Wedding Party Collection: Marrying The Prince. Кейт Хьюит

her hips, welcoming this glorious invasion, the sense of completeness she ached to feel with every fibre of her being.

      ‘This might hurt just a little,’ he whispered and she closed her eyes against a sudden, soul-quenching rush of shame.

      She couldn’t lie to him, not even by her silence. Not now, not about this.

      ‘It won’t, Leo,’ she choked, her anguish all too apparent to both of them. ‘I’m—I’m not a virgin.’

      She felt him poised above her, could feel the heat and strength of him so close to her; another inch or two and he’d be inside her, as she so desperately wanted. She arched her hips reflexively, but he didn’t move.

      Alyse let out a shudder of both longing and despair. Clearly she picked her moments well.

      Leo swore under his breath and eased back. ‘What a time to tell me,’ he said, his voice coming out in a groan.

      ‘I didn’t—didn’t know how to tell you,’ she whispered miserably.

      Leo rolled onto his back and stared up at the woven-grass roof of the hut, his chest heaving with the effort of stopping at such a critical moment.

      ‘Obviously it’s a distressing memory,’ he said after a moment, his eyes still on the roof. ‘You must have been very young.’

      ‘It was.’ She took a breath, hating that they were talking about this now, in such an intimate moment, a moment that had seconds ago promised tenderness and pleasure and perhaps even the first fragile shoots of a deeper and more sacred emotion. ‘And I wasn’t that young. I was twenty.’

      She felt Leo still next to her, every muscle in his body seeming to go rigid. Then he turned his head to stare at her, and everything in Alyse quailed at the sight of the cold blankness in his eyes. ‘Twenty?’

      ‘Yes—at university.’

      ‘You slept with someone at university?’ he repeated, sounding so disbelieving that Alyse flinched.

      ‘Yes—do we have to talk about this?’

      ‘I don’t particularly relish the conversation myself.’ In one fluid movement Leo sat up and reached for his boxers.

      Alyse felt her throat thicken as disappointment and frustrated desire rushed through her. ‘Leo, I’m sorry. I suppose I should have told you earlier, but we never had any remotely intimate conversations, and frankly I just wanted to forget it ever happened. That’s no excuse, I know.’ He finished sliding on his boxers and just picked up his shirt. ‘Are you—are you angry? That I’m not a virgin?’

      He let out a bark of humourless laughter and turned to face her. He looked as cold and remote as he ever had—only worse, because she’d seen his face softened in sleep or with a smile, his eyes warm with laughter and then hot with desire. Now he was reverting once more to the icy stranger she knew, the man who made her despair. ‘You think I’m angry that you’re not a virgin?’

      ‘Well—yes.’

      He shook his head, the movement seeming one of both incredulity and contempt. ‘That would be a bit of a double standard, since I’m not one.’

      She swallowed, surprised. ‘I know, but it’s always been different for men, hasn’t it? And the whole princess thing...’

      ‘This has nothing to do with the princess thing,’ Leo answered her shortly. ‘And I don’t believe in double standards. If I seem angry, Alyse, it’s not because you’ve had sex before. It’s because you had sex while you were engaged to me.’

      And, before she could even process that statement, he had yanked on his trousers and was heading out into the night.