Desert Jewels & Rising Stars

by Sharon Kendrick

  She could not breathe for a long moment, could not manage it past the swell of agony that swept through her. When she could, she had to fight off tears. Was that truly how he saw her—no more than a spiteful little brat? She knew with a sudden, unbearable certainty that it was. He believed she’d left him on a whim—rather than in pieces.

  “I can’t imagine why you ever wanted me in the first place,” she managed to say, her voice trembling, shaken to the bone.

  “Oh, I want you.” His voice was far too raw then, with too many undercurrents, and spoke to all the sins she dared not name—all of which he had taught her. The look in his eyes set her afire. His expression was almost brooding. Something deeper, more painful, than simply wry. “It seems there is nothing at all you can do to keep me from wanting you, and you have certainly put that to the test.”

  He did not move, he only watched her, and yet he seemed, suddenly, to be everywhere. It was as if she had forgotten the danger of being this close to him—of talking to him, of allowing him to weave his way into her psyche again—until this very second—and now she could notice nothing else.

  Her heart beat in a jagged rhythm. Her mouth was far too dry. She felt as if her entire body was short-circuiting, shutting down. Readying itself for his touch.

  It did not matter how much it hurt. She still wanted him. She always wanted him.

  Blindly, she shoved away from the table and lurched to her feet. She knew only that she had to escape. She had to put distance between them, because he might have made a promise not to touch her of his own volition, but she knew all too well that she was the one who could not be trusted in that area.

  She moved toward the French doors and she knew even as she reached for the handle that he was behind her. She did not have to turn and confirm it, not when she could feel him.

  She stopped with her hand on the ornate handle and felt the heat of him at her back, so close she could smell the faintest hint of his cologne—so near that if she shifted her weight backward she would be nestled beneath his chin, her back against the hot, hard wall of his chest.

  “You promised!” she whispered, desperate to run away and yet frozen in place. She wanted him, but she also wanted the comfort of his heat, his closeness, his scent.

  He had been her man, her family, her love. She still did not know how to let go of any of that, only that she must.

  Even so, her eyes drifted closed. “You said you would not …”

  “Am I touching you?” he asked in that low, stirring tone that seemed to roll through her, quietly devastating her, reducing her to little more than mindlessness and need.

  She turned then, before her knees collapsed beneath her, and found her back against the door with nothing before her but Leo. As if he was all the world.

  He leaned closer, resting his hands against the paned glass on either side of her head, a move that brought his mouth nearly flush with hers.

  And though she could feel him in every part of her—in her swollen breasts, her taut belly, her molten femininity—he did not touch her. He kept his promise. He only gazed down at her, his eyes hard with a passion she recognized all too well.

  “I cannot stop wanting you,” he said then, his mouth a breath away, his sensual lips close enough to kiss. “And I have tried. Nights I lay awake, cursing your name, and yet here I am—as ready for you as if there was no history between us, no years apart, no demands for a divorce.”

  “Leo …” But she could not seem to form any words save his name, even then, when she knew she should end this moment, whatever it was.

  She should not let him speak these things out loud, making both of them remember. Making her yearn. Ache. Want.

  But all she could do was stare up at him and hope her heart did not beat so hard, so frantically, that it might break through her own ribs as she half-feared it might.

  “You are under my skin,” he whispered as if it was torn from him. “You are like a poison. You cannot seem to kill me, but I cannot seem to be rid of you.”

  He had said too much, Leo thought, and yet he did not step back.

  He could not seem to make his own body obey him, not when she was so close. He could feel her breath against his skin, close enough that he could smell the unique scent of her. Like lavender and vanilla—her own delectable perfume.

  He could count the freckles that splayed across her nose, and knew what the larger one on her clavicle tasted like. He felt it when their breath began to move in sync, as it always had—as if their bodies insisted on synchronizing even as they dedicated themselves to remaining at war.

  This close to her, he could not even remember why.

  “You …” She could not manage to speak. He watched, fascinated, as she wet her soft lips and swallowed. “You must let me go.”

  “How many times must I let you go?” he heard himself whisper. Worse, he heard the emotion that was underneath it. The jagged pain. What was more horrifying was that he did not immediately move away from her. Not even then.

  “You say you want me,” she said in a low, urgent voice, her impossible blue eyes wide with a sheen that told him he was not the only one rubbed raw by this encounter, no matter that they were not actually touching.

  “I do,” he agreed. “Just as you want me, Bethany. I can feel it. I can see it.”

  “You say that,” she continued as if it hurt her to push the words out. Her eyes searched his, something desperate there reaching out to him. “But you only want me if you can keep me in a convenient box of your choosing. If I behave, if I conform, if I act according to your rules, then I am treated like a queen. But it’s still a box.”

  “You are confusing a box with a bed,” he said. Her mouth was so close and her skin would be so soft and he could not believe he had made such a foolhardy promise, much less that he intended to keep it—even now when he was so hard it bordered on the painful.

  “With you they are often the same thing,” she said.

  No matter how much he yearned simply to sink into her, he could not miss the reproving tone she used. He tilted his head back slightly and gazed at her, taking in that high red flush across her neck, the determined set of her jaw, the cool gleam in her eyes.

  “I am only telling you the truth,” she said after a long moment. She took a breath that lifted her breasts alluringly, but he refused to be sidetracked. “Nothing I did happened in a vacuum, Leo. You were as responsible for what happened in our marriage as I was. But I suppose it’s easier to look only at me, isn’t it?”

  “I looked for you for three long years,” he gritted out. He was so close to her it bordered on madness, yet he still did not touch her. “But you were never where you were supposed to be. Tell me what I was meant to do. Beg? Plead? Weep?”

  “Why not?” she whispered fiercely. “Why not all of the above, if that is how you feel?”

  “I am not you,” he whispered back in the same hard tone, shoving through the things he refused to admit, even to himself. “I cannot flash my every emotion for all to see.”

  “You cannot or you will not?” She moved then, only slightly, but it brought her shoulder into glancing contact with his arm. They both froze, focused on that single, accidental touch. He watched her swallow, the long, graceful column of her throat begging for his mouth, his tongue, his teeth.

  “Tell me to touch you,” he ordered her huskily, their history forgotten in that moment like so much smoke. “Tell me to hold your face in my hands. Tell me to kiss you.”

  Her lips parted on a soundless breath, but he felt it fan across his jaw. Her eyes widened, darkened. He could feel that shimmering electricity arc between them, hot and wild.

  “Tell me …” he whispered, moving his mouth to hover near her ear, so very close, just out of reach. “Tell me to take you in my arms and make you mine. Again and again. Until you cannot remember your name. Or my name. Or why you left.”

  * * *

  She was almost his, until that last whispered sentence.

  A
chill snaked through her, and it gave her the strength to force open her eyes and remember. Why she was there. Why she could not simply surrender to him as every cell, every breath, every part of her longed to do. Why she could not let him cast this spell around her.

  Not again.

  “I think it is time for me to get some sleep,” she said, keeping her head turned and choosing her words so carefully, so desperately. “I think the traveling is catching up with me.”

  He murmured something in Italian, something lyrical that she did not have to understand to know was all sex and command. She could feel it move between her legs, coil low in her belly and spiral along her skin until she shivered in reaction. But she did not look at him. She knew, somehow, that gazing into his eyes just then would be the end of her. She knew it.

  “If that is what you wish,” he said eventually, and he pushed away. The night air seemed to rush at her, cooler than it had been moments before; shocking.

  He stood only a foot or two away, his beautiful face shadowed, though his eyes burned with a fire she dared not touch. Or even acknowledge.

  “I will see you in the morning,” she said with absurd, unnecessary courtesy.

  His brows arched with a dark amusement, and she did not wait to see what he might say. Instead, she fled.

  Again, she fled from him. She had spent her whole life running away from this man, it seemed. Was he right to accuse her as he had? Was he right to lay the blame at her feet?

  She moved through the quiet halls as if pursued, though she knew he did not follow her. Not then. She closed the heavy door of her bedchamber tight behind her and did not so much as glance at the other door.

  She did not let herself think about where it led or how easy it would be to simply walk through the doorway and succumb to what her body wanted—and what would be, she knew, so very easy. So deliriously easy. Far easier than these conversations that ripped apart scars she had thought long-healed.

  She pulled off her gown, changed into the comfortable pajamas she had brought with her from Toronto, scrubbed her face until there was no hint of color left in her skin and crawled into the wide, empty bed.

  It was as soft and inviting as she remembered. No place for terrifying, unwieldy emotions. No room for a very old grief.

  But she did not get to sleep for a long, long time.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HE WAS waiting for her in the breakfast room the next morning.

  She walked in, her head still a confused muddle from the night before, and there he was. The sunlight poured in through the high, arched windows and surrounded him with a golden halo, despite the fact he looked forbidding and unapproachable at the head of the table. His gaze rose to meet hers over the top of the paper he held before him, cool and remote, in direct contrast to the pool of light around him.

  She knew perfectly well he was challenging her, and it hit her hard and true, like an electrical charge, sizzling directly into the coiled tension low in her belly and between her legs.

  Somehow, Bethany managed to keep herself from stumbling in the high, wedged sandals she had foolishly opted to wear beneath a casual knit sundress. She could feel his gaze in every cell, along every nerve. She had to fight to breathe normally.

  Pressing her lips together, she let the ever-present servant seat her with a solicitousness that struck her as an absurdly formal manner to take with the soon-to-be ex-wife. The room was bathed in light and seemed to shimmer with promise, from the painted medieval ceiling with its long, dark beams to the bright friezes that decorated the walls above the wainscoting.

  She could sense more than feel Leo’s long legs stretched out beneath the polished wooden table, too close to her own, and wished that it was bigger or that she was further away from him instead of having to share a corner with him. As it was, she sat at a diagonal to Leo. But her body was not about to let her pretend she was not attuned to every single detail of his distressingly perfect appearance, the power he exuded as easily as he drew breath and the incredible, undeniable force of the pull he seemed to exert upon her.

  Even now, when she had vowed to start anew this morning. When she had vowed not be so affected by him.

  “Good morning,” he said, and she was all too aware of the amusement that lurked in his gaze, his voice, the slight twist of his sensual lips.

  Settled in her seat, the thick white linen napkin draped over her lap, Bethany faced him fully, to offer the expected polite greeting that would prove her to be as unaffected as he was. To present him with the cool and calm façade that she knew she needed to use if she was to survive any of this intact.

  But she froze when her eyes met his. The dark, passionate, starkly sexual dreams that had kept her half-awake and tormented with longing the whole of the endless night rose again in her head, taunting her. Shocking her. She could see all of that and more in his black-coffee gaze.

  He did not merely look at her—he devoured her, his eyes hot and hard.

  Hungry.

  Her lips parted slightly as her breath deserted her. She felt her eyes glaze over, and that same tell-tale flush begin to heat its way along her breasts and neck.

  It was as if he’d touched her, as if he was touching her right now—as if he’d reached over, yanked her into his lap and finally fixed that wicked mouth of his to hers. When all he had really done was greet her and then watch her, hard male satisfaction gleaming in his eyes and stamped across his beautiful, impossible face.

  She did not need to be a mind reader to realize that he knew exactly what her flush meant—that he suspected she had tossed and turned, her body aching for him, all night long. Leo knew exactly what he did to her—what she felt—simply because of his proximity.

  He knew.

  “All you need to do is touch me,” he said now, his intoxicating voice slightly hoarse, as if his own want shook him as it shook her. “It would take so very little, Bethany. You need only reach your hand to mine. You need only—”

  “Leo, please,” she said, trying desperately to sound stern instead of weak, all too aware that she fell far short. “The only thing I want right now is coffee.”

  “Of course,” he said, not even attempting to hide his sardonic amusement. “My apologies.” He did not even need to call her a liar. It hung between them like a shout.

  Bethany scowled at her plate as the efficient staff poured her thick, aromatic coffee and placed the toast and jam she had always favored before her. She did not want to think about the fact that her preferences still registered here. She would not consider the ramifications of that.

  Instead, she somehow managed to keep her hands from shaking as she lifted her delicate china coffee cup to her lips and drank the rich brew. Only after she’d taken a few bracing, head-clearing sips could she bear to look at him again.

  He had placed his newspaper to the side of his plate. He lounged back against his chair, his expression brooding, one hand supporting his jaw. He looked every inch the prince, the magnate, the duly crowned emperor of his vast and ever-expanding personal empire.

  He wore another perfectly tailored suit, the charcoal fabric molded to his shoulders, pressed lovingly to his fine chest. He was freshly shaved, newly showered—his dark hair glossy, begging for her fingers to run through it. He was like a dream made flesh. Her dream, specifically. The explicit, delicious dream that had tortured her all night long.

  But she could not reach across the divide between them, no matter how much she longed to do it. She could not allow herself to fall again, not when she knew exactly how hard that landing was. And how impossible it seemed to her that she would ever truly climb back to her feet and walk away from him.

  “I must go to Sydney,” he said into the simmering silence. She had the sense he picked his words carefully, for all his voice remained cool and unemotional. “There are fires to put out, I am afraid, and only I can do it.”

  “You are going to Australia?” she asked, jolted from her own depressing cycle of thoughts. “Today?”
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  “I am interested in some hotels there,” he said. Again, with care. “We are at a delicate stage in the negotiations.” He shrugged, though his gaze did not leave her face or soften at all. “I did not expect that I would have to attend to this personally.”

  Her mind raced. What exactly was he saying? But then, she knew. Hadn’t she been here before? Repeatedly? There was always something, somewhere, that required his attention. A day here. A week there. Always at the last minute. Always non-negotiable.

  “How long will you be gone?” she asked with as little expression as she could manage. She picked up a piece of perfectly toasted bread then dropped it again, unable to conceive of putting anything in her mouth when her throat felt too dry and her stomach clenched.

  “It should not take long,” he said, his own tone measured. He watched her, his expression cool.

  “Which, if memory serves, can mean anything from an evening to two weeks,” she said crisply. “A month? Six weeks? Who can say, when duty calls?”

  He only lifted a brow and gazed at her, his expression inscrutable. After a moment he lifted his hand and with a careless wave dismissed the hovering servants. The way he had always done—as a precaution, he had said once, so condescendingly, should she fly off the handle.

  She gritted her teeth and shoved aside the humiliating memories. The tension that always swirled between them seemed to tighten, to pull at her, hard and hot.

  “I sense this is a problem for you,” he said with exaggerated patience.

  He had said such things before, she recalled. A problem for you. The implication being, as ever, that only a hysteric like Bethany would ever dream of finding his business affairs personally objectionable. It made her want to scream.

  But she would not give him the satisfaction of reducing her to that. She would tear out her own throat first.

  “Why am I here?” she asked quietly. A sudden thought occurred to her and she could not hold it back. “Did you plan this?”