Page 46 of The Forbidden Bride He Stole

“I like you.”

“Did I hurt you?”

He gritted his teeth.

“What?” she asked.

“I didn’t say anything,” he said.

“I know you didn’t,” she said. “But you’re looking at me with questions in your eyes.”

“I don’t have any questions,” he bit out.

“Then were you just thinking about the other night?” she asked.

He could see that in his mind far too easily. Could see her, naked and glorious and the redemption he wanted most.

“It was last night,” he said.

“Was it? I slept on the plane. And we did change a time zone so I think... Never mind.”

“Yes,” he said. “Never mind. Because it is nothing.”

“It isn’t nothing. You said so yourself. It changed us. If it hadn’t, today would never have occurred.”

That was an unerring truth, hitting him square in his soul.

“You say that with such confidence,” he said, his throat going tight.

“Well. I know it’s true,” she said.

“I don’t know how to love anyone, Hannah.”

Oh, he wanted...so much. But he was ever a sinner wandering through a cathedral. A man who wanted to glimpse a holiness he could never find or feel.

He said it because he had to be honest with her. He said it because he didn’t want her to spin fantasies out of this desire between them. And yet he was desperate. To touch her. To hold her. To have her. It was so far beyond his own experience that he had no idea what he was supposed to do with it. When it came to sex, he had done it all. But it was mercenary. Void of any kind of connection or emotion. With her he had tasted something new, and it had opened up the space inside of him that had been untouched all this time. It had led to today. She was correct about that. He had shown her those pieces of himself that he had never really even trotted out and examined for his own benefit.

But he had done it for her. He had done it because of her.

He wanted to taste it again. This electric, deep connection that he had never allowed himself to have with anyone else.

He could remember the first time he had taken a lover because he had chosen it. Because he wasn’t going to pay, and even that had been something twisted. It had not been about connecting with another person. It hadn’t truly even been about pleasure.

For him, the act had been so tortured and deformed throughout his life and she... There was something about her. About the genuine strength of their connection that made it feel like it was his first time. And he hadn’t wanted to admit that.

He had gone to great lengths not to admit it.

But exhausted from the day, from the years, from holding all of this for so long, he didn’t possess the strength to deny it. To deny her. To deny himself.

“I didn’t say that I needed you to love me,” she pointed out.

“No,” he said. “You didn’t. But I will not lie to you. I don’t...” He wanted to find words. But he didn’t have them. He didn’t know how to articulate this thing. This desire to connect with her while protecting himself. While making sure she knew that it couldn’t become... He had no family.

He had no vocabulary for connection. He spoke so many languages, and couldn’t figure out what he wanted to say in any of them. But his chest felt like it was raw and bleeding. His control stretched thin. Because he had been trying to deny himself since he had left her that night, and it was only getting harder and harder to do.

Sex had never been something he’d had to resist. It wasn’t about control.

But this wasn’t a transaction, and it wasn’t about proving himself. It wasn’t about the freedom to take sex for free, rather than charge for it.

---