Page 66 of A Diamond Deal
He couldn’t let emotions leech now.
He couldn’t allow her in.Close.But hewasdesperate.
Desperate to be inside her.
‘Why shouldn’t we do this?’ Her hand moved from his shoulder. Her fingers inching towards his face. Her thumb, so small, pressed to his bottom lip. Gently she dragged it across his skin. ‘I won’t regret it,’ she said, her words uneven.
Thisdidn’t feel fake.
This chemistry between them. Heating her cheeks—controlling her words. Controlling the involuntary fall of his mouth.
Thishad never been fake.
‘One last time,’ she said, her eyes dipping to his mouth. ‘For closure.’
‘Closure?’ he repeated.
‘I regret many things, Konstantinos,’ she admitted, and he now knew the truth of those words.
He understood the weight she carried on her too small shoulders of regrets that never should have been hers to have. Her father should have protected her. Whatever he did outside of their family home, it never should have been his daughter’s secret to keep.
‘I don’t want to regret you,’ she continued. ‘I know now, however hard it was to tell each other our stories, it’s not enough.’ Her hand fell from his mouth. ‘We need to do this. We need to wrap up…close the door—on everything. Includingthis.’
She moved. Only a fraction but every part of him hardened. Pulsed.
‘Hssss!’ His teeth gritted, he dug his fingers into her thighs and dragged her harder on the pulsing heat of him.
She gasped. ‘Konstantinos…’
Closure. It was such a small word. It was such a necessity, he realised now.For them both.And the only place they would find it… His chest rumbled. It would not be on the sofa. He would not fuck herhere.Like an out-of-control teen. Without a condom. Without the extra protection he could provide.
‘We will sleep together,’ he decided out loud, his hands moving to the bare flesh of her outer thighs. He smoothed his thumbs down the seam of them. Her spine curled with the downward stroke of his fingers.
‘Yes,’ she agreed.
It was a breath in his ear. A single word. But it felt like a storm. It attacked him from every direction. His mind.His senses. He couldn’t pinpoint the attack. Where this single word hit him hardest.
‘Make love to me,’ she said, so forthright in her needs.
He ignored the drag in his gut. The ache in his chest. He felt all twisted. His thoughts. His insides…Hedidn’t make sense.Thisdidn’t. It contradicted…everything.
‘Not here,’ he growled. It was raw.Animalistic.
‘Then where?’
He’d take her to a place where they made sense. A place where they’d always found each other. Where words were never difficult.
He’d take them back to the place where they’d started.
He placed his hands on her hips, held her against him, and he stood.
It was fate for him to do this. For the war to end between themthere. For them to lay down their arms and surrender to the inevitable in the place where they’d begun, and their marriage would end.
‘We will go to bed.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Poppy buried herface in his throat.
