Julia felt another kind of pain lance her. The memory of the look of shame on her husband’s face, the way he had closed in on himself and started to retreat, which had marked the beginning of the end of their marriage.
She shook her head and said, a little defiantly, “Of course not. Do you think I would be here if I had?” And then she cursed herself inwardly. She didn’t want Kaden analysing why she had come. “My husband—ex-husband—couldn’t … We had difficulties … And you? Did you have children?”
That slightly mocking look crossed his face again, because she must know well that his status as a childless divorcee was common knowledge. But he just shook his head. “No, no children.”
His mouth had become a bitter line, and Julia shivered minutely because it reminded her of how he’d morphed within days from an ardent lover into a cold stranger.
“My ex-wife’s mother suffered a horrific and near-fatal childbirth and stuffed my wife’s head with tales of horror and pain. As a result Amira developed a phobia about childbirth. It was so strong that when she did discover she was pregnant she went without my knowledge to get a termination. Soon afterwards I started proceedings to divorce.”
Julia gave an audible gasp and Kaden saw her eyes grow wide. He knew how it sounded—so stark. His jaw was tight with tension. How on earth had he let those words spill so blithely from his mouth? He’d just told Julia something that only a handful of people knew. The secret of his ex-wife’s actions was something he discussed with nobody. As were the painstaking efforts he’d made to help her overcome that fear after the abortion. But to no avail. Eventually it had been his wife who had insisted they divorce, knowing that she could never give him an heir. She hadn’t been prepared to confront her fears.
Kaden’s somewhat brutal dismissal of a wife who hadn’t been able to perform her duty made a shiver run through Julia. The man she’d known had been compassionate, idealistic.
To divert attention away from the dismay she felt at recognising just how much he’d changed, she said quickly, “I thought divorce was illegal in Burquat?”
Kaden took a measured sip of his amber-coloured drink. “It used to be. Things have changed a lot since you were there. It’s been slow but steady reform, undoing the more conservative laws of my father and his forebears.”
A rush of tenderness took Julia by surprise, coming so soon after her feeling repelled by his treatment of his wife. Kaden had always been so passionate about reform for his country, and now he was doing it.
Terrified that he would see something of that emotion rising up within her, Julia stood up jerkily and walked over to the window, clutching her glass in her hand.
She took in the view. Kaden had told her about this apartment, right in the centre of London. Pain, bittersweet, rushed through her. He had once mentioned that she should move in here when she returned to college in London—so that he could make sure she was protected, and so she would be waiting for him when he came over. But those words had all been part of his seductive patter. Meaningless. A wave of sadness gripped her.
She didn’t hear Kaden move, and jumped when his deep voice came from her right, far too close. “Why did you divorce your husband, Julia?”
Because I never loved him the way I loved you. The words reverberated around her head. Never in a million years had she imagined she would be standing in a room listening to Kaden ask her that question.
Eventually, when she felt as if she had some measure of control, she glanced at him. He was standing with one shoulder propped nonchalantly against the wall, looking at her from under hooded lids. With one hand in his pocket, the glass held loosely in the other, he could have stepped straight out of a fashion magazine.
He looked dark and dangerous, and Julia gulped—because she felt that sense of danger reverberate within her and ignite a fire. She tried to ignore the sensation, telling herself it was overactive hormones mixed in with too many evocative memories and the loaded situation they were now in. She looked back out of the window with an effort. She felt hot and tingly all over, her belly heavy with desire.
“I … we just grew apart.” She shook her head. “It seemed like a good idea, but it never really worked. And our difficulty with having children was the last straw. There wasn’t enough to keep us together. I’m glad there were no children. It wouldn’t have been the right environment to bring them into.”
Julia had never told Kaden that she was adopted, or about her own visceral feelings on the subject of having children. She’d never told anyone. It was too bound up in painful emotions for her. And perhaps she hadn’t told him for a reason—because on some level she’d been afraid of his judgement, and that what they shared hadn’t been real. She’d been right to be afraid.
She was aware of tension emanating from Kaden and didn’t want to look at him, afraid he might see the emotion she felt she couldn’t hide. Her face always gave her away. He was the one who had told her that as he’d held her face in his hands one day …
Suddenly from out of the still ominously cloudy sky came a jagged flash of lightning. Julia jumped so violently that liquid sloshed out of her glass. Immediately shocked and embarrassed by her overreaction, she stepped back. “I’m sorry …”
Kaden was there in an instant. He took the glass out of her hand, placing it down on the table alongside his own. He was back in front of her before she could steel herself not to react. His dark eyes looked her up and down and then rested on her chest. As if mesmerised, Julia followed his gaze to see where some of the drink had landed on her shirt, right over one breast, and now the material was clinging to the rounded slope.
Panicky, Julia stepped back, “I’ll get a cloth … I don’t want Samia’s shirt to get ruined.”
A big hand snaked out and caught her upper arm. “Leave it.”
Kaden’s voice was unbearably harsh, and in that instant the air between became even heavier and more charged. As if the tension and atmosphere between them was directly affecting the weather, a huge booming roll of thunder sounded outside.
Julia flinched, eyes glued to Kaden’s with some kind of sick fascination. Faintly she said, “I thought the storm was over.”
With a move so smooth she didn’t even feel it happening Kaden put his hands on her arms and pulled her closer. Their bodies were almost touching.
“I think the storm is just beginning.”
For a second confusion made Julia’s head foggy. She didn’t seem to be able to separate out his words, or even understand what Kaden was saying. And then she realised, when she saw how hot his gaze had become and how it moved down to her mouth. Desire was stamped onto the stark lines of his face and Julia’s heart beat fast in response. Because it was a look that had haunted her dreams for ever.
Desperately trying to fight the urge to succumb to the waves of need beating through her veins, she shook her head and tensed, trying to pull back out of Kaden’s grip. His hands just tightened.
“Kaden, no. I shouldn’t be here … we shouldn’t have met again.”
“But we did meet. And you’re here now.”
Julia asserted stiff ly, “I didn’t agree to come here for this.”
Kaden shook his head, and a tiny harsh smile touched his mouth. “From the moment we stood in front of each other in that room earlier the possibility of this has existed.”
Bitterness rang in Julia’s voice. “Even when you pretended not to know me?”
More lightning flashed outside, quickly followed by the roll of thunder. The unmistakable sound of torrential rain started to lash against the window.
“Even then.”
Nothing seemed to be throwing Kaden off. Had he somehow magically dimmed the lights in the room? Julia wondered frantically, feeling as though reality was slipping out of her grasp. The past was meshing into the present, and the future was fast becoming irrelevant.
Julia tried again. “The possibility of this stopped existing twelve years ago in Burquat—or have you forgotten when you informed me o
ur affair was past its sell-by date?” Bitterness laced her voice, but she couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there, much as she would have loved to feign insouciance. The rawness of that day was vivid.
Kaden’s hands were steady. “I don’t wish to discuss the past, Julia. The past bears no relationship to this moment.”
“How can you say that? The past is the reason I’m standing here now.”
Kaden shook his head, eyes glowing with dark embers, effortlessly stoking Julia’s desire higher and higher, despite what her head might be saying.
“I would have wanted you even if tonight was the first time we’d met.”
His flattery did nothing for Julia’s ego. The evidence of how unmoved he was by the past broke something apart inside her. Of course it had no effect on him now. Because he felt nothing for her—just as he’d never really felt anything for her.
Julia tensed as much as she could. She had to get out of there. Things were spiralling out of all control. “Well, the past might not be relevant to you, but it is to me, and I think this is a very bad idea.”
Kaden’s eyes flashed, showing Julia a glimpse of the emotion that thickened the atmosphere between them, no matter how he might deny it. “This is desire, pure and simple. We’re two single consenting adults and I want you.”
Julia looked up, helpless to pull away or articulate any kind of sane response. Which should be no. How was it possible that this desire hadn’t abated one bit? That if anything it felt stronger? There were so many layers of meaning here, and Kaden wanted to ignore all of that. As if they had never met before.
He lifted a hand and slid it around the back of her neck, under the fall of her hair, and pulled her even closer. Huskily he said, “I didn’t expect this. I didn’t expect that if I ever saw you again I would feel this way. Perhaps this was meant to be … a chance encounter to burn ourselves free of this insatiable desire.”
Insatiable desire. That was exactly how it felt—how it had always felt between them. Moments after making love Julia had always been ashamed of how quickly she’d craved Kaden’s touch again, and only the fact that it had been mutual had stopped her shame from overwhelming her.
As he said, he hadn’t expected to see her again. And she could well believe that he’d not expected to desire her again. But he did, and obviously resented it. Why wouldn’t he? He’d turned his back on her, and he’d bedded plenty of women far more beautiful than Julia since then. It must be galling to meet your first lover and realise you still wanted her. That made Julia feel acutely vulnerable. But it was too late.
Kaden had pulled her even closer, and now her soft belly touched his hard-muscled form—far harder than she remembered—and his head was lowering to hers. She tried to stiffen, to register her rejection, but everything was blocked out when she felt the explosive touch of Kaden’s mouth to hers. Did it coincide with another clap of thunder outside or was that in her head?
Her heart spasmed in her chest, as if given an electric shock, and as his mouth moved and fitted to hers like a missing jigsaw piece she fell down into a dark vortex of desire so intense that it obliterated any kind of rational thought. Her hands had gone automatically to his chest, but instead of pushing him away they clung. The feel of powerful muscles under his shirt was intoxicating.
Time stood still. Everything stood still except for their two hearts, beating fast. Blood was rushing through veins and arteries, pumping to parts of Julia’s body that hadn’t been stimulated in a long, long time.
Kaden was seduction incarnate. His hands moved over and down her back, cupping her bottom in the tight jeans, floating sensuously over the silk shirt. With an easy expertise he certainly hadn’t displayed when she’d known him before he coaxed her mouth open and his tongue stroked along hers, making a faint mewl come from the back of her throat.
Through the heat haze in her head and her body Julia felt something urgent trying to get through to her. Kaden’s touch was all at once achingly familiar, and yet so different from how she remembered. They’d been so young, and their passion had been raw and untutored. The man who held her in his arms now was not raw and untutored. He was a consummate seducer, well-practised in the art. His body was different too. Muscles were filled out and harder.
It was that realisation that finally broke the spell cast around Julia. Plus the fact that within a mere hour of meeting Kaden again she was kissing him like a sex—starved groupie.
Wrenching herself away in one abruptly violent move, Julia staggered backwards, looking at Kaden’s flushed face and glittering eyes. “I don’t know you. You’re a stranger to me now. I don’t do this … I don’t make love to strangers.”
Something dark crossed Kaden’s handsome features. He drawled, “From what I recall, you found it remarkably easy to make love to relative strangers.”
With the memory of that incident so vivid, Julia lashed out. “It was just a kiss, Kaden. A stupid kiss. It meant nothing … It was just—” She stopped abruptly. Had she really been about to blurt out that she’d only allowed that man to kiss her because she’d felt so desperately insecure after days of silence from Kaden? That she’d pathetically wanted to try and prove to herself that his touch alone couldn’t be the only touch she’d ever crave?
She clamped her mouth shut, burning inside. This man would never know that her experiment had backfired spectacularly—on more levels than one.
She had to claw back some sense of sanity. Some sense of the independent woman she’d become. Her voice was shaky. “This is not a good idea, Kaden. The past is the past and we should not be revisiting it.”
Kaden felt tight and hot inside. With ruthless effort he excised the image of her kissing that man from his mind. What on earth had prompted him to bring up that kiss? The last thing he wanted was for Julia to know that he remembered the incident. And yet it was like the stain of a tattoo on his memory, the jealousy fresh.
She was avoiding Kaden’s eye. He might have appreciated the dark humour of the situation if he’d been in a better mood: merely kissing her just now had had a more explosive effect on his libido than anything he’d shared with a woman in years. If ever. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly. Some more buttons had opened on her shirt, exposing the shadowy line of her cleavage, and his erection just got harder. If that was possible.
The fact that what she said was right irked him beyond belief. He knew with a soul-deep certainly that to explore this desire with this woman had danger written all over it. He had a sense of having escaped the fire years before, only to be standing right on its edge again.
But stronger than that was this life-force rushing through his veins, along with the very carnal urge to sate himself. It was heady, and it made him feel as if he was awakening from a long sleep. He could no more turn back from it than he could stop breathing. He struggled to control himself. The rawness of what he was feeling was rising up, and Kaden ruthlessly drove it down, back to depths he’d never plumbed and had no intention of doing so now.
He crossed the room to where Julia stood. She looked up. Those grey eyes were dark and troubled. A line of pink slashed each cheek, and her lips were full and tender-looking. In a completely instinctive gesture he reached out and tucked some hair behind her ear, only realising as he did it that he’d used to do that all the time. His jaw clenching hard was the only sign that he’d recognised this tell-tale gesture which was at such odds with the dark emotion seething through his gut. Jealousy. He had to distance himself from their past, focus on the present.
“If we had met at any other time we wouldn’t have been available, and yet this desire would still have blown up. It would have made a mockery of the fact that twelve years had gone by. And of our marriages.” He went on, his deep voice mesmerising, “But we’re both free and single now, two consenting adults.”
Julia knew she should run—and fast. Get away and pray to God that she never saw Kaden again. But her feet wouldn’t move. The way he’d casually reached out to tuck her hair behind her ear
had broken something apart inside her, bringing with it an onslaught of memories of so many moments when he’d done that. It had been the first physical gesture he’d made to her.
Fatefully, knowing that on some level she was making a momentous decision by not leaving, Julia couldn’t seem to turn away. She felt curiously lethargic—as if she’d been running towards something for a long time, only to have finally reached her destination. She wanted this man with a hunger she’d known only once before … for him.
She’d fully expected that if they ever met again that he would act as dismissively as he had earlier … and yet here she was. He wasn’t pretending not to know her now. He was looking at her as if she was the only woman on the planet. That elusive feeling of home and connection that she’d only ever found with him whispered to her like a siren song, calling her to seek it again.
Desperately she fought it—going that way again could only end in worse devastation. Clinging furiously to some last vestige of pride, to the illusion that she had control, she backed away. “Just because we’ve met again, it doesn’t mean anything, Kaden. It doesn’t mean that we have to end up … in bed.”
For a long tense moment they just looked at each other, and then, after another ear-splitting crack of thunder, the electricity went off.
Julia gasped and Kaden cursed. “The storm must have outed the power. Wait here. I’ll get some candles.”
Julia felt Kaden move away from her and took a deep, shaky breath. The darkness seemed to envelop her in a cloak of collusion. It made her want to forget the outside world, forget to remember their history. To give in to what he was offering. She wanted him so badly she shook.
Desperately she tried to remember the awful excoriating pain of the moment when he’d coolly informed her that all they’d shared had been a summer fling, that he had a life of responsibilities that didn’t include her. But it was like trying to hold onto a wispy cloud. All she knew was the exhilaration rushing through her blood, the heightened awareness of desire.
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