The Wedding Night They Never Had

His mouth curved in a faint, lazy smile. ‘Yes. It’s very nice. Come here and you can have a taste.’ He uncrossed his feet and spread his thighs, indicating that she was to come and stand between them.

The aching, breathless feeling inside her intensified.

Slowly, she moved to stand in front of his chair, between those powerful thighs, while he gazed at her, golden-brown eyes gleaming under silky black lashes.

It was strange to have him look up at her when normally she was the one looking up. Even so, she felt his power. Even when she was sitting down the impact of his presence made her want to go on her knees before him.

Cassius sat forward. ‘Here,’ he said softly. ‘Take a sip.’ And he extended his hand, holding his glass out to her.

Her heartbeat was louder now and she could feel the heat coming off him, making the fierce longing inside her tighten.

Whenever she thought about getting close to him, her fantasies were always veiled and gauzy. Kisses, certainly, though she had no idea what a kiss felt like or tasted like. She definitely imagined his arms around her, holding her, and sometimes in the dead of night she imagined his hands on her.

But those were furtive imaginings, making her restless and hot, vaguely feverish and a little afraid, so she tried not to imagine that too much.

It wasn’t that she didn’t know about sex. It was more that thinking about it in terms of herself and Cassius was too much. The depth of her own feeling about it was too much.

But now she was closer to him than she’d ever been in her life and it wasn’t like her teenage imaginings. It was more immediate, more physical, more visceral than those gauzy fantasies had ever been.

Inara swallowed and put her hand out for the glass, only for him to pull it back slightly and out of her reach. How annoying. She took a tiny step closer, reaching out again, only for him to do the same thing.

He watched her, his mouth curving, his gaze full of what looked like challenge mixed with something hot and wicked. A tease.

He was doing this on purpose, wasn’t he?

Of course he is. He’s flirting with you.

What little breath she had left caught in her throat, a strange euphoria sweeping through her. Because, while she didn’t know much of anything about flirting, a very female part of her told her that was what he was doing. Which could only mean one thing: he saw her not just as a woman, but as a woman he was attracted to. A woman he wanted.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked huskily, wanting to be sure.

‘I think you know what I’m doing.’ That devastatingly sexy smile deepened, his eyes gleaming. ‘If you want a taste of my brandy, little one, you’re going to have to come much closer than that.’

Cassius knew he was being grossly inappropriate. But the brandy had gone to his head, he was tired and it had been a long time since he’d allowed himself to enjoy the company of a pretty woman. A long time since he’d flirted with anyone. A long time since he’d felt desire at all.

Yet desire was coiling through him now, and even though she was the wrong woman to be feeling this about, the wrong woman to be using his old flirting skills on, he couldn’t bring himself to stop.

She was just so...pretty. And sweet. And so very innocent, in her white dress with her mismatched underwear plainly visible underneath. She was also very slender and fragile, her eyes silvery from behind the lenses of her glasses, her hair lying loose over her shoulders like moonlight.

His child bride.

Except she wasn’t a child any more. Her cheeks had gone pink and she was looking at him in a way that was intimately familiar to him. He’d seen it before in the faces of too many women to count.

She wanted him.

He hadn’t expected that, though in retrospect he should have, and it was a warning sign that he needed to stop. Because nothing could happen between them. Nothing should happen between them, not when they were going to separate. Their marriage needed to stay unconsummated, because she was so much younger than him, and because he wasn’t the man he’d once been—that reckless playboy with no purpose in life but to indulge his own selfish needs. He was trying to put distance between himself and that man, and seducing his lovely, innocent wife was definitely not putting distance between them.

Also, it wasn’t what his parents would have wanted. They’d been appalled at his marriage, never mind that he’d done it to save Inara, and they’d certainly be appalled at what he was contemplating now. Then again, his parents had been dead for three years, and he was so tired of being good. Tired of being rigid and distant and controlled. Tired of having to set an example. Tired of being the King.

Would it be so wrong to have one night where he could indulge himself? To sip a good brandy and flirt with a pretty woman? That was all—just flirt. He wouldn’t take it any further. But he could have that, couldn’t he?

A crease had appeared between Inara’s brows, as if she was contemplating doing what he’d said and getting closer to him, and he found himself breathless at the thought that she might.

It was not an unreasonable response. It had been years since he’d allowed a woman to get close, so it probably had more to do with her being female than it did with Inara herself.

Anyway, he wanted to know what she smelled like. Did she wear perfume? He didn’t think she would. There was no artifice to her; everything about her was haphazard and untidy. But also very, very honest.

She wasn’t trying to be anyone other than who she was.