The Most Powerful Of Kings - Jackie Ashenden Page 0,58

could never have.

She stood at the parapet and put her hands on the cool stone, taking breath after breath. Perhaps it was simply panic about the wedding and becoming queen. An attack of bridal nerves...

It’s him you’re missing. It’s him you’ll never have.

Cold iced the blood in her veins, doubt hooking its claws into her, and she had to take yet another breath to get control of it.

Yes, she was missing him. But she had to be patient. Had to believe that he would eventually come to see that what he’d found on the island he could have here too.

Ione was only tired and so was she. Tomorrow would be better. Perhaps she might even see him. That would help. She didn’t need much, just his presence somewhere close by.

Behind her came the sound of her bedroom door shutting, and when she turned it felt as if her heart had stopped beating and was seizing in her chest.

Adonis was striding towards her, tall and powerful, shrugging out of his suit jacket and discarding it on the couch as he came. Pulling at the grey tie around his neck and jerking that off too, he tossed it negligently onto the floor, leaving him wearing a black business shirt and charcoal suit trousers that highlighted his strength and dark, masculine power, making every feminine sense she had sit up and take notice. His expression was stony, but the blue of his eyes burned like a gas flame.

Had he remembered their time on the island? Was he coming to tell her that was what he wanted? Was he coming to tell her that he needed her?

But he didn’t say a word and he didn’t look anywhere else but at her, coming across the room and through the double doors that led out onto the balcony. And he didn’t stop. He reached for her and pulled her into his arms. He lifted his hands, sliding his fingers into her hair, tipping her head back and covering her mouth, hard and demanding.

It was a hungry, frantic kiss, echoing the hunger and demand in her own heart, crushing the doubt, melting the ice.

That man was still there. Her lover of the island. She could taste the desperation in his kiss, the longing for something more, the need for a connection.

It was there and perhaps it would take a long time for him to say it, or perhaps he never would, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel it. That didn’t mean he didn’t want it.

She couldn’t doubt him or put her own fears before what was in her heart.

His parents might not have put him first, but she would.

He needed her to and so she’d give him everything. Whatever he wanted, anything at all. She would give him all of it. Her mind. Her heart. Her soul.

Anna melted against him the way he’d been dreaming of for days now. Her mouth was open and hot under his, her lush curves pressed to every inch of him.

Since getting back from the island, he’d had a mountain of work to get through, because, although Xerxes had handled most of it, there was always more, and there were some things he alone had to do.

Adonis had informed Xerxes of his intention to marry and had installed Anna in new rooms in the family wing of the palace. To say Xerxes had been surprised was an understatement. But Adonis hadn’t been in the mood to discuss that, or the child Anna was carrying, and so he’d sent his brother away and buried himself in his work.

Or, at least, he’d tried, starting with rebuilding the detachment he’d left in ruins back on the island.

Yet for some reason he couldn’t. Because every time he attempted to detach himself from his emotions, all he could think about was walking along the beach and the leap of joy in his heart as Ione had put her hand in his; the tenderness that had filled him as Anna lay against him in the dark; the satisfaction of cooking for her; the happiness as he’d tacked across the bay in the little yacht, with Ione laughing in the sun...

The happiness that had ruined him.

That was why it was impossible to put his emotions aside, why he couldn’t shake the coiling, tangling need that had clawed at him ever since he’d returned to the palace.

He’d tasted happiness and now he wanted more.

He’d thought denial would work, that his will would be strong enough, that if he stayed