tome in her lap. She removed the rather sexy specs that had been balanced on the end of her nose.
‘Sorry!’ she said as she stood, clutching the heavy book to her chest. ‘We weren’t expecting you until later.’
‘Is that a royal we?’
She tried to slide her foot back into a sandal. ‘Hard to be royal when you’re barefoot.’ Hard to sound as if you had more than one brain cell when this man was standing so close. ‘How did it go?’
Well done, Brina, you sounded almost sane and not sadly deluded and desperately in love.
He dragged a hand through his hair ‘I have some sympathy with the idea of being a despot...’
‘That’s because you are incredibly impatient.’ Gifted with a quick mind and an exceptional intellect, Sebastian struggled, she suspected, with the intellectual pace of a normal human being.
‘So what are you reading?’
Heart beating fast, she hugged the book closer to her chest, knowing she looked guilty as she shrugged and took a step back. ‘Just a thing...nothing really.’
He bent down to her level and read the spine, running a finger along it as he read out the title. ‘“Dementia and the Socio-Economic Impact on Developing Nations...” Wow, racy stuff! Don’t look so worried—it can be our guilty secret.’
‘Someone I know wrote it. They asked me for a review.’
‘So they are getting paid to read it?’
She frowned, wondering if that was against the rules. ‘Not exactly. I keep the book.’
His teasing smile faded as the full impact of what she had left behind, the expertise that she was never likely to use, hit home. In contrast to the knot of anger in his belly, his voice was gentle. ‘This really is not your world, is it?’
‘It is now.’ She lifted her chin and along with it any wimpish impulses to throw herself at him and confess it had been awful: the arrival, tea with the Queen and being introduced to the women who she was expected to be friends with, suitable women.
She could deal with that, but she would be the wife he needed even if he didn’t know he needed her yet... Would he ever? ‘You never said—beyond discovering buried despotic tendencies you discovered, how was your day?’
Better since I saw you.
And the shocks just kept coming, he thought, pressing a hand to the region of his chest where the pleasurable warmth had ignited when he’d seen her sitting with her bare feet dangling in the historic fountain. He lowered his hand and focused instead on the lust that had come with it. There was something delightfully uncomplicated about lust. It was one of the basic needs in life, like hunger and sleep, and he was tired. It was a known fact that exhaustion could do weird things to a man’s brain.
His glance slid to the inches of smooth calf revealed as she lifted her skirt to grimace at the inches of damp silk that clung to those smooth calves. As it lifted he saw there was still a question in her eyes.
‘Long.’ And so were her legs.
The signs of tiredness in his face intensified the ache inside her.
‘And you?’
‘I had tea with your...the Queen.’
‘And you’re not lying down in a darkened room? I’m impressed.’
‘She was trying to be helpful.’
One dark brow elevated. ‘That bad.’
‘Apparently I am meeting a stylist tomorrow.’
‘No!’
Her eyes flew up to his face. ‘No what?’
‘Just no, you do not need a stylist, and the last thing you need is to be turned into some sort of “ladies who lunch” clone, and the idea that