“I don’t want to stop,” he growled with masculine ferocity. “The only thing hotter than our first time together has been every time since.”
She wanted to believe that, but yesterday...
Gideon watched Adara withdraw and knew he was losing her. He’d come on too strong, but hunger for her was like a wolf in him, snapping and predatory from starvation.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded, then swore silently at himself when he saw that his roughened tone made her flinch. He wasn’t enjoying these heart-to-hearts any more than she was, but they were necessary. He accepted that, but it was hard. He was the type to attack, not expose his throat.
Adara flicked him a wary glance and stepped back, arms crossing her chest in the way he was beginning to hate because it shut him out so effectively. She chewed her bottom lip for a few seconds before cutting him another careful glance.
“Yesterday you said... Maybe I’m being oversensitive, but what you said when we were swimming really hurt, Gideon. About me not being good enough. I try to give you as much pleasure as you give me—”
He cut her off with a string of Greek epithets that should have curled the leaves off the surrounding trees. “Yesterday was a completely different era in this relationship. What I said—” The chill of frustration gripped his vital organs. How could he explain that his appetite for her went beyond what even seemed human? He understood now why she’d confined their relations to oral sex, but it didn’t change the fact that he ached constantly for release inside her. “I felt managed, Adara. I don’t say that with blame. I’m only telling you how it seemed from what I knew then. I want you. Not other women. Not tarts like Lexi. You. Having you hold yourself back from me made me nuts. I need you to be as caught up as I am. To want me. It’s the only way I can cope with how intense my need for you is.”
She blinked at him in shock.
He rubbed a hand down his face, wishing he could wipe away his blurted confession. “If that scares the hell out of you, then I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have told you.”
“No,” she breathed, head shaking in befuddlement. “But I find it hard to believe you feel like that. I’m not a siren. You’re the one with all the experience, the one who thinks about using condoms because you’ve used them before.”
“Yes, I have,” he said with forcible bluntness, not liking how defensive he felt for having a sexual history when she’d come to him pristine and pure. “But you know when the last time I used one was? The night before we met. I don’t remember much about the woman I was dating then, only that the next evening she left me because I asked her if she knew anything about you. Pretty crass, I know. I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
Her searching gaze made him extremely uncomfortable. He jerked his chin.
“Let’s keep walking.”
“And talking? Because it’s such fun?” Adara bent to retrieve the blossom he’d dropped and twirled it beneath her nose as they continued deeper into the orange grove. His revelations were disturbing on so many levels, most especially because they were creating emotional intimacy, something that was completely foreign to their marriage. Nevertheless, as painful as it was to dredge up her hurts, she was learning that it was cathartic to acknowledge them. Letting him explain his side lessened the hurt.
She glanced at him as they walked, no longer touching.
“I hate thinking of you with other women.” The confession felt like a barbed hook dragged all the way from the center of her heart across the back of her throat. “Infidelity destroyed our family. We were quite normal at first, then Nico was sent away and it was awful. Both my parents drank. My father fooled around and made sure my mother knew about it. She was devastated. So much yelling and crying and fighting. I never wanted anything like that to happen to me.”
“It won’t,” he assured her, reaching across with light fingers to smooth her hair off her shoulder so he could tuck his hand under the fall of loose tresses and cup the back of her neck. “But tell me you were jealous of Lexi anyway. My ego needs it.”
“I felt insecure and useless,” she said flatly.
He checked his step and a spasm of pain flashed across his face before he seared her with a look. “Exactly how I felt when I saw you walk up the driveway here. Like I’d been rejected because I wasn’t good enough.”
She bit her lips together in compunction while her heart quivered in her chest, shimmering with the kind of pain a seed must feel before the first shoot breaks through its shell. She wanted to cry and throw herself into him and run away and protect herself.