She must not allow herself to become downhearted, Sophia warned herself later as she was driven back to the palace. It had been a shock for both of them to discover that she was carrying twins. Surely the knowledge that they were to become parents was bound to bring them closer? After all, it was what they both wanted.
CHAPTER TEN
IT WAS almost exactly a month since her scan, but far from bringing them closer together those four weeks had, if anything, led to Ash putting an even greater distance between them, Sophia thought as she sat alone in her private courtyard garden in the welcome cool of the evening.
Where the twins were concerned, Ash was scrupulous about keeping a check on their health and her own, but whenever she tried to talk to him on any kind of personal level he retreated from her and changed the subject.
And most humiliating of all for her, as her own need and indeed craving for a loving gentle intimacy with him grew, along with her feelings of emotional insecurity, Ash had rejected her by no longer coming to her bed.
Whilst part of her—the old feisty Sophia—longed to demand to know what had happened to the sexual chemistry he had told her existed between them, the new mother-in-waiting Sophia was far too protective of the future emotional security of the babies she was carrying to want to risk a confrontation that could destroy the increasingly fragile bonds that held them together.
Besides, she seriously thought that Ash’s distance from her was the way things were going to be and that nothing she could say or do could change that, and that really scared her. Not for her own sake but for the sake of their sons. It was one thing for Ash to refuse to let her get close to him, but increasingly she was worrying that he might behave in exactly the same way with the twins, locking them out emotionally. Not necessarily deliberately—she knew how pleased he was about them—but because he simply couldn’t help himself?
She had grown up with a distant father whom she had felt had rejected every attempt she had made to get close to him. She couldn’t bear the thought of that happening to her precious babies. But they would have her, and Ash would be a good and protective father in many other ways. Right now, because her pregnancy was making her feel so emotionally vulnerable, she was achingly conscious of all that she was missing as a woman by not having a husband who loved her, but it was the twins who mattered most, not her. There was no sacrifice of her own personal happiness she was not prepared to make to give them the security of growing up with their parents living together. That didn’t mean that she wasn’t right to feel concerned that Ash might not be able to stop his attitude towards her from spilling over into his behaviour towards his sons.
In the privacy of his own suite, Ash paced the floor of his office. He had taken to working late into the evening, telling himself that he needed to ensure that all his projects were up to date ahead of the birth of the twins, but he knew that the reality was he worked late because that was the only way he had of blotting out the demons that were stalking him.
It was illogical and … and unnecessary, unwanted and unacceptable to him, this almost constant need he had to be with Sophia. And not just to be with her. He wanted. Ash stopped pacing, a dark frown slashing his forehead. He had told himself that it would be no hardship for a man of his level of self-discipline to deny himself Sophia’s bed as a precautionary measure to ensure the safety of her pregnancy—after all, as good and passionate as the sex between them had been it was only sex—but the truth was that with every night without her, his desire for her found a thousand different new ways in which to torture him. Just the memory of the scent of her skin, the sound of her breath as it accelerated with the desire he had stoked, the small mewling sounds of increasingly out-of-control pleasure she made when he aroused her, all of those just by themselves were enough to have a need coursing through him that left him feeling as though he had been burned with acid and left raw and close to crying out with the pain of his wounds.
He had lost count of the number of times he had woken in the night thinking he could hear her breathing, conjuring up out of the darkness the sound of her voice as she whispered his name so sweetly when she pleaded with him not just for the pleasure he gave her but also for the right to return that pleasure to him. How could one single woman in the space of a handful of weeks have come to have such a powerful effect on him? He had desired women before. But never as much as he desired Sophia, and certainly never as much as he needed the sweet agony the desire gave him.
That he should feel like this was a warning to him, Ash told himself. A warning and a test. He must surely prove to himself that he could stay away from Sophia’s bed—in the first instance for the practical reason of not wanting to endanger her pregnancy in any way, especially as she was carrying twins, but in the second instance so that by the time they were sharing a bed again the need he felt for her would be under his control, not the other way around.
Given all that, why was he right now walking down the corridor that led to Sophia’s room?
She knew it wasn’t the sensible thing to do. Surely she’d spent far too many hours preparing herself logically for what her life with Ash was going to be like to waste all that effort on some kind of irrational emotional outburst, or even worse, the kind of emotionally demanding behaviour that was bound to make Ash retreat even further from her?
This wasn’t about her, Sophia reminded herself as she hurried towards her bedroom door, intent on seeking Ash out to confront him with her growing concern about how his emotional distance from her could impact on their sons if he behaved the same way towards them. She’d been on her way to bed when the emotional firestorm that was now propelling her towards her bedroom door had struck, leaving her to pull a robe on over her cobweb-fine silk nightgown.
Ash reached out for the handle to Sophia’s bedroom door. He should not be doing this. An ice-cold river of self-loathing held him immobile whilst also trapping his emotions in its familiar numbing wasteland. Even his heartbeat seemed to have slowed in tune with the emptiness that had now filled the gap left by the rush of longing that had brought him here. His hand fell back to his side just as inside the bedroom Sophia pulled open the door.
The unexpectedness of seeing Ash there, outside her bedroom door, obviously on his way to see her—where else could he be going, after all?—flooded her with so much happiness that she immediately reached out to him, her hand on his arm as she urged him inside her room, her joy showing in the warmth in her voice as she said his name.
Automatically Ash allowed himself to be drawn towards her. Her open delight at seeing him was confusing the ice-cold deadening river of controlled self-loathing inside him. His gaze—the one that only seconds ago under the influence of that deadening flow had, like his other senses, assured him that there was nothing about any aspect of Sophia that could break through the barriers he had so regrettably allowed to weaken in the privacy of his own treacherous thoughts—could see the sweet warmth of the curve of her lips, lips which he already knew were so soft and incredibly responsive to his kisses that just to look at them was enough to have them quivering with longing, and her body softening with desire for him just as right now his was hardening with its desire for her.
He must not think about that. He dragged his gaze from her face and then realised his mistake as it slipped to her body, its burgeoning shape revealed to him through the flimsiness of the nightgown he could see beneath her open robe. Her breasts looked fuller, her belly rounding. His heartbeat had picked up and was now racing, thumping, in fact, with the renewed force of his longing to reach out for her and take hold of her, to discover her newly forming body with his fingertips so that he could learn its promise and rejoice in the gift it was holding.
Ash was here. She had been allowing her silly vulnerability to get the better of her. He was here and soon he would hold her and in the secret darkness of their bed they would share an intimacy that surely she could build on to sustain her. Only now that he was here could she admit to herself the true depth of the sense of loss and abandonment she had felt through his absence from her bed. In fact, she was physically trembling with the intensity of her relief—trembling inside and close to tears caused by that relief, as well. Perhaps there was hope for the future after all. It was obvious that she had misjudged the situation in thinking that Ash didn’t