Her shoulders lifted and she took a step toward him, her voice lifting into a growl. “I don’t know—I don’t know when you showed up. No one ever said anything about it and it didn’t matter. I was gone. Done with you. I made the deal with my father and I was bound to it.”
“Ye should have damn well told me you made a blasted deal with your father.” His words slowed, his head shaking. “Ye set everything upon that moment and ye didn’t even tell me.”
“If I was important enough—you would have come.” Her palm slapped onto her chest, her neck craning to look up at him. “I trusted you to come because you said you would. Do you know I stood there that entire night, refusing to dance, my eyes on the entrance? I was in the exact spot where I thought I would be easy to find, in front of the pillars just to the left of the French doors leading to the gardens. And I had the vision of you coming through the double doors, filling the width of them, your blue eyes searching all the corners of the room until you found me. And then you would spot me and cut across the dance floor and pull me into your arms in front of everyone. Marking me as yours in front of my father, in front of everyone. And life would be right—our life, together.”
The rage in her voice petered and she had to swallow a shaking breath. “I waited until the ballroom was empty and they snuffed the candles, Dom. I waited alone in the dark. And not once in those moments did I doubt you would show. I knew you were coming. But then the morning rays started streaming in. And my father appeared.” Her eyes closed, her head shaking. “If only you would have shown like you promised you would, Dom. But you didn’t.”
Her lips pulled inward, her gaze skewering him. “You made that choice—I wasn’t important enough.”
{ Chapter 6 }
“Not important enough?” He looked down at her, at the fury lining her brown eyes, at her strained lips.
That she could even think such a blasphemy spiked the blood in his veins, his chest twisting at the injustice of it.
That he’d been vilified for being late to a damned ball. That she’d ever believed she wasn’t important enough.
And then he saw it. The quiver in her irises. The pain. The pain in her brown eyes that she was trying to cover up with indignation.
Pain at something he’d done.
His breath stilled.
He had promised her he would come to the ball, and he didn’t.
He’d failed her.
He’d failed himself.
And he hadn’t even known it until that very moment.
He’d always blamed her for leaving him. Leaving without a word. Leaving everything they’d dreamed about being together.
She had been the one that left him.
Except she hadn’t.
He hadn’t shown at the ball. Hadn’t shown until the day after.
And the pain of that moment—of that destruction he’d caused in her heart—still vibrated six years later in her amber brown eyes.
Pain he needed to make disappear.
Pain he had no words to lessen.
He stepped toward her, closing the space between them, his body brushing against her arms clamped in front of her.
His hands clasped onto her face and he leaned down, his lips meeting hers in a storm. She stilled for a second, her body going rigid, almost as though she was to fight it.
But then her lips parted to him.
Parted to him, but angry. Angry that he was here. Angry at what they had lost. Angry that she still could not deny him—deny how their bodies needed each other. He absorbed all of that in the kiss as she met him with fire in every breath, every swipe of his tongue against her lips.
She didn’t back away. She met him move for move like she always had.
He pulled slightly up, his voice raw. “Whatever you thought, Karta, you have it wrong. You were always the one—the only—important thing.”
She flinched, her voice cracking. “Then where were you?”