Princess From the Past. CAITLIN CREWS

will you tell him that you cannot ever do more than commit adultery so long as you remain married to me?” he murmured in that way of his that seemed to channel directly along her spine, making her feel shivery and weak. “What man would tolerate such a thing, when all you need do is fly to Italy to take care of that one, small detail?”

      “He is enormously tolerant,” Bethany said through her teeth. The word ‘adultery’ seemed to ricochet through her, chipping off pieces of her heart until they fell like stones into the pit of her stomach.

      “As it happens,” Leo said in that quiet, lethal tone, “I am flying to Italy tomorrow morning. We could finish with this unpleasantness in no time at all.”

      It paralyzed her. For a moment, she simply stared at him, lost, as if he’d reached over and torn her heart from her chest. It was as if she could no longer feel it beating. She could not begin to imagine the damage his capitulation caused her. She did not want to imagine it.

      “If there is no other way,” she said slowly, feeling as if she was teetering on the edge of a vast, deep abyss, as if her voice was something she’d dug up somewhere, rusty and unused, not hers at all. “Then I suppose I will have to go to Italy.”

      Leo’s eyes darkened with that pure male fire she knew too well. It called to that twisted part of her, the part she most wanted to deny.

      Because despite the pain, the grief and the loneliness, she still wanted him. She still ached for him, that wave of longing and lust that made everything else the very lies he accused her of telling. His body. His presence. The light of his smile, the brush of his hand, the very fact of his nearness. She ached.

      Time seemed to stand still. There was only that fierce, knowing gleam in his eyes, as there had always been. One touch, his gaze promised her, hot, gleaming and sure. Only one small touch and she would be his. Only that, and she would betray herself completely.

      And she knew some part of her wanted him to do it—wanted him to tumble her to the bed and take her with all the easy command and consummate skill that had always shaken her so completely, melted her so fully, made her his in every way. She no longer even bothered to despair of herself.