The Scandalous Collection. Кейт Хьюит
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Название: The Scandalous Collection
Автор: Кейт Хьюит
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Короткие любовные романы
Серия: Mills & Boon e-Book Collections
isbn: 9781474084130
isbn:
This was not how she had imagined he would react when she had lain sleepless at night, longing for his arrival, aching for his help, needing his support.
‘I’m not being dramatic,’ she defended herself. ‘Surely I should have some rights as a person, a human being, some say in my own fate, instead of having my future decided for me by my father?’
‘I’m sure he only has your best interests at heart.’
Ash just did not want to get involved in this. Why should he? He was a busy man about to enter the final negotiations on a contract, the success of which would secure the future of his people for generations to come.
‘No. No,’ she denied immediately. ‘He doesn’t have my best interests at heart. All he is interested in is securing a royal marriage for a daughter of the house of Santina. He told me that himself when I begged him to reconsider, that he had had to promise this Spanish prince that I would be an obedient and dutiful wife, a wife who would not try to interfere in his own preferred lifestyle of bed hopping amongst his many mistresses.
‘When I told him that I didn’t want to marry this prince, he said that I was ungrateful and ignoring my royal duty. He said that I would grow accustomed to my husband. Accustomed. To endure marriage to a man who has simply agreed to marry me because he wants an heir, and to whom my father has virtually auctioned me off in exchange for a royal alliance. How could that ever be having my best interests at heart?’
‘I should have thought such a marriage would suit you, Sophia. After all, it’s well documented that your own chosen lifestyle involves something very similar, when it comes to bed hopping.’
A body blow indeed and one that drove the blood from Sophia’s face and doubled the pain in her heart. It shouldn’t matter what Ash thought of her. That was not part of her plan. But still his denunciation of her hurt and it wasn’t one she could defend herself against. Not without telling him far more than she wanted him to know.
‘Then you thought wrong,’ was all she could permit herself to say. ‘That is not the kind of marriage I want. I can’t bear the thought of this marriage.’ Her panic and fear was there in her voice; even she could hear it herself, so how much more obvious must it be to Ash?
She must try to stay calm. Not even to Ash could she truly explain the distaste, the loathing, the fear, she had of being forced by law to give herself in a marriage bed in the most intimate way possible when … No, that was one secret that she must keep no matter what, just as she had already kept it for so long.
Not even to Ash? Definitely not to Ash. Now she was letting her emotions get muddled instead of focusing on the practicalities of her situation.
Steadying her breathing she told Ash as calmly as she could, ‘When I marry I want to know and respect my husband and our marriage. I want to love him and be loved by him. I want us to bring our children up in the safe secure circle of that love.’ That, after all, was the truth.
And it was a truth that Ash heard and couldn’t refute. He frowned. Against his will he was forced to acknowledge that there was something in her voice that touched old nerves, revived old memories. Revived them? Since when had they really needed reviving? He had never forgotten, could never forget.
‘Please, Ash, I’m begging you for your help.’
THOSE words—the same words with which she had cried out to him once before—sliced through his self-control, cutting the cords that held fast the doors to the past.
Once before Sophia had begged him for something.
She’d been just past her sixteenth birthday the last time he’d seen her. He could still remember the shock he had felt at seeing her all grown-up. One minute—or so it had seemed—she had been a child, but somehow six months later she had been trembling on the brink of what would become her woman hood, a girl still for all her burgeoning physical maturity, a girl with tears tracking down her cheeks, her huge dark brown eyes drowning in tears. Then she had still been an innocent: naive, unknowing, virginal and vulnerable. He had been determined that it would not be through him that any of those things were taken from her, no matter how hard she begged him to do so.
What had happened to her during those intervening years to turn her into the wanton sensualist she was now? Why should he care? The sixteen-year-old towards whom he had felt so protective belonged to another life, another Ash.
Even then she’d been sensationally beautiful, with everything about her already hinting at the sensuality to come. Then she had had the promise of a sweet, almost ready-to-ripen peach, yet still a girl compared to his adult-male maturity, and his natural sense of responsibility and moral probity had naturally reacted to that. He had known that he had a duty towards her to protect her not just from herself but from that shock of awareness within himself of the fact that she was becoming a desirable woman.
Ash discovered that there was suddenly a sour taste in his mouth. For himself. For that brief ripping through his moral code, caused by the shocking sexual awareness he’d had of her when he had seen the change in her. Desires he never should have had for that girl given the protective role he had previously played in her life and the fact that he had been about to be married.
Desires he still had for her? He swallowed hard against that question. She was a woman, and available. He was a man, but he could not allow himself to want her. He would not allow it. After all, he had nothing left within him to give to a woman like Sophia, who so obviously brought emotional passion to her relationships along with her sexual desire. A grim wryness filled him. So he was back in his old role towards her, was he, protecting her from his own desire?
‘Ash, please.’ The panic in Sophia’s voice made Ash frown. Twice before he had heard her say his name in that same tone of mingled fear and need and now somehow his body reacted to that memory, instinctively halting him in his tracks.
‘Sophia …’
‘Please, Ash. I need you. There isn’t anyone else I can turn to.’
‘No? What about one of those young men who share your bed?’ His challenge was harsh and acerbic.
This was getting dangerous, Sophia recognised. The conversation was going now in a direction she most certainly did not want.
‘That’s just sex. What I need from you is help.’
Just sex? Ash could almost taste the ferocity of the atavistic emotions surging through him.
Across the years that separated him from those other occasions inside his head he could see the sixteen-year-old she had been, pleading with him for something it was impossible for him to give her. He could almost smell the hot summer fragrance of the small grassy bank on which they’d been sitting. Inside his head he could see a clear image of her in her thin cotton dress. It had shown quite clearly the perfect shape of her high rounded breasts with their eager thrusting nipples pushing against the fabric, just as she had pushed against his chest with small fists when she had begged him to take her and show her what it was to be a woman—and the icy cold shock to his system it had given him to realise that his awareness of her was darkened by the sexual desire. He had wanted to walk СКАЧАТЬ