In his peripheral vision he saw Olivia stiffen, her hands quickly moving to cover herself. A prolonged silence ensued as he turned his back and listened while she frantically tried to button up her blouse and calm her breathing. When he finally turned around it was to find her gone—back up the stairs to the top of the lighthouse.
He followed, stepping out soundlessly onto the narrow balcony alongside her.
‘Olivia...’ he began, exhaling on a long sigh.
‘Whatever you are about to say, just don’t,’ she said, her voice tight with recrimination and something else—regret, perhaps?
‘It won’t happen again, between us,’ he said, almost as though he were trying to convince himself along with her. ‘It was a mistake, bringing you here at all. This just proves what I already knew.’
‘And that is?’
‘That you are incapable of controlling your impulses.’
‘And you are the most arrogant man I have ever met.’ She turned to face him. ‘Are you actually trying to blame me for this?’ she asked. ‘I may have kissed you first, but at least I’m emotionally mature enough to admit it was because I wanted it.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I wanted it.’ She spoke slowly and deliberately, her eyes blazing emerald in the brightness of the mid-afternoon sun. ‘I wanted to know how it would feel, being kissed by you. To get under that wall of stone you surround yourself with. And I may be unpractised in these things, but I know that you wanted it too.’
His mind caught on one single word she had uttered. Unpractised. He coughed on the sharp intake of breath that filled his lungs.
Olivia’s eyes widened, her face rapidly warming with embarrassment. ‘I simply meant that I’m not accustomed to making the first move,’ she said quickly, her eyes wide with mortification.
‘Chert voz’mi,’ Roman cursed under his breath, suddenly despising his own ability to see through to the truth. ‘You have never had a lover, have you?’
He watched as her shoulders tensed and she tightened her grip on the rail in front of her. She hid her face from him but he could read the signs in her body. Surprise rapidly turned to self-defence. She didn’t speak, but she didn’t have to. He already knew he was right.
She was a virgin.
As if there weren’t enough reasons already for this attraction to be the worst kind of wrong...
He turned, bracing one hand on the balcony rail and gripping it with all his might. ‘Have you any idea what kind of game you are playing?’ he gritted.
‘I was not playing a game.’ She turned her face to him, her shoulders stiff and unyielding.
‘How would you even know what you were doing?’ he said harshly. Anger raged in him—towards her, towards himself. He felt as if he was drowning in it. ‘What did you think? That you could use me as a damned test run? Lose your virginity with the rough and tumble ex-con before I sent you back to your royal fiancé’s bed?’
Her eyes narrowed, her fist flying out to thump him squarely in the middle of his chest. ‘How dare you?’
He grabbed her hand in his fist, stopping her movement and inadvertently pulling her closer to him.
‘You are angry at me because it is the truth. You think you are attracted to me? You don’t even know me. You’re attracted to my lack of refinement, Olivia. You see me as some big, uncivilised fool who you can charm with your delicate skin and innocent eye-flutters.’ He shook his head, his mouth hardening into a cruel line.
‘I don’t think of you that way.’
‘Well, maybe you should start. I might come from the gutter, but that doesn’t mean I make a habit of living like a street thug. I do not sleep with virgins or with other men’s fiancées. I have morals, Olivia.’
‘What? And I don’t? I am not engaged. I have done nothing wrong here.’
‘You are as good as spoken for,’ he ground out.
She looked up at him. Eyes that moments ago had been blue-black with desire were now wide and blazing with anger. ‘I will never be spoken for. Never again.’ A tremor passed through her throat. ‘I am not another man’s property, to be protected and transported.’
‘You are going back to the palace as soon as possible.’
‘Roman, is it so hard to believe that I am just as overwhelmed as you?’
‘Don’t flatter yourself, Princess,’ he said cruelly. ‘It would take a lot more than an innocent’s clumsy kisses to overwhelm me.’