Caitlin Crews - Princess From the Past

“You will forgive me if I did not think the social niceties had any place here,” she said instead as calmly as she could, as if she could not feel that sharp gaze of his leaving marks on her skin. “Given our circumstances.”

Bethany had to move then, or explode. She walked toward the next bright, jumbled canvas on the stark-white wall and sensed instead of saw Leo keep pace with her. When she stopped moving, he was beside her once again, close enough that she could almost feel his heat, the corded strength in his arm. Close enough that she was tempted to lean into him.

At least now she could control her destructive impulses, she thought bitterly, even if she could not quite rid herself of those urges as she’d like.

“Our ‘circumstances,’” he echoed after a tense, simmering moment, his voice dark and sinful, at odds with the razor’s edge beneath. “Is that what you call it? Is that how you rationalize your actions?” A quick sideways glance confirmed that one dark brow was raised, mocking and cruel, matching his tone perfectly. Bethany knew that expression all too well. A chill moved through her.

She was aware of her own pulse drumming wildly in her veins and had to stop herself from fidgeting with the force of will that, three years ago, she had not known she possessed. But it had been forged day by day in the bright fire of his cold indifference. At least she knew it existed now, and that she could use it.

“It does not matter what you wish to call it,” she said, fighting to remain cool. She turned toward him and wished at once that she had not. He was too big, too male, too much. “It is obviously time that both of us moved on.”

She did not care for the way that Leo watched her then, his eyes hooded, predatory. They reminded her exactly how dangerous this man was and exactly why she had left him in the first place.

“This is why you deigned to contact me tonight?” he asked in a deceptively soft voice that sent a chill spiraling down her spine. “To discuss a divorce?”

“Why else would I contact you?” she asked, wanting her voice to sound careless, light, but hearing all too well that it was tight with anxiety.

“I can think of no other reason, of course,” he said, his eyes fixed on her in a way that made her deeply uncomfortable down into her very bones. She set her jaw and refused to look away. “Certainly I knew better than to imagine that you might finally be ready to resume your duties or keep your promises. And yet here I am.”

She did not know how long she could keep this up. He was too overwhelming, too impossible. She had been unable to handle him when he had been as lost in the volcanic passion between them as she was. But his anger, his lacerating coldness, was much, much worse. She was not certain she was equal to it. She was not at all sure she could pretend not to be wounded by it.

“I do not want anything from you except this divorce,” Bethany forced herself to say.

Her body was staging a civil war. One part wanted to run for the door and disappear into the chilly fall evening. What was truly distressing and shocking was that part of her did not. Part of her instead ached for his hands that she knew could wield such dark sorcery against her flesh. She did not want to think about that. To remember. Touching Leo Di Marco was like leaping head-first into the sun. She would not survive it a second time. She would feel too much, he would feel too little and she would be the one to pay the price. She knew it as well as she knew her own name.

She straightened her shoulders, and made herself look at him directly, as if she were truly brave instead of desperate. Did it really matter which? “I want to be done with this farce, Leo.”

“And to what farce, exactly, do you refer?” he asked silkily, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his trousers, his gaze fixed on her face in a way that made her want to fidget. It made her feel scorched from the inside out. “When you ran away from me, from our marriage and our home, and relocated halfway across the globe?”

“That was not a farce,” she dared to say. There was no longer anything to lose, and she could not give in to her own desolation. “It was a fact.”

“It is a disgrace,” he said, his voice deceptively quiet, though she did not mistake the cold ferocity and hard lash of it. “But why speak of such things? You prove with your every breath that you have no interest at all in the shame you bring upon my family, my name.”

“Which is why we must divorce,” Bethany said, fighting to keep the edge from her voice and failing. “Problem solved.”

“Tell me something,” he said. With a peremptory jerk of his chin, he dismissed a hovering gallery-worker bearing a tray of champagne flutes then returned his gaze to Bethany’s. “Why this particular step? And why now? It has been three years since you abandoned me.”

“Since I escaped, you mean,” she retorted without thinking, and knew as soon as the words had passed her lips that she had made a grave error.

His dark eyes flared with heat and she felt an answering fire rage through her. It was as potent as the sense of being nothing more to him than prey, but she could not allow herself to look away.

She could not allow him to railroad her into another bargain with the devil made out of desperation and, cruelest of all, that tiny flicker of hope that nothing had ever managed to stamp out—not even his disinterest. She had to be out from under his thumb.

For good.

Prince Leo Di Marco told himself he was coldly, deeply furious. But it was no more than anger, no more than righteous indignation, he assured himself; it went no deeper than that. This woman’s uncanny ability to sneak around his lifelong armor and wound him was a thing of the past. It had to be.

He had spent the whole of his day in meetings on Bay Street, Toronto’s financial center. There was not a banker or businessman there who dared challenge the ancient Di Marco name—much less the near-limitless funds that went with it. Bethany was the only woman who had ever defied him, who had ever hurt him. The only person that he could remember doing so.

Three years on and she was doing it still. He had to fight himself to maintain his controlled exterior. He could feel the anger that only she inspired in him opening up that great, black cavern within him that he had long preferred to ignore. He knew exactly why she had demanded they meet in a public place—as if he was some kind of wild animal. As if he needed to be contained. Handled. He was not certain why this insult, atop all the others, should bite at him so deeply.

It infuriated him that he was not immune to her fresh-faced beauty that had so captivated and deceived him in the first place. She was still far too much of a temptation. Her angelic blue eyes were such an intriguing contrast to her dark-brown curls, all of it tempered with the faintest spray of freckles across her pert nose. He did not allow himself to concentrate on the delicate fullness of her mouth. It did not seem to matter that he knew her appearance of wide-eyed innocence was nothing more than an act.

It never seemed to matter.

He wanted his hands on her skin, his mouth on her breast. Those tight, ripe nipples against his tongue. He told himself it was all he wanted, all he chose to allow himself to want.

“Escaped?” he queried, icily. “The last I checked, you were living quite comfortably. In a house I own.”

“Because you demanded it!” she hissed, that fascinating splash of color rising from her graceful neck toward her soft cheeks. He knew other ways to raise that color upon her delicate skin and very nearly smiled, remembering. She darted a glance around at the crowd which surrounded them, as if for strength, then faced him again. “I wanted nothing to do with that house.”