He grunted, shot her a quick glance, and poured his water out again without drinking it.
“Ben,” Rose said, taking two steps toward the kitchen, then stopping. “Earlier, when you kissed me—”
“It won’t happen again,” he interrupted.
Rose drew back. “Why won’t it happen again?”
“You’re a lady, and I had no right to touch you—” His voice caught when he saw the hurt in her eyes, “—or kiss you like I did. It’s not proper, and I apologize.”
“What if I wanted it to happen again?”
Ben lifted his head and rubbed his fist across his chest. His heart pounded as he forced his eyes to stay focused on hers, to stop his hands from remembering the curves of her body—
“I want to kiss you again.” Rose nibbled her plump lower lip. “Did you not like it?”
If you only knew how much I liked it.“It won’t happen again,” he repeated, his jaw clenched. Perhaps if he said it enough, he would actually believe it.
“You didn’t answer my question.” Rose stepped closer, and each footfall drained more of his willpower away. “Did you enjoy kissing me?”
Ben felt dizzy. “What I enjoy is beside the point. I won’t kiss you again.”
“Why not?” She hesitated, her eyes widening. “Have you been with a woman since—”
“Yes.” He should have lied, fallen back on being a poor, pitiful widower, too broken up over his loss to feel the level of attraction he had to this woman. “I’ve had… others.”
Rose stretched her arms wide. “Then what is stopping you? This is America, at the dawn of the twentieth century.” Her eyes skimmed down his body, and he felt the weight of her gaze like fingertips grazing along his skin, the touch that drove him mad just hours before. “We’re in the land of opportunity and progressive women.”
He swallowed hard. “And your point is?”
“You’re acting like a bloody pilgrim! I know my mind, and my wants, and I want to kiss you.”
Ben liked to think of himself as a noble man, but even he had his limits. A simple kiss was not the problem; the problem was that he wouldn’t be able to stop with a taste of her lips. She’d intoxicated him the moment she touched him. And taking Rose Waverly to bed would undoubtedly lay him flat, leave him wasted and hollowed out once more.
“Is that all it would be for you?” His voice sounded foreign to his own ear, thick and heavy with desire. “A kiss? Because I can say with certainty that I could not walk away with just a kiss.”
Her lips parted as she gasped, and the last vestiges of his self-restraint began to tatter.
“But I won’t take advantage of a woman,” he continued. “And I won’t be used as some sort of… game.”
Her brows knit together. “What do you mean, a game?”
“A cheap thrill, leading a man from the slums into bed before you marry a fuckinglordand spend the rest of your life in luxury. Something scandalous to look back on when you’re bored with your husband. Isn’t that what you’re doing?”
His entire body tensed as he awaited her answer. If she said yes, he could take her to bed without guilt, lavish her with praise and pleasure as he showed her what she would be missing with the English toff she would eventually wed. He’d keep the sex mindless, a mutual release and nothing more.
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Well, he hadn’t expected that. Ben wanted to decide for her, to press her back against the door—inside, this time—and kiss her until they both succumbed to the incendiary heat between them, disintegrating into ashes as the fire destroyed them.
Rose may not know what she was doing, but he knew what was right. Whatever her background, Ben was responsible for her, for her safety and protection, and he was imagining the ways he would debase her. His desires may be far from noble, and Rose was in his debt while she stayed with him.
Whispers from the past pushed into his mind, rumors about his father he heard from the boys in his neighborhood in San Francisco, how Gerald North would use women, his power enough lay ruin to the women in his factory, under his so-called care.
Love and sex were entirely separate things. His father had let his cock make his decisions. Ben’s desire for Aiko, his need to share her bed and her body, led to her death.
If Ben let himself succumb to his baser need for Rose, if he unleashed the roaring lust that boiled in his blood, what would he do to Rose? All along he thought she would lay him to wreckage, but was he the one who would destroy her?
“Then all we need to do is… cohabitate.” He picked up the quilt and thrust it towards her. “I don’t sleep with women in my building, anyway.”
