Chapter Five #2
‘No,’ she said, simply, when it was anything but.
‘You are very good.’
She let the praise fall into a little black hole in her chest—a place that could never be filled, no matter what was said.
She was competent, but she was not gifted, and her competence was really just a byproduct of how much she’d cared, how much she’d wanted to gift her parents her piano playing, as a token of love to Mary, and of their love for the daughter they’d lost.
‘Why do you have the piano if you don’t play?’
‘It came with the house.’
‘Ah.’ She dropped her hands into her lap and looked around, then pulled her silky dark hair over one shoulder, toying with the ends distractedly as she considered the room. ‘Was it all like this when you bought it?’
‘Mostly.’
She bit into her lip—now washed clean of the burgundy lip stain and returned to their natural dusky pink. ‘You didn’t think about walls? Extra bedrooms?’
His eyes probed hers, and she felt the spark of heat travel between them, felt it bloom in her belly then incinerate her whole soul.
‘What for?’
‘I don’t know. Entertaining?’
‘There are twelve bunks downstairs, for staff,’ he said. ‘If you’re bothered by sharing a bed with your husband, you are welcome to use one of them.’
‘Staff?’ She clung to that. ‘So, we’re not completely alone here?’
His smirk showed that she’d given away too much of how she was feeling. Though it was very likely he’d mistaken her hesitation for a lack of willingness, when if anything, the opposite was true.
‘The staff are for when I’m not here, which is most of the time. If I come to the island, it is to be alone. They leave me, then.’
‘Just like that?’ she pondered. ‘You click your fingers and they simply disappear?’
‘Believe it or not, they have lives and families off island that they’re happy to return to.’
He was so confident within himself, so much a man now.
Then again, he was when they were dating, too.
His reputation in the boardroom had been forged from the time he turned eighteen and started stepping into his foster father’s shoes, taking an already successful business and turning it into an empire.
Seven years later, when they had started dating, he’d already made an enormous mark in the business world.
But with Annie, he’d just been… Theo. She’d always seen beyond his success, his achievements, to the man he was.
‘I don’t suppose you’d consider sleeping in a bunk downstairs?’ she asked, mainly because she felt like she ought to ask it. ‘It would be the gentlemanly thing to do.’
He came to stand right in front of her then, pressing a finger to her chin and tilting her face to his, just like he had when he’d given her the engagement ring. ‘We both know I’m not a gentleman though, don’t we?’
Her heart turned over in her chest and it took every ounce of her willpower to deny that. A long time ago, she’d thought him the epitome of character and yes, gentlemanliness.
She swallowed past a bitterness in her throat as their eyes locked together in a battle of the wills.
In a silent exchange, from which Annie had no idea if she, or he, emerged the victor.
Eventually, he dropped his hand away, though remained close enough that if she shifted ever so slightly, her hand would be brushing against his leg.
‘Are you afraid of me, Annie?’
The question surprised her, so too the delivery: deep and gruff.
She stared up at him, her eyes round, her pulse racing.
She could tell him that of course she was—having seen the darkness in him, how could she not be?
But the truth was, for some reason, she wasn’t afraid.
Not of Theo; she couldn’t be. For as much as he clearly hated her father, and Annie, for what had happened five years ago, she still knew he’d never truly hurt her. Certainly not physically.
‘No,’ she answered, simply.
‘Yet you’re shaking all over.’
‘Am I?’ She hadn’t noticed.
‘Or is there another reason for you to be trembling from head to toe?’ he asked, and then his finger landed on her shoulder and stayed there a moment, hovering against the fabric of her T-shirt.
She shook her head, knowing why she was shaking, knowing he knew it, too. She hated her inexperience. Hated that he could stir her to this sort of fever pitch with just a look. If only she’d been with someone, then perhaps he wouldn’t have this effect on her.
‘That’s a shame,’ he murmured, letting his finger trail lower, to the upper part of her arm, and then flicking the shirt sleeve a little, so he could connect with her bare flesh. She had to bite back a groan.
‘What is?’ She couldn’t think properly.
‘That you’re not willing to admit what you want.’
Her lips parted on a husky breath. ‘Does it matter what I want?’ she asked, trying to regain the upper hand. ‘We both know what’s going to happen. I’m as good as bought and paid for.’
His smile was laced with mockery. ‘True,’ he said, slowly. ‘But I’m not interested in having sex with you on those terms.’
Her heart stammered. Something slipped inside of her. Doubts fired in her blood.
His finger tracked sideways, to the curve of her breast, and the nipple that was straining against the soft cotton of the shirt. He flicked it with his forefinger, his lips twisting at her obvious reaction—a gasp and then a soft, husky whimper.
‘Are you saying—you don’t want—’ She couldn’t finish the sentence. Not when he was now cupping her breast with possessive need.
‘Oh, I want,’ he ground out. ‘Make no mistake about it, I need. But what I wish for, most of all, is for you to beg for me,’ he said.
‘I want to hear you cry my name, as though you are driven almost mad with need for me.’ He leaned closer, so his mouth was right by her ear.
‘Only then will we both get the release we’re craving. ’
She whimpered, but before she could say anything else, his lips crashed to hers, just like in the wedding ceremony, hard and fast, possessive and desperate, and all semblance of thought fled from her mind, leaving only this.
The immediacy and passion of their kiss, the white-hot desire that was exploding through her body.
Her hands reached for him, even as his were tucking beneath her arms and lifting her, then pushing her back to sit on the keys, which clunked beneath her bottom.
She pressed the ball of one foot to the piano stool as Theo stood between her legs, his lips expertly moving over hers, a masterclass in persuasion and temptation.
And though thought had deserted her, somewhere deep in the recesses of her brain was a strand of pride, whispering not to beg for him, not to give in to him. Not yet. Not so easily.
‘You taste the same,’ he said, into her mouth, and the words were discordant, initially making no sense. But after a moment, she realised he was talking about when they’d used to kiss, all those years ago.
‘You’re different,’ she said, honestly, because he was. This Theo was all hard edges: in his behavior, his attitudes, his body, and his kiss. Everything was rough and harsh. Back then, he’d kissed her like he might break her. Now it was as though he was daring her to break him.
She scrunched her hand into the fabric of his shirt, her heart racing so hard she thought it might pound right out of her chest. The word please flooded her brain, screeching through her, but she buried it in their kiss, refusing to speak it, refusing to ask for him. Refusing to give him that satisfaction.
As if he could hear her determination, he pulled away from her, dark eyes glittering when they met hers. ‘What do you want, Annie?’
Her pulse washed through her ears so loudly it was like a hurricane had come and whipped up the sea outside. She bit into her lip, refusing to say it, even when her body made a liar of her silence.
A single dark brow of Theo’s lifted, and his expression was so calmly cynical that it was hard to know how he felt and what he wanted.
‘Is this some kind of game to you?’ she asked, after a beat.
He lifted a finger to her cheek, and stared at it, as if mesmerised. ‘Everything is a game, in a way.’
‘You don’t seem like someone who’s having much fun.’
‘Don’t I?’
She shivered. ‘You’re enjoying this?’
His eyes moved to hers and for a moment, she saw a glimpse of the man she’d once known, but it was gone again, immediately.
‘I play to win,’ he said, but it was too cryptic to understand.
He straightened, his touch gone, her lips aching for his kiss, her body liquid with need.
‘It’s late. Go to sleep, Princess.’ She flinched at his use of that name.
He’d never called her that before, but her father did, and Theo knew it.
She heard the disdain in his voice and a small, fragile part of her seemed to wither up and die.