Anger simmers sullenly in my gut, proving the truth. I’m sitting here stiff as a board, because this woman has managed to get so completely under my skin that I can’t get her out. She’s been under it since the moment I saw her at that fundraiser, and it galls me that it’s almost impossible for me to be my normal logical self when she’s around.
But I’m a man who likes facts and those are the facts. Ican’tbe my normal logical self when she’s around. I have no physical self-control when she comes near, and all my efforts to deny that have failed. So now I’m forced to conclude that yes, I’ve been lying to myself about how much I want her, and that it’s useless to pretend otherwise. Just as it’s useless to pretend that everything she does doesn’t either infuriate me or fascinate me, and usually both at the same time.
So once again, I give her the truth. ‘What I’m angry about is having no self-control around you, because self-control is something I value.’
A look of surprise crosses her face, and this time I let myself have the feeling of satisfaction that I’ve surprised her. That I’ve made her feel as off-balance as I do.
Yet more colour floods through her cheeks, making her look like a blooming rose.
Her lashes lower abruptly, and she picks up her teacup again, taking a sip.
If it weren’t for her blush and the way she’s avoiding my gaze, I’d think my words have no effect on her at all. But I know better. She liked that I told her that, didn’t she?
‘That…goes both ways,’ she murmurs into her teacup.
I like that. Her own need for me is something I already know, but hearing her admit it out loud is very satisfying.
‘Is that why you chose my father?’ I ask, surprising myself with the question and my own willingness to talk about it. Because now I’m giving it some rational thought, it’s the only logical explanation. She’s as uncomfortable as I am with our chemistry, and elected not to chase it.
Her lashes lift and her blue gaze meets mine, and I feel the impact like a blow to the stomach. It’s like that first time in London, no anger, only fierce hunger, and this time my body tenses for a completely different reason entirely. For the first time she’s letting me see this desire of hers, uncoloured by anything else, and it’s as if she’s giving me a gift.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘You affected me so powerfully and I was…afraid of it.’
I search her face, but there’s only honesty there. ‘Why?’ I ask, curious now, though my hunger for her is rising again in equal measure, no matter that she knelt for me only an hour or so earlier.
‘I…haven’t felt that way about anyone before.’ She’s slightly hesitant, as if she can’t find the right words, which for some reason is extremely erotic to me. ‘It’s…overwhelming.’
As I study her, my curiosity shifts and discovers a new and intense focus: her. Maybe I was…premature when I dismissed the idea of researching her as if she was a puzzle, deciding my desire was simple sexual attraction, nothing more. But there’s merit to the thought of investigating her more thoroughly, and the scientist in me agrees. She’s…interesting.
After that fundraiser, where I first saw her, I found out what I could about her. Then, after she rejected me, I let my anger at both her and my father colour my thinking. I let my anger at myself and my own lack of control around her get to me.
But this conversation, more honest and without anger, is letting me see her clearly for the first time. Letting me see her as I first did, at the bar, where she seemed to me the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, and I wanted her.
I want her now, powerfully, yet I also want to discover the facts about her, get to knowher.
I shift in my seat and lean forward. This is the first time she’s shown me any vulnerability, confessed to feelings for me that aren’t hate or simple lust, and I want to hear more. I want to know why she was so overwhelmed by me and why she’d never felt that way about anyone else before.
Still, maybe that can wait. For now, I’d like to hear about why she made the decision to choose my father instead of me. ‘You didn’t feel that even for my father?’
One corner of her mouth lifts in a faint smile, and my breath catches. I’ve seen her smile only once before, and that was when I approached her at the bar, and now I want it again. I want her mouth to curve in just that way, just for me. ‘No, not at all for him,’ she says. ‘He was the…safer option.’
‘Safer how?’
She’s blushing again, as if my attention discomforts her yet pleases her, and I like that too. It’s odd to imagine wanting to please her, since I’ve spent so long wanting to anger her, but her pleasure could be a research topic that I’d definitely consider immersing myself in.
‘I…don’t trust people easily,’ she says, again sounding hesitant. ‘My instincts can be wrong about them.’
My curiosity deepens still further. ‘Why?’ I ask. ‘Did something happen to you?’
She glances away again, down at the cup in her hands. ‘Oh, you don’t want to know about all of that. It’s really not very interesting.’
‘I’minterested,’ I tell her bluntly. ‘You’ll be my wife, in which case I’ll want to know all the facts that relate to you.’
Again, her gaze lifts to mine and again I feel the impact of it. A punch of fascination and raw hunger. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘You asked for it. I was given into foster care as a baby and placed in a lot of different homes. It was very…destabilising. When I was around thirteen, another girl and I were actually placed with wonderful foster parents.’ She pauses, shadows moving in her blue eyes. ‘I thought they liked us, and when we were told they were considering adopting us, I was so excited. But at the last minute the other girl was adopted and I wasn’t. I was never told why.’
There’s a strange tightness in my chest. As if I empathise with her. I wasn’t ever in foster care but I’m familiar with the sense of destabilisation. I felt that way myself, in my early childhood, with my parents and their acrimonious relationship that would at times spill over onto me. My father furious with me for something I said or did that he didn’t agree with. My mother shaking me off and pulling away when she didn’t want to deal with me.
The random element of it, the not understanding why they were so furious and dismissive, the not knowing what you had done that was wrong. It was all so precarious and fraught. Like living in a tent and being constantly afraid that a strong wind would come and blow it all down.
