At the age of six, she had not been able to stop her parents from treating her like an object rather than a person, but she was twenty-seven now—an adult fully capable of influencing her own destiny. Her father needed to learn that people were not commodities and if she was the only one willing to teach him that particular lesson, so be it.
She got out of bed and walked quietly to the adjoining bathroom, thinking Sebastian was probably still sleeping and not wanting to wake him. She could use some time to herself this morning to get her thoughts sorted and plan her next move.
She was so focused on her inner reflection that she had stepped inside the bathroom before she realized two things at once. The first, the light was on and she hadn’t been the one to flip the switch. And the second, Sebastian stood there , preparing to step into the shower.
Her brain short-circuited as her body reacted in a way it hadn’t to any stimulus since she was nineteen.
For as intimate as they had gotten when she was in college, she had never seen him . She’d never seen any man without his clothes on and it was a revelation. Bronzed skin stretched over sculpted muscle all over. Dark silky whorls of hair covered his chest and torso, arrowing down to his manhood. That particular appendage fascinated her and she reached out to touch it without thinking. Her fingertip barely grazed the tip. The skin was surprisingly smooth, like satin. As she watched, the flesh grew rigid, flushing with color.
It was big. Much larger than she had expected. Men and women had been copulating for millennia, so she had to ume the fit wasn’t a problem, but she couldn’t quite imagine how that would be true. The now hard shaft bobbed under her gaze, curving up toward his taut stomach and Sebastian made a sound halfway between a groan and a sigh.
It was the first sound either of them had made since she walked into the bathroom. Yet the spell of silence surrounding them did not break further.
She was too entranced to even look up at his face. She wanted to feel more of that satin-smooth flesh. Was it as warm as it looked?
Without realizing she’d done it, she had moved closer so his body was mere inches from her own. She could smell his male musk. Was that what arousal smelled like? It was heady, like a drug. Sucking her bottom lip between her teeth, she gave into the urge to touch and brushed her fingertips over the heated flesh. It was hot and both so very soft and incredibly hard…like pulsing stone under a velvet covering. Her fingers curled of their own volition around him. He was too thick for her fingertips to touch her thumb, but he felt just right in her hand. She still couldn’t imagine him fitting inside of her, but the pulsing pleasure between her thighs told her she wanted to try.
A pearly drop of wetness formed on the tip of his penis and her nostrils flared as she took in this new scent. So incredible. She took a deep breath, a tiny moan escaping her throat as her body reacted.
Sebastian pressed his forehead to hers. “You need to stop this, princess.” His voice came out a hungry growl that went directly to her core.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because if you don’t, I’m going to pick you up and carry you to my bed and I won’t be letting you out of it until I’ve touched and tasted every centimeter of your skin.”
That sounded good to her.
He made a pained sound and it was then that she became aware of how tightly wound he was, his entire body rigid with tension. His big hands were curled into tight fists at his sides. A fine tremor shook him and she knew he was fighting what was happening between them with everything in him.
“Please, princess. We can’t do this.” He sounded so desperate; she could not ignore his plea.
She pressed her hand down his shaft just once before pulling it away. A guttural groan came from deep in his chest. She knew she had to step back from him and return to her own room, but she didn’t want to. She wanted to revel in this feeling, to experience an aspect of her femininity that had been missing since his betrayal eight years ago.
She tilted her head back so that their eyes met, then her gaze flicked to his mouth. Would his lips taste the same? Was she sure she remembered that flavor right? Would his kisses affect her the way they had when she was nineteen? She had to believe they would because everything about him brought about an intense response in her.
“Kiss me,” she whispered in the air between their lips.
Hawk’s lips were eager to do just that, but he knew that even the most chaste kiss would lead to him taking Lina to his bed. He couldn’t do that. She was an ignment, not a girlfriend. Technically she was engaged to another man. All of the reasons that had existed eight years ago for not giving in to his urges continued to be valid. She was still a princess. He was still determined not to make a fool of himself over a woman. She was still a nonrunner for a short-term affair. There was still no possibility of a future between them.
Plus one.
It took him several long seconds to work up the strength to gently push her away. Even that touch felt like it burned him; it made him want more. But more was something he was determined not to have. “No, sweetheart. We can’t.” Then he said the one thing that for him was irrefutable. “You belong to another man.”
It was as if an ice storm had blown into the room, it got so cold.
Lina’s gaze could have frozen lava as she put more distance between them. “Even if I had agreed to marry a man, I wouldn’t belong to him like a pet dog. We might conceivably belong to each other in an emotional sense, but my commitment would be just that. A commitment, not a contract of indenture. And in this case, I did not agree to marry anyone. I am not engaged and I have made no promises of fidelity. If I had, rest ured I would not be in this bathroom with you.”
With that, she spun on her heel and left, slamming the door behind her.
Lina was so angry she could spit nails. That arrogant prehistoric male! How dare he imply she belonged to Amir? Okay, so, according to Sebastian, she was engaged to the sheikh. But she wasn’t, darn it. She wasn’t! And she wasn’t going to be.
But even worse? Was the realization that she was a at twenty-seven and it looked like the only man she wanted…might ever want…to change that was in league with her father to treat her like she was a possession, not a person.
How could this be? She had her theories about why she was…well for lack of a better word, frigid and not one of them included the prospect that she was a one-man woman and he was her man. Or at least her chosen physical mate.
The very thought made her stomach churn. The last thing she wanted was to be irrevocably connected to a man who had betrayed her the way Sebastian had done. Moreover, he was so much more like her father than she would ever have believed, even after the debacle when she was nineteen.
No, that couldn’t be it.
She’d only tried dating a couple of times in college, both at least a full year after the last time she’d seen Sebastian. The results had been less than auspicious. Her new security measures had resulted in her being outed as a princess and that had subsequently led to her inability to be sure the men wanted her for herself.
After her minor rebellion and the loosening of her security, she’d tried dating again, but even when she was fairly sure she was being dated because the man liked her, there was always a tingle of doubt. What if he had been hired by her father to keep a closer eye on her like Sebastian had been? To this day, she wasn’t sure any of her dates had been purely legit.
Which probably said way too much about insecurities she’d rather not face.
But Sebastian’s betrayal had destroyed her ability to trust. Both her own judgment and in the honesty of men who expressed interest in her.
She’d always umed that she needed to be able to trust a man in order to feel the things that Sebastian had brought about in her so many years ago. Well, that theory had been blown to Hades because of all men, she certainly didn’t trust him now. Yet there was no denying the way he impacted her senses. Or was that her hormones?
It certainly wasn’t her heart. That particular organ was off-limits to him. Forever.
So, what did all this mean for her status as a ? Did she have no hope of ever having a normal physical relationship with a man?
Prior to Sebastian’s reentry into her life, she’d convinced herself she was fine with being alone…with being sexually innocent. That was before he reawakened her sensual self. She still wasn’t entirely sure she could trust that aspect of her nature, but she recognized it was one she missed. No matter what her mother’s opinion would be on the subject.
The prospect that a man who had betrayed her held some irrevocable sway over her libido was completely unacceptable.
A man who had the audacity to believe she belonged to the man her parents had chosen for her without her input.
The sound of a growl surprised her and she realized it had come from her. He made her so angry.
No way was she going to let him hold her sexuality hostage.
So, how did she fix it? She already knew that trying to do something with another man wasn’t going to work. At least not while her body was still tuned to respond to Sebastian.