Chapter Three #2
Shoulders straightened, stretching the tee tight across her chest until he could see the sharp points of her nipples.
Eyes swollen from having cried, mouth pink from his kisses, hair a haphazard halo around her face, she looked like one of those mythical warrior women she became in her role-playing games.
The stubborn streak that made her survive without breaking would never take his suggestion sitting down.
He couldn’t stop admiring the quality even as he needed to push her away.
“Admit that you lost yourself to the kiss as much as I did, that you want this as much as I do. If I hadn’t moaned out your name and broken the spell, you’d have been f—”
“There is no this, Nush,” he bit out, his voice low and urgent. “You and I can’t...happen.”
She blinked. Studied him thoughtfully. He could almost see her consider this from all points, gather her arsenal, make logical leaps.
Damn it, that she approached this with the weight and logic and thought she gave everything made him want to kiss and rumple her all over. “I’m not asking you to marry me, Caio.”
“What are you asking me then?” The question left his mouth against his wishes.
An arrow shooting out of the dark, slumbering place that was remembering how she’d felt in his arms. How she’d responded to every caress.
How she’d melted against him. How, even now, he wanted to hear from her own lips what she wanted of him, what she’d wanted of him.
“What is it that you think I’m denying you? ”
She licked her lips, her gaze zeroing on his own. Lust was a sizzling burn in his limbs as his libido made leaps he’d never before made. “I...”
Hesitation danced in her eyes and he gobbled it up like the big bad wolf he was.
Who did she think he was? A hero straight out of those fairy tales who’d give her a happily-ever-after?
One of those honorable knights she was so fond of reading about?
Maybe that was the problem. “A red-hot affair? A fling that would cheapen everything we mean to each other? A quick fuck against the wall in this room that belonged to the man we both lost?”
“Don’t bring Thaata into this.”
“You’re his precious granddaughter. He’s in the middle of everything you and I do.” He let out a long sigh, willing himself to appeal to her rationality. “I can’t dishonor Rao’s memory like that. I can’t...dishonor you like that.”
She stared at him, aghast. “My honor’s not tied to my having sex. With you or anyone.”
“I wholeheartedly agree, querida. But mine is tied to not taking advantage of the generosity and trust Rao gave me. In not taking advantage of your...affection for me.”
“You really think I can’t separate lust and affection?
Grief and loss from want? Is that what you’re afraid of?
That if we have sex, I’ll somehow confuse my poor unsuspecting mind and cling to you and make all sorts of demands on you?
And for Thaata’s sake and your poor honor’s sake, you’ll have to agree and be tied down to me for the rest of our lives? ”
That the idea of being tied down to Nush for the rest of their lives didn’t alarm him much alarmed him. He was really due for some mindless entertainment if his mind was making outrageous leaps like that out of thin air.
“What if we do have sex? Then what, Anushka? Do we greet each other as friends when it’s over?
Do we continue working and collaborating as if we don’t know each other intimately?
What happens when I have my fun with you, discard you and move on to the next woman that catches my fancy?
Do you expect me to hold you together? Do you know if you can bear it when I lose interest in you and dump you?
” He forced himself to be as crude as possible.
“Because you know very well, that’s what I do.
Are you telling me you’d be okay with fracturing everything good between us.
..all for what? For a few minutes of mindless sex? ”
“Yes, I want it as long as both of us want it. I want it because...” Some sort of self-preservation seemed to have caught her there.
Swallowing, she looked down at her hands, and then back up at him.
“Don’t use Thaata or our relationship or your bloody integrity as excuses, Caio, because that’s all they all are.
If you don’t want to pursue this, just say that. I’m mature enough to accept that.”
So be it then. “Kissing you back was the biggest mistake of my life. I have plans for it that don’t involve messing up what you and I might have in pursuit of questionable pleasure.
I’m not some errant knight that will hold you together when an affair ruins things between us, Princesa.
Your little experience with men doesn’t mean you’re ready for me.
The fact that you hold one kiss so high in your estimation is proof enough of how naive and unworldly you are. ”
Even in the meager light of the table lamp, Caio could see how she paled. How that final barb had landed hard. Now that he was so in tune with her very breath, he could see the soft gasp that escaped her lush mouth.
Fat tears pooled in her eyes, magnified by the thick glasses.
She blinked and one rolled down the very cheek he wanted to touch and clasp and hold.
He’d always been the one who’d offered her a shoulder when she cried, who stood by her until she found that strength again.
Never the one who made her cry and it left the foulest taste in his mouth.
“I have no use for you as a lover, Nush.”
“No. Only for my brain in your campaign for world supremacy,” she said with a scornful laugh.
It cut through him easily, her self-deprecation, her hot anger, her bitterness, like a knife through butter. And that he’d let her get so close to wound him shocked him in itself. “Princesa—”
“Stop.” Finally, she blinked, pulled in a shuddering breath, straightened her shoulders and faced him. Always fighting, even in defeat, full of that steely strength that he’d always admired. “Get out, Caio.”
He regarded the picture she made for several seconds, desperate to kiss away the hurt from her mouth. Cristo, he was screwed up in every way when it came to Nush.
He walked out, closing the door behind him. He’d spent a lot of time in the last fifteen years disliking who he’d become, but he’d never actively hated himself as much as he did then.
And while he knew he’d acted for the best, for both of them, Caio had a feeling he’d destroyed whatever they’d had and whatever they might have had. But the second was only possible if he’d been a better man.