Page 42 of Taming Achilles

I didn’t know what I was telling her not to do. Don’t push me away, Princess. Don’t tell me what to do, Princess. Don’t push us apart when we can be so close. Don’t leave without a word. Don’t leave me in the darkness, without your sunshine.

She struggled against my hold, but I held her to me, bringing our faces together until my forehead rested on hers. She leaned in for a moment, before she tried to pull away again. It was brief. Maybe a fraction of a second. She had leaned into me. Her lips parted, and I heard a slight sigh. It was a crack in her armour. Miniscule, but there.

“The sun has set, Princess,” I whispered in her ear.

She shuddered. It was all the consent I needed. She lusted for me the same as I had for her.

“Geordie, please, don’t.”

I leaned down and kissed her throat. I felt the rapid beat of her pulse point on my lips.

Did she know those words just made me harder? Did she know that her refusal stoked my desires. Oh, to take her rejection and fuck her into a submissive, wanton little whore. That was the fantasy. To enter her heat as she tried to fight me away, and through the power of orgasms, turn her pliant, and willing in my arms.

Want me. My soul begged. Wrap your heat around me, and stay.

I thought I had gotten past this. I thought that I had moved on. But I was still the same boy that had stared at her from across a clover field. Her, in her little plaid skirt and braids, dancing around St. Michael’s in the summertime, with daisies and marigolds in her hair.

“Not tonight, please,” she shivered. “I can’t.”

I straightened myself, and kissed her temple.

“You’ll make it up to me.” It was a statement, but came out like a question. Oh, I wished I could still act like she was a whore, but I couldn’t play the game now. I couldn’t do it. Not after I fished her from frozen water.

Jesus, she had wanted pain. She was as cold as ice, shivering in my arms. Even then, she had refused to let me hold her. I was crumbling.

God damnit, Geordie, get it together. Let her go, or use her. But you can’t fluctuate between the two.

“You look beautiful,” I said, as if I was surprised. But I wasn’t. She was always beautiful.

Her makeup, the loose waves of her hair, and the luminescence of her skin made her look like an angel. A goddess. Had she always been this perfect? Or only when she was close, but out of reach?

“Pippa Fox?” a voice called politely from the doorway.

She and I pulled apart. The connection severed again between us.

A delivery man came in holding a bouquet of white lilies and offered it to her.

“These are for you,” he said with a smile.

Pippa took them with a watery sounding, “Thank you.”

She cradled them in her arms, placing it between us to create space before she plucked the card and silently read it.

She gasped, and dropped it to the ground.

“What is it?” I bent down to pick it up. “Who’s it from?”

I opened the card, and stared at those damning words: He won’t come between us.

Chapter 20

Pippa

A carnival mask. A fucking venetian Carnival mask? Jesus christ. If I had known this, I would never have chosen to walk with Ray fucking Ricoda.

Or I would have insisted that someone else stay with me instead of Geordie. He was staring daggers at me, as if this was my fault. Like I had done it on purpose. He stood upstage, near the wings, watching me strip, then walk, then strip, then walk. All the time, the damning reminder of Venice popping on and off my head to match the outfit I was wearing.

The bouquet of flowers had been a threat. I knew that. And Geordie had tried to stop me from walking the runway. But I told him to go fuck himself. I tried to get him to send someone else on Caledonia’s payroll to stay with me, but he wouldn’t budge.

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