Once Touched, Never Forgotten - By Natasha Tate Page 0,2

for a moment she allowed herself to savor the delicious probing of his kiss, the commanding sweep of his palms as he stroked her back from shoulder to hip. She swayed unsteadily when he withdrew, his soft exhalation warming her half-open mouth.

“I missed you this morning,” he said against her lips as he bumped her pelvis with his. “I missed waking up next to you.”

She heard the smile behind his words and closed her eyes, mustering her strength. “I had to be at work early,” she said. “I’m just heading back for the afternoon shift now.”

He must have heard something in her voice, because the same concerned note that had lulled her into complacency suddenly colored his tone. Leaning back, he peered into her face. “So why are you here?” His blue eyes glittered with fresh fury while his jaw knotted. “Did my grandfather or cousin say something to you?”

Blinking against a sudden blur of tears, she sucked in a steadying breath. Don’t fall apart now. You can do that later. “No. I just … I needed to talk to you,” she managed, swallowing hard.

His hands drifted from her waist up to her arms, a hint of wariness clouding his expression. “About what?”

“I …” She inhaled his lovely scent, gulping air to no avail. She couldn’t seem to stop her body from shaking. “I need to sit down.”

Wordless, he ushered her into his large masculine office and over to the brown leather chair angled before his desk. He pressed her into it, his palms bracketing her upper arms. He squatted before her, his expression incrementally more concerned as his thumbs caressed the skin beneath her white T-shirt sleeves. “What is it?”

After a few moments of torturous silence, while she struggled to find the right words, he inhaled sharply and dropped his hands to the leather armrests.

“You want to break it off, don’t you?” he said, his expression an inscrutable shield of blankness.

She dipped her head in a single nod and dropped her gaze to her tightly knit hands. “It’s time.”

He stared at her in silence for several long beats before speaking, his voice cool and remote where before it had been warm. “Care to tell me why?”

“We promised no questions.” She hauled in a breath and forced herself to meet his blue eyes. “And we both knew this—”

“You’re right,” he interrupted, surging to his feet and walking toward the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the Thames. “You don’t owe me any explanations,” he said in a clipped voice as he stared out over the sun-drenched water.

She stared at his wide shoulders, the crisp lines of his charcoal suit, and the sleek, muscled transition from buttock to leg. “This is what we agreed to,” she started again. “Remember? We said—”

“I said you were right.” He shoved his hands deep in his pockets and turned back to face her, the sunlight glinting blue against his black hair. “If you want to end things, I won’t stand in your way.”

His easy capitulation, expected as it was, still hurt more than she’d have thought possible. “Thank you.”

“We never claimed this was supposed to last,” he said in a harsh voice, while the muscles in his jaw twitched. His silk sleeves bunched up around his wrists and she could see the knots of his fists within his pockets. “I won’t pressure you for more.”

She tamped down a flutter of irrational hope. An irrational, crazy hope that he’d beg her to stay. To marry him. To bear his children no matter what the powerful Whitfield family thought about her suitability. “Do you want more?” she whispered.

“Is that what you think?” he asked, withdrawing his hands from his pockets and striding toward her with ominous swiftness. He leaned to grip her upper arms, his gaze trapping hers. “Do you think I want more?”

She forced herself to maintain eye contact, to keep her impossible dreams buried too deep to see. “Do you?”

“Of course I don’t!” he said, releasing her as if he’d been stung.

She inhaled sharply, pressing her shoulderblades against the back of the chair while her hope died a swift, brutal death. She’d been right not to tell him. Right to break things off. It was better this way, to be the one who did the rejecting first. Even so, shards of pain dug deep and shallow breaths serrated the back of her throat.

“I don’t want a messy nightmare of a relationship any more than you do. You know that.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said, while a wail