Her shocked expression masked into something complex. Her lips tightened in dismay while her brow flinched in pain. A stark yearning drew her features taut while her swallow indicated a type of fear. Then it all smoothed away, leaving him unsettled, wondering if an affair with her could become more complicated than it needed to be.
“Had,” she said in a husky voice. “Past tense.”
“I’m not talking about your husband,” he growled, stirred to jealousy after all.
The blank look she sent him disappeared in a raspy laugh. “Neither am I.”
His sharp brain caught a hidden meaning, but she kept talking, distracting him.
“Last night was a departure from my real life, not something I’ll ever do again. Why would you even want to—” Dawning comprehension waxed her features before her face gradually tightened in rejection and something more disturbing. Anguish. “Wow. Nice to know some things haven’t changed,” she said bitterly.
“What do you mean?” Clammy palms seemed an overreaction to being rejected as a one-nighter. He’d done it himself in the past, but he didn’t like it. Not from her.
“I’m still capable of being used,” she answered. “You think that if you keep me close, you’ll keep my father’s cronies closer.”
A pinch of compunction gave him pause, but that’s not all that was going on here. And now she’d piqued his curiosity.
“Who used you in the past? How?” It was a tender point for him. Only a blind fool would fail to see the advantage to him in associating with her, but there were lines, especially with women. When Luiza was taken, it was to use her as leverage against him. She’d ended her life to prevent it. He never took manipulation of the unwilling lightly.
“Who hasn’t used me?” she demanded. “I thought if there was one silver lining to this—” she drew a circle around her face “—it was that I was no longer a pawn. Thanks for dinner.” She stood up, tossing him a pithy look. “A girl in my position is lucky when a man shows her a bit of attention. You’re a helluva guy, Ryzard.”
Her contempt burned like acid as it dripped over him. It might not have seared so deeply if he hadn’t grasped at the advantages of an affair to justify exactly how badly he wanted to continue theirs.
He didn’t want to admit how fierce his hunger for her was, but the hurt beneath her words told him she didn’t see any at all. Wounding her, especially when she was so sensitive about her desirability, had a disturbing effect on him. Guilt assailed him and provoked something deeper. A compulsion to draw her close and make up with her.
He didn’t want to be so enthralled. It went against everything he’d promised himself and Luiza’s memory. Nevertheless, he reacted to the way she rejected him with a pivot of her body. It incited him to strike fast to keep from being shut out. Fear that had nothing to do with the best interests of his country goaded him to act.
“Don’t underestimate what’s between us, Tiffany.” He inwardly cringed at revealing so much, but he was even more averse to her thinking he was capable of low motives. “The attraction between us is real and very strong.”
“Oh, give it up! You don’t want me. You—”
“Shall I prove it?” He rose and easily stalked her across the tiny space of the balcony, using her outstretched hand to tug her close and pulling her resistant body into to his own.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, wriggling for freedom then stilling when she felt his arousal. “You—” Confusion stilled her and she searched his expression.
“As I said.” He lowered his head, setting a determined kiss over her protesting mouth.
* * *
Tiffany continued to press for distance, but he wasn’t being mean, just insistent. Still, she was awfully confused. The way he’d given her that moment of hope that she could be attractive to someone before she realized it was all a ruse had been devastating. Now he was coming on strong, making her want to melt into him. Really, seriously, turn to mush in his arms. It was so frightening to be this affected. She did the only thing she could think to do. She tried to bite him.
He jerked his head back. “Are we playing rough, draga?” He shot his hand beneath her robe, grasping her breast in a firm hand, dislodging the slippery tie of her robe so it started to fall open.
“Don’t!” she cried, hunching and scrambling to keep as much cloth in place as possible. “Please, Ryzard, don’t do this. Not out here where anyone could see.”
He froze, then slowly withdrew his hand. The tips of his fingers grazed a distended nipple, sending a pulse of pleasure-pain through her. She was too humiliated to respond and too shaken by the fear of exposure to appreciate his obeying her plea.
“Tiffany,” he scolded as he held her in loose arms. “I’m not trying to hurt you.”
Pushing back until he reluctantly let his hold on her drop away, she ensured she was completely covered, but couldn’t lift her head.
“I’ve seen battle scars, you know.” The hand he used to smooth her hair back from her bad cheek was surprisingly compassionate.
* * *
Rather than turn into his caress, she averted from it.
“I’m your first lover since the accident? That’s why you’re so shy?” Ryzard was still trying to catch up to the way her shield of toughness had fallen away so quickly into such tremendous vulnerability. One second she’d been a worthy adversary, the next a broken fawn in need of swift protection.
“Yeah.” Her snorted word held a hysterical note. She tried to step over the chair he’d upended, trying to move away from him. Tears sheened her eyes, her emotions so close to the surface he knew she was near a tipping point.
He bent to right the chair, allowing her to move away into privacy because pieces were falling into place in his mind in a way he couldn’t quite believe. Her back seemed incredibly narrow and bowed under a weight as she entered the suite. He could hardly countenance what he was thinking, but her gasp of pain last night rang in his ears. He had thought she just wasn’t quite ready, but...
Cautiously he followed, one hand going to the door frame to steady himself as he asked, “Tiffany. Am I your only lover?”
She didn’t turn around, but her shoulders seemed to flinch before she lifted her head to say cockily, “So far, but with my looks and connections, I’m encouraged to believe there’s more in my future.”
He bit back a curse while his free hand clenched into a fist at his side. He wanted to shake her out of sheer frustration with her cavalier attitude, but at the same time he had a deep compulsion to cradle her against him. The erotic memory of their coming together grew sweeter even as he struggled with the ramifications of being a woman’s first. He’d done it once before. He knew the emotional ties it pulled from both parties.
A splintering sensation accosted him as he once again compared her with Luiza. His first instinct was to walk away. Confusing emotions tumbled through him like a rockslide, tainted with the intense grief he’d managed to avoid as the aftermath of war had consumed him. He once again hated himself as a traitor for having more than a passing interest in Tiffany, but learning he was her first changed things. He wasn’t so archaic he thought virginity was a seal of quality, but losing it was an important marker in a woman’s life. He couldn’t be dismissive of her or what she’d offered him, even if she was trying to be.
“Can you explain to me how this is possible, Mrs. Davis?”
* * *
Tiffany looked to the ceiling, battling back stupid tears and a deeper sense of vulnerability than she’d ever felt. There had been a time when her confidence, her belief in her own superiority, had been unflagging. In an instant she had become weak and broken and dependent. Finding her way back from that seemed impossible, and she hated that Ryzard saw her at this low point. He was so strong and sure of himself. Where had he been when she’d had all her defenses in place and could have handled his forceful, dynamic personality?
A dozen sarcastic responses to his question came to her tongue, but the nearest she could get to flippant was to say, “I was afraid I’d fall in love with someone else if I didn’t save myself for Paulie.”
She tightened her belt and turned, surprised to catch him in an unguarded moment.
The faraway look in his eye suggested he had dark thoughts of his own. Seeing he might not be as completely put together as he seemed gave her the courage to continue with more outspokenness than she’d ever allowed herself.
“Our marriage was written in stone. Our fathers were friends, and his mother was my mom’s maid of honor. Paulie and my brother, Christian, were inseparable through childhood. The architect and engineer designed the bridge between our families when Paulie and I were still in diapers. By the time I was in high school, no other boy had the guts to ask me out. They knew I was already taken.”