Chap. 15
Surprised and embarrassed beyond belief, she stood still as his bruising lips plundered hers mercilessly. He kissed her as if he had all the time in the world; his hips ground against her sending sensation shooting through her entire body. Against her will, her treacherous body inevitably bent to his, and her arms curled around his neck, pressing herself closer to him. He smiled in triumph, his lips softening and growing more passionate than punishing. He drugged her mind with his endless kisses, and his hands caressed her nape lovingly, but he eventually released her mouth reluctantly.
As Eriol looked at her face flushed a becoming pink and glorious violet eyes filled with confusion, he knew that, for some reason, she was more provocative than the most wonderfully dressed women he had known in the past.
"Do you know what I could do to you?" he asked her softly. "I could take you right now on the ground and compromise your situation. Then even if you had managed to escape," he continued, watching her eyes begin to flare into anger, "no respectable man would take you as his wife. You would have absolutely no choice but to marry me, is that not so?"
"You wouldn't dare-" she choked indignantly.
"You wouldn't know what I wouldn't dare to have you. But you're right. I wouldn't do that in this case; there's something more important that I want from you that you continue to withhold from me-something that I'll have no chance of receiving if I take you," he interrupted softly, brushing a strand of dark, silken hair away from her face.
"What," she asked hoarsely, "do you want from me?"
She watched his lips curve into an amused smile. "Your love."
"You lost it," she choked, trying to push him away. "You lost it that day," she said, and he knew what she was talking about without her having to tell him.
"About what happened…there's something you need to know. You need to know the truth that I tried to tell you before," he replied in answer to her statement. "I-"
"Please…don't," she said with a small, watery smile, "I don't want to hear it."
His arms tightened around her as he said with determination in his eyes, "You will hear my explanation. I will not have you blaming me for something I have not done, do you understand?"
"Oh let me guess…you didn't kiss another woman," she said with sarcasm, "and what I saw was a hallucination, a figment of my own imagination. How trite." She laughed bitterly. "You lied to me…oh wait, that was a delusion too. I must be put into a mental institution immediately."
Eriol kept his anger in check. When he was dealing with anyone else, he was impatient, but with her, he had all the patience in the world. He was…happy, strangely enough. He felt elated to know that the thought of him with someone else could cause so much pain because it meant that she sincerely loved him. After spending his life surrounding by women who only loved money, he had found the one woman who loved him for who he was, and no matter what he had to do, he wasn't about to let her get away. "Look at me," he said gently, taking her by surprise, "Look into my eyes and tell me what you see." And for the first time in his life, he laid his soul bare for a woman. "That was nothing but a setup, love," he whispered, wiping away the tears running out her cheeks. "What you saw wasn't true. Trust me. Believe me."
Tomoyo obediently looked into his intense eyes and thought she might drown forever in blue. Oh god, it was all there: Concern, Worry, Hope, Truth, Hurt, Happiness, Caring…and some things she hadn't truly expected…Desire, Want, and…Love. They were all there, waiting for her-waiting to embrace her in their warmth, and, for some absurd reason, she felt herself melting in his arms.
"I truly love you. Can't you love me?" he asked hoarsely, "Just a little? Just one more time?" His words crumbled the remainder of her resistance, and happiness pervaded every pore of her body. The nightmares weren't true…and he was giving up his pride to come to her humbly when she had wrongly betrayed his trust and accused him of betraying her: "I've heard all of this before, and I must say I'm terribly disappointed. I expected the great, all-powerful Duke of Clynester to come up with a more original excuse than most of the people I have known in my life," she'd said coldly when he had tried to explain. "I am the wronged party here. I trusted you. You were discovered with another woman minutes after my foolish declaration of love. Now you tell me, who do you think is the one who lied? Who betrayed whom?" Regret washed through her like a burning acid. "I'm so sorry," she said, tears pouring out in torrents. "So sorry."
"Don't cry love," he whispered in her ear, crushing her against him. "Please don't cry…You're ripping me apart," he said with difficulty, his throat clogged with emotion, and as soon as he said that he could sense that she was trying valiantly to stop…for him. "Shall we go back?" he asked her, and as she nodded against his chest, he tossed her gently on a horse and mounted his own night black stallion.
Even this far away, Eriol could see mischief glimmering in her gentle, purple eyes, and he thought that she looked exactly the way he imagined her to look when he had been so oblivious to his own emotions. "First person back wins," she said lightly, and took off toward his mansion at the speed of light. With a startled laugh, he nudged his own horse into a gallop. "Cheater!" he called after her as he followed her.
Another pair of eyes followed them as they raced, and its owner's lips turned ever so slightly upwards.
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Another chapter written. Comments are welcome…as always. All those people who have been telling me that Eriol is too rough, here's a nice one. Gosh, he had to be mean, so the transformation was more dynamic and evident. Oh well…until next time, ja ne! Oh, and ruthless means merciless or without pity for those of you who don't use English as your primary language.