Page 199

He wanted to touch her. Wanted to draw her close to him, but he couldn’t do that. He could not do that.

She was the one who closed the distance between them, those blue eyes far too bright. She lifted her hand, and he jerked back, like a hit dog.

“Adonis,” she whispered.

She touched his face, delicate fingertips gliding along his cheekbone, down to the corner of his mouth.

And then she just held him like that, in the palm of her hand.

He didn’t move. He wasn’t entirely certain that he breathed.

He could hear nothing but his own heartbeat.

Nothing but the fragile air around them.

It would be so easy to kiss her.

Esme. To taste her mouth again. To lose himself in the need that he felt for her. She had liked it when he was rough. When he was dominant. And she had played the part of siren to match. It had worked. Perfectly. Beautifully.

They could do that again. They could go upstairs, and he could whisper dirty commands, and she would follow them. On her hands and knees.

That wouldn’t be this. This beautiful held breath.

But it would feel manageable.

He didn’t. Didn’t move. Didn’t kiss her. And she didn’t kiss him either.

Because he could feel the desire welling up between the two of them, but also the fear.

Then she put her hand back at her side, and took a step away from him.

“This is the house,” she whispered.

“Yes. This is the house.”

That part at least was simple. They would raise their child here. And when it came right down to it, they would make the best decisions for that child.

Because they had the opportunity here to do something foolish. They hadn’t.

He did his best not to regret that all the way back to the city.

Chapter Nine

She barely saw Adonis in the run-up to the wedding.

It felt wrong, but necessary.

That moment at the house kept playing over and over again in her mind.

It had been clear that they wanted each other. It hadn’t been a fluke.

She’d been wondering if it might’ve been. For him.

That night where they’d lost themselves in that fantasy. It had been so consumed by everything that had happened since. By the way that he had rejected her. By the five months of separation, the pregnancy. Everything.

Since they’d come back together everything had been about that, and she’d wondered if he wanted her at all.

He did. She’d seen it on his face. She had also seen fear.