"Or.." he paused and looked at her with a strange expression. His eyes never leave her face. He leaned forward and his hand settled against her cheeks. His thumb reached for her chin. His touch was warm and light but she was still unable to breath. She stared into his blue eyes, deeper than the ocean. She had drowned in them for a long time.
"I can help you." he whispered softly, seductively, "if you trust me, i have a way to save you Elara." her lips parted.
But she caught the voice before it could escape. Len.. she would have called him as her hands trembled to hold him. To feel more of his skin, more of his touch. How her body had missed him. How she had carved for him even when she had hated him for so long. His touch had unleashed all the buried feelings of her heart. Len.. Lennart. Her Len.. She would have called until she could not speak anymore. She could not hear anymore. She would have called for him.
He noticed her struggle perhaps, for he leaned closer until his breath could caress her skin. His palm, rough wil calluses cupped her cheeks. Her mind as if he had forgotten these two long years. She could not register that Len had come as her enemy. It reacted to the love she had shared with him, how sweet he had been. How passionately he had loved her and protected her.
Tears slipped her eyes as she remembered all the memories she had burnt that night. His cold eyes were better, easier to bear but now… she felt like she was burning, and melting around him. She wanted him. His touch all over her skin. Her brain might have grown older but when it comes to her heart.. It still loves him with all that it has.
She wanted him, that hunger burning her stomach and spreading all over her body that was heating for him. Perhaps he could feel that too. She could see his eyes flickering and burning and he leaned to hug her. Or so she thought. His lips came closer and closer until he spoke..
"Tell me.." his lips touched her ears as he spoke, "what is your husband planning?"
And her heart stopped. The words made her body grow cold at once except her heart that burnt anew but with different emotions this time. He knew that she was affected by his presence. He had called her name deliberately to know the secrets of her husband. He was using her like a pawn in his hands. Isolating her, scaring her and then showing warmth so that her scared self would latch on it as if all this was left in her life.
But he did not know.. She had faced this tactic so many times that it hardly left any effect on him. And… she could not betray her husband even if she wanted to, she could not.
She recoiled from his touch, and he sat back with no reaction except a raised brow and coldness seeping in his eyes. The hurt felt sharp, deep and she felt mortified by the satisfaction grin on his face. But as she thought about it more, it turned into rage, burning her in and out.
Two years! She had seen him with a dozen women in those two years. How could she expect that he had feelings for her after those two long years. He had grown up into a man from a boy in those two years.
"You will get no information from me. There is nothing I know and I have already told you that. You are wasting your time on me. You will get better news from the servants working here if there is anything to find out. Or I request you to look for my husband again." she said in a harsh cold tone with her face going numb. If there was any sign that she wanted him, it disappeared with the cold look on his eyes.
He took a deep breath as if asking for patience. "Four men had gone to find him all over the city. Trust me, we are finding him by any means possible." there was something in his voice that she did not like. "And if you think it would end with him, you are wrong.
Traitor, if proved, his whole family will walk to the gallows with him. Your mother in law was already in the investigation room like you." horror clawed into her. Her husband could not be a fool to go against the king. Could he?
But by the looks of his face, he was only testing how much she was involved. He was sure that her husband had committed treason. And she.. .as his wife was part of it.
"I have no idea. Trust me, I do not know what my husband will do when he leaves this palace. You want me to be a maid, I will work as one. You want me to be your servant, I will be that. If it is your revenge that has brought you here, I will do anything to fill your wounded pride. But do not drag me in the war I had nothing to do with." her voice did not show any emotions but he misunderstood it as mockery.
"My pride?" He spoke those words slowly as if they were foreign to him and he was tasting them for the first time. "What does it have to do with that? You are making a professional business trip as something personal my lady. I have offered you help since you pleaded ignorant. But I have no other intention." he stood up with a smile still lingering on his face as if all this had no impact on him, on his thoughts and she wondered was it true?
Was the idea of revenge only in her mind while she was nothing but just another woman for him?
"You have time to think until we find your husband, my lady. Take decisions before you are too late."