Fiona McArthur - Dreaming Of... Bali - The Man to Be Reckoned With / Nine Month Countdown / Harry St Clair - Rogue or Doctor?

She laughed then, her hands tucked tight around her, her entire body trembling. “Home? I have no home, Nathan. That estate belongs to you. I have no one and nothing.”

“Riya, it doesn’t have to be this way. I understand that you’re angry. I understand how it feels when someone who should take care of you betrays you...when someone you—”

“Do you? She lied to me. About my father. She practically stole me from him.”

If she had cried, Nathan wouldn’t have been so scared for her. But she didn’t. It was as though her shock was much too deep for mere tears. “Everything I have believed about myself, everything is a lie. I thought he abandoned me. I thought he didn’t love me. I will never forgive her for this. She stole my childhood and she made me into this frozen coward who hid from everything in life. No one has ever cared about my happiness.

“Not her and definitely not my dad. If he had, knowing how emotionally weak she is, would he have threatened her that he would take me from her?”

What the hell had he started?

He had never meant to hurt her. He had never meant to make her feel alone, had never meant to unravel her like this. He understood the weight of it, he knew better than anyone how painful, how awful it felt.

“Shh, Riya. Enough,” he said in a stern voice. “Look at me, butterfly.”

When she raised her gaze to him, the depth of feeling that filled him scared the life out of him. Her mouth trembled and he jerked his hand back, the urge to touch that soft cushion overwhelming him. “This will pass, Riya. Believe me, let me drive you back to the estate and—”

“Please don’t send me away, Nathan. Tomorrow, I’ll be back to myself again. Tomorrow, I’ll be strong again. Tomorrow, I might even forgive her. Tonight, I want to be selfish. Tonight, I want it to be just about me.”

What could he say to that?

His chest was tight with guilt. All she had tried was to make his father smile. And he...he had unleashed nothing but hurt on her.

Because he had coveted something he could never have.

CHAPTER NINE

TIGHTENING HER ARMS around his neck, Riya nudged closer to Nathan, the warmth of his body a cocoon she didn’t want to leave. As though sensing her reluctance, he didn’t put her down. Not when he lingered outside the sitting area, not when he walked through it into the bedroom.

Finally he sank down in the armchair and settled her in his lap.

How had she never learned how good it felt to be held like this, to be cherished as if she was precious? How many more things had she missed tucked away in her own world?

She had erected a fence around her heart, around herself, and she had missed out on so many things. While other girls had been going on first dates and experiencing first kisses, she had been studying for a place at the university, giving Robert a hand when she could, managing her mother’s moods.

She had bound herself so tight that a little truth from the past had splintered through her. Nothing had really changed. And yet everything had.

It felt as if someone had stuck a pin in her side to jolt her awake from a slumbering state. She sucked in a breath and opened her eyes. His gaze clashed with hers, his long fingers splayed out over her bare arm.

An infinitesimal tension spun into life around them. His other hand tipped her chin up. “Why this dress? Why drinking? Why this route to show your anger, your hurt?”

And just like that, he shot straight to the heart of the matter. “I don’t remember when I had decided that no man would ever hurt me like my father’s abandonment did, when I decided I would live my life in this frozen state. I wanted to prove to myself that she didn’t ruin me forever with her lies.”

“And?”

She tucked her head into his shoulder and sighed. “It’s not that simple, is it? A lifetime of sticking to the safe side, suppressing any small urge that could be deemed unsafe, that could risk pain, it’s a hard habit to shake.” She gave a laugh, tinged with sadness. “I was dancing and I had a little to drink, but I realized it wasn’t that simple to change myself inside. Like flipping on a switch. I can’t suddenly do something I’ve trained myself not to do.”

“No, it’s not simple.” There was a roughness to his voice, an edge, a desperate sense of being tightly leashed. As if he was forcing himself to laugh instead of...something else.

Her hand clasped in his. Long fingers with blunt nails and hers, slender and pink tipped, coiled around his.

“It takes years to defeat that kind of conditioning, years to conquer that fear. Doesn’t take much to trigger it back either.” He sounded strained, almost resigned. He squeezed her arm and Riya caught the sigh that rose to her lips.

How did he understand her so well?

“How about you start with small steps, butterfly?”

She smiled and nodded, the scent of his cologne drifting over her. And the huge chasm that she couldn’t cross toward living her life suddenly didn’t feel so daunting.

In the shifting confusion of her own emotions and thoughts, he was constant, her awareness of him sharp and unwavering.

Nathan, who had brought so much upheaval into her life, felt like an anchor. All he lived for was the thrill, the fun, the moment. Who better to show her what she’d been missing? Who better to show her what it meant to be daring, to be wild, to grab life by the horns and shake it? Who better to start on her path to living than a man who would never affect her in any other way?

With Nathan, there would be no expectations, no disappointments. When it was time to leave, he would, and this fact had nothing to do with her. Therein lay her safety net.

A sharp hunger bursting inside her, Riya slid her fingers toward the nape of his neck. Pressed her mouth to the pulse flickering on his throat. “Is a kiss a small enough step, Nate?”

Instantly he stiffened beneath her. His fingers landed on her jaw, pushed her face away from his neck in a gentle but firm grip. Desire was a relentless peal in her, as if her pulse had moved just from some points to all over her body.

Fear and safety were taboo. Daring and living were her words of the moment.

She clasped his wrist with her hand and laid kisses against the inside of it. His palm was rough and warm, and as she pressed her lips again to the center of it, she felt the rightness of it.

“Tonight’s going to be your lucky night,” she said, her throat working to get the words out. She had to brazen it out, didn’t want him to know how huge this was for her.

A sharp grip at the nape of her neck caused her to look at him. “My lucky night?” he said.

He looked as if his face were carved from pure stone, his blue eyes molten with desire. There was no frost, no ice tonight.

Nathan was all fire and passion, and she wanted that fire; she wanted to lose herself in him. “Don’t make promises you might not be able to keep, butterfly.”

Straightening in his lap, she pushed into his touch, determined to have this. “It’s okay if you’re not up to it, Nate. No one wants to be a pity f—”

His fingers tightened their grip in her hair. His breath landed on her mouth, until there was nothing to do but breathe the same air as him. “You’re doing this for the wrong reasons, Riya.”

Feeling gloriously alive, she bent and kissed a spot just beside his mouth. The bristle on his jaw rubbed against her mouth. Heat spread everywhere, incinerating a need she had never known. So she did it again. And again. Like a cat rubbing herself against her favorite surface. Until her lips, her cheeks, her chin stung in the most delicious way, scraping against the roughness of his jaw. Until he made a feral sound that in turn scraped against her very senses.