Forgiven but Not Forgotten? by Abby Green Page A

was shaking inwardly like a leaf, ‘What else did you expect? A disgraced virgin heiress? This is the twenty-first century—surely you know better than most that virgins are as mythical as the knight on a white horse you just spoke of?’
    Andreas stalked away from her, tension emanating from his body in waves. In that moment he hated her, and he hated himself, because he knew he didn’t have the strength to just walk away and leave her here. To show her nothing but disdain. If he did he knew she would torment him in dreams for ever. He’d spent five years haunted by her. He had to have her—had to have this closure once and for all. And he despised himself for his weakness.
    He looked at Siena and to his chagrin all of his previous thoughts were blasted to smithereens and rendered to dust. Her hair was tousled from his hands, her cheeks were rosy and her lips full and pouting, pink from his kisses. Her chest still rose and fell with uneven breaths and those glorious blue eyes flashed defiantly.
    Andreas had the very strong urge to take her right here in this scummy flat—to turn that expression of defiance into something much more acquiescent. And he would if he thought that once would be enough. But he knew with a preternatural prickling of awareness that it wouldn’t be enough. He hardened his resolve. She would not reduce him to such baseness.
    Siena was slowly regaining control of herself. His words rang in her head: ‘I don’t pay women for sex. I never have and I never will. It’s heinous and disgusting and demoralizing.’ The pity of it was she agreed with every word he’d said, and had to admit to respecting him for it.
    She finally dragged her almost stupefied gaze from his and walked on very shaky legs back to the door, about to open it—because surely he would be leaving now, for good? Once again Siena didn’t like the hollow feeling that thought brought with it.
    Before she could open the door, Andreas said ominously, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
    Siena looked at him, the breath catching in her throat for a moment. ‘But you just said you wouldn’t pay...’
    Andreas’s face was like stone, his eyes so dark they looked navy. ‘Yes, I did, and I meant it.’
    Siena struggled to understand. ‘So, what...?’
    Andreas crossed his arms. ‘There are other means of payment that aren’t so...’ his lip curled ‘...obvious.’
    Something very betraying kicked in Siena’s gut at the thought that he wasn’t leaving her. ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Gifts...’ He smiled cynically. ‘After all, how many women and men have benefited from the largesse of their lovers for aeons? You can do what you like with them when our relationship is over, and if that means converting them into the money you want so badly then you’re welcome to do it.’
    Suspicious now, and feeling supremely naive because she’d never been in this situation before, she said, ‘Gifts...what kind of gifts?’
    Andreas’s jaw tightened. ‘The expensive kind. Jewels. Like the ones you were wearing that night.’
    Siena flushed to recall the priceless diamond earrings and necklace her father had presented her with on the evening of that exclusive debutante ball in Paris. They’d belonged to her mother, but had been seized by the authorities along with everything else she had owned.
    Siena found herself feeling almost a sense of sick relief that he wouldn’t just be handing her a sum of money. The thought of receiving jewellery made what she’d just asked for a little more palatable, despite the fresh shame heaped on top of old shame. Siena comforted herself with the thought that Andreas must have presented plenty of his lovers with tokens of his affection.
    ‘Fine,’ she said shakily, barely believing she was agreeing to this. ‘I’ll accept gifts in lieu of payment.’
    Andreas smiled. ‘Of course you will.’
    Siena had a vision of walking out of here with him and fresh panic galvanised her to ask, a little