“You don’t.You already told me that.”
Ellie released him to pace across the canvas.“I find them deeply off-putting.Like little monsters who are utterly incapable of articulating their needs but punish you for failing to meet them regardless.”
Adam regarded her warily, as though he had found himself in the room with a cornered hyena.“Have you actually been around many kids?”
“I generally avoid them.”
“I mean, not that your description’s entirely inaccurate, but—”
“They are tiny bundles of inescapable obligation that tie a woman even deeper into the virtual slavery of the patriarchy.”
“Ooookay,” Adam returned carefully.“That’s one way of looking at them…”
Fear snapped through her like a shot of ice in her chest.
“I don’t know if I can ever bring myself to do that,” she blurted out, holding her arms close to her chest.
Adam gazed down at her softly.“Why’s that a problem?”
“Because it means if you stay with me, you’d be giving up your chance to become a father,” Ellie pushed back, the fear still clawing at her.
Adam cupped her cheek.“I’m all right with that.”
The fear pushed harder.“But what if—”
Adam set a finger to her lips.“I picked you.I’m going to keep on picking you.That’s how this works.”
Ellie’s fear broke, shivering away like falling petals.She fell into Adam, leaning against the warm, bare skin of his shoulder as his arms came around her back.“You say the most unforgivably romantic things sometimes.Do you know that?”
“Maybe I’m trying to get you into bed.”His voice danced with humor.
“You just had me in bed.”
“That was the floor,” Adam reasonably countered.
She raised her hand to trace the delicate lines at the corners of his eyes—the ones that always looked to her like joy.
“I love you, you know,” she said softly.“Rather desperately.”
Adam dropped his lips to the top of her hair with aching tenderness.His chest pushed against the circle of her arms as he drew in a deep, uneven breath.“Me too, Princess.Me too.”
?
Thirteen
Adam Bates wasfeeling pretty damned fine.His body hummed with the after-effects of his time with Ellie.Finding her in the hall after his cool immersion in the pool had been a gift—and Adam had made good use of it.
He was already hungry for more.
Laying his woman out on the floor and giving her everything he had until she was groaning with pleasure had rapidly become one of Adam’s favorite hobbies.He’d had far too few opportunities to enjoy it.
He wasn’t sure he’d ever get enough—not unless he somehow stole Ellie away to a cabin in the woods for a month.
Or two.
Maybe three,Adam thought, his mind bursting with ideas for how the pair of them could use that time—especially if he got hold of that contraband she’d asked him about.
Granted, these weren’t the sort of things Adam ought to be thinking about while sitting at a maharaja’s dinner table.
