Julianne clenched her jaw, fighting panic, as Zeeland steered her to the door of the library. She had to get away from him. He couldn’t know what was going on.
In some ways he hadn’t changed. He was the same take-charge Zeeland he’d always been. As a child, she’d believed in him implicitly, knowing she could depend on him above all others. She’d trusted him to move heaven and earth to keep her safe.
Until the day she’d driven him away, and he’d turned his back on her.
And she’d grown up enough to know no one could keep her safe.
She’d thought Zeeland had forgiven her for ten years ago, but now she wasn’t so sure. Shortly after dinner, as she’d played the show tunes at Grayson’s request, Zeeland’s eyes had turned angry, and she was terrified he’d seen something in her own.
He always saw too much.
What had he learned? How had she given herself away?
Zeeland pushed open the door of the library and pulled her inside. Daniella and Cambria sat on the window seat, their conversation dying.
“Zeeland,” Daniella said by way of greeting, her eyes lighting up.
“Ladies. If you’ll excuse us, I need a word with Julianne in private.”
Cambria and Daniella exchanged amused, interested glances, their encouraging gazes turning to her.
Couldn’t they see his anger? They acted like they thought he was interested in her, but there was nothing soft in his touch. They’d like nothing better, she realized, than for Zeeland to develop an interest in her and decide to return to Alexandria for good.
She loved them both, but they didn’t have a clue what was going on. As the pair rose, she was infinitely glad she didn’t have to have this conversation in front of them.
The door clicked, leaving them alone. Zeeland released her, and she stifled the urge to run, knowing Zeeland too well. He was determined to have it out with her. Whatever it was.
Goddess help her, she had to stay in control. And the best way to do that was to go on the offensive.
She swung to face him. “That was rude.”
“They’ll get over it. You’ve been avoiding me since I got here, and I’ve had enough. You’re going to tell me why you’re playing Beethoven, and you’re going to tell me now, Julianne.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Start talking.”
Ten years he’d been gone, yet he acted like he hadn’t left at all. Like he expected them to simply pick up where they’d left off, with him acting like an overprotective older brother.
The worst of it was that there was nothing she wanted more than to lay her multitude of problems firmly in his lap.
But she couldn’t.
She had to convince him he was mistaken. Crossing her arms over her own chest, she managed to give him a long-suffering look even as she felt as if she held herself together by a thread. “What exactly do you want to talk about, Zeeland?”
“Dammit, Julianne.” He grabbed her shoulders.
She began to tremble beneath his touch, her longing to step into the circle of his arms almost too much to bear. He couldn’t know. She couldn’t let him know!
As if he could see right through her, could see her crumbling inside, his grip softened, his hands caressing instead of gripping.
“Sunshine…” The name he’d called her since he’d coaxed the first smile out of her all those years ago sounded soft and caring, tearing a strip from her soul. His warm hands slid down her upper arms and back up again, firm, yet infinitely gentle. “Something’s wrong, Julianne. I see it in your eyes. I hear it in your music. I feel it. You’re trembling, sweetheart.” His brows pulled down, his mouth hardening. “Is it Jag? Is he the one that hurt you?”
She couldn’t hide her surprise, and he seemed to see the truth clearly enough.
His brown eyes lost that razor-hard edge as his gaze searched hers. “Confide in me, Sunshine. You know you can tell me anything.”
The velvet-steel promise in his words tore at her resolve. Everything within her begged to believe he could handle her truths and keep them both safe. But she wasn’t a child anymore. She knew even childhood heroes could die.
And the only thing she could do for either of them was push him away.
“Zeeland…I have nothing to confide. I’m fine.”
His grip on her tightened, the plea sharp in his eyes. “Don’t lie to me. Please?”
“I’m all grown-up, Zee. I have a job and a life and relationships that have gotten complicated. You’ve been gone ten years. You don’t know me anymore.”
“I was told you weren’t with anyone in particular. Did they lie to me?”
“No,” she said with a sigh. “There’s no one in particular.” Everyone in the enclave knew it.
He stared at her, searching her face and her eyes, looking too deep. It was all she could do not to turn away, but she had to make him believe she was fine.
“Juli.” His expression softened, his hands caressed her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left without telling you I was going. I should have called you.”
She stared at him, her brows drawing down with confusion. Had he forgotten that night? Forgotten why he left?
Or was he only pretending, as she was?
She shrugged, pulling that mask of indifference more firmly into place. “You were busy. As was I.”
“You’re mad at me. I don’t blame you.”
Mad? “I’m not mad, Zeeland. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not anything with regards to you.” She swallowed hard, forcing the lie. “I barely remember you.”
His mouth tightened, and he watched her, studying her. A single dark brow rose. “You barely remember the man you offered your virginity to?” he asked softly.
She flinched. Goddess, she couldn’t do this. “Let me go, Zeeland. I was young and foolish, and you’d turned my head. I’m not that girl anymore.”
His thumbs slid along the fabric covering her collarbones, but she felt the warmth of his flesh right through the dress. “So you feel nothing for me, now?”
“No.”
“Not anger?”
“Why would I be angry?”
“Not resentment?”
“Again, why?”
He released one shoulder and lifted his hand to brush his knuckles lightly over her cheek.
Her heart tripped, sensation racing over her skin. Her pulse began to pound as she watched his eyes darken.
“Not desire?” he asked softly.
“Don’t.” Julianne jerked away from his touch, stepping back out of his reach as the old humiliation rose to swamp her. How could he…? He’d acted like she was a slut for offering herself to him ten years ago and now…now he was treating her like one?
She whirled away from him, but he caught her before she’d taken a step.
“Juli…”
Tears burned her eyes. If they started falling, if he saw them, her humiliation would be complete. “Let me go, Zeeland.”
“Dammit, Julianne, talk to me. What just happened? I always used to be able to read you, but I’m lost here. I’m sorry for abandoning you ten years ago. It was unforgivable. But I did it for a reason. A reason I always assumed you knew. Don’t you know why I left?”
He gripped her jaw and lifted her face, forcing her to look at him.
She had to blink back the tears to see him through the moisture. “Don’t make me say it, Zee. I know. I saw the look of horror on your face. I heard the anger in your voice when you ordered me to my room. I felt the disgust in your hands when you pushed me away.”
She’d been five years too young, but she hadn’t wanted to wait. She’d loved him too much. Wanted him too badly.
To her utter humiliation, the tears began to fall. To her mortification, Zee began to smile. It was a sad smile that didn’t meet his eyes, but it was a smile all the same.
“You were wrong, sweetheart. On all counts. It wasn’t disgust or anger I was feeling. Not with you. I’d been riding a razor-sharp edge of control with you for two years. Wanting you. But you were too young. My control had been thinning by the day because you were starting to feel the same. I could see the desire in your eyes, but you were too young!”
Julianne shook her head. “No.” He couldn’t just rewrite ten years of her life.
But Zeeland didn’t stop. “And when you offered me your virginity that night, it was all I could do not to haul you into my arms and cover your mouth with mine. If I had, I knew deep inside my soul, I wouldn’t have been able to pull back. I would have given you exactly what you asked me to, exactly what we both wanted. So I pushed you away with the last ounce of strength I possessed and ordered you out of my reach before I broke the law of our kind. And I left, putting an ocean between us so I couldn’t lose my resolve until you were of age.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought you knew.”
“Why didn’t you ever call? I thought you forgot about me.”
Zeeland groaned. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you. If I’d heard your voice…I don’t think I could have stayed away. Instead, I talked to Serenity and Gray. I asked about you, checked up on you, nearly every day, Sunshine. Nearly every day.”
She stared at him with a mixture of disbelief and wonder. “I didn’t know. I knew they talked to you, but they never told me you asked about me.”
“I asked them not to say anything. I suppose I was afraid you’d try to find me.”
“I might have.” If she’d known he still cared. If she’d realized she hadn’t sent him away in disgust. Her heart tried to lift, tried to shake off ten years of carrying the weight of that night, but something still didn’t fit.
“If you stayed away because I wasn’t of age, why didn’t you come back when I turned twenty-five?”
He watched her for long minutes, his expression at once thoughtful and pained. “I don’t know,” he said at last.
But she knew. At some time during those ten years, she’d stopped mattering. Nothing had really changed at all. Maybe he hadn’t left for the reason she’d thought, but in the end, it was all the same.
“Zeeland, it happened a long time ago. We’re not the same people we were then.” He had no idea how true that was in her case. She wasn’t what either of them had thought.
Zeeland cupped her face in his hands, his brown eyes warm and soft as he looked down at her. “I stayed away too long, Julianne, but I’m here now.” His thumb traced her cheekbone, his touch sending small shivers of delight skating over her skin.
His expression tightened, his eyes turning impossibly darker. “I haven’t stopped wanting you.”
His words sent a rush of damp heat straight to her core, as her pulse leaped into a fast, erratic pounding.
But with the flood of desire came dismay. This was worse than his probing questions. How could she push him away when all she wanted to do was to lean into his touch?
She steeled herself against the warmth of his fingers and the heat in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Zeeland, but I no longer feel the same way about you.” To her relief, her words came out with just the right amount of regret and pity.
But his expression told her he didn’t believe her. Not one bit.
Lightly, he brushed the pad of his thumb across her lower lip, startling a soft gasp from her. She told herself to move, to back away, but she couldn’t. His touch snared her in a net of sensations. Wonder sang through her heart. He’d never been horrified by her. He’d wanted her all along.
But it was too late.
“You’ve never been a liar, Julianne,” he said softly. “Don’t lie to me now.”
Her whole life had turned into one huge lie. “Zeeland, let me go.”
Instead, he lowered his face as if he meant to kiss her. Panic shot through her. She’d wanted this for too long. Too long. If he kissed her now, she’d be lost.
She turned her head. His lips brushed her cheek, his breath stirring the wisps of hair at her temple.
A shudder went through her. “Don’t.”
He ignored her whispered plea, trailing kisses along her cheekbone, around the curve of her ear, and down her jaw.
Her body shivered and burned. “Zeeland, please.”
He held her prisoner with her own need as his lips trailed lower, to the sensitive skin of her neck. Teasing, licking. How many times had she dreamed of this? Of Zeeland taking her into his arms as a man does a woman? Of Zeeland wanting her?
“Zee.” On a shuddered sigh, she reached for him, her will crumbling beneath the weight of her longing. Her trembling hands gripped his head where it dipped low against her neck.
He inhaled deeply, as if he would take her inside him and never let her go, then slowly raised his head and met her gaze, probing her secrets.
Fear skittered through her, then vanished at the sight of Zeeland’s beloved face, fierce and gentle, and dark with passion. For her.
“You really are attracted to me,” she breathed, hardly able to believe. Ten years she’d thought him disgusted with her.
He laughed, but the sound was low and strangled. “Attracted doesn’t begin to describe it, Sunshine.” He dipped his face to hers, and this time she didn’t turn away.
The first featherlight brush of his mouth against hers exploded her senses, nearly buckling her knees.
How many years had she dreamed of this? Yet the dream was nothing compared to the reality.
His lips moved over hers, soft as silk, yet warm and demanding, the pressure increasing moment by moment, the kiss becoming more insistent, more desperate.
Gripping her head with gentle fingers, he slanted his mouth over hers and parted her lips with a single stroke of his tongue. Julianne gasped, then moaned as he dove inside her mouth, staking his claim.
Her senses spun at the clean, masculine taste of him. Her body shuddered, heat flowing through her limbs, pooling between her legs. She melted against him, her hands sliding up and around his neck as she gave herself up wholly to the kiss. To Zeeland.
His arms tightened around her, pulling her close enough to feel the beat of his heart, to feel the hard, pulsing length of his erection against her stomach.
He swept the inside of her mouth with his tongue, exploring every surface, every indentation as if he were learning the feel of her. She moaned with pleasure as his hand gripped the back of her head, slanting her head one way, then the other as he sought to deepen the kiss.
If he lifted her dress and spread her thighs, would she push him away? No. Heaven help her, but no.
As if reading her mind, his hand slid down the curve of her back, cupping her rear, then began to pull up the hem of her dress.
Her heart skipped a beat.
The sound of male voices broke through the haze of lust a mere moment before the door opened behind them. Zeeland released her. Julianne whirled away, hiding her mortification as Grayson and two others burst into the room.
“There you are!” Grayson’s voice boomed. “We’re putting together a poker game. You in, Zee?”
Head down, Julianne made her escape, slipping between the men and out of the room, her cheeks flaming, her body shaking with need.
Her life had shattered. Everything she’d ever wanted was finally in reach of the woman she’d once been. But she was that woman no more.
Zeeland met Grayson’s look of expectation with a frustrated sigh, running a hand through his hair, willing his body to cool the heat that still raged through every cell.
“Yeah. Count me in.”
Dammit, Julianne. He still didn’t know what had put the fear in her eyes. He’d pulled her in here for one reason, to find out what was scaring her. Not to kiss her. Not to force her to admit she wasn’t as unaffected by him as she pretended. Though both had been on his mind from the moment he’d returned, from the moment she’d greeted him, not with a smile and a hug, but with the cool, haunted eyes of a stranger.
He’d brought her in here to finally get at the truth, but the moment he’d had her alone, he’d forgotten everything but the fierce need to touch her, to taste her.
That kiss had been everything he’d known it would be and a hundred things more.
Yet the woman herself had become a mystery to him. A mystery he was determined to solve.