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I smile. “Yeah?”

“You are an extraordinary woman.”

I laugh softly. “I’m pretty ordinary, actually.”

“No.” His hand comes up to cup my cheek. “Not to me, you’re not.”

Oh, damn. That’s unfair. A man shouldn’t be allowed to say things like that while looking like Gabriel Winchester.

There should be laws. Possibly constitutional amendments.

I kiss him again.

And this time, neither of us is particularly interested in stopping.

Somewhere between his mouth finding my neck and my fingers slipping beneath his shirt, I realize something has shifted.

We’ve been here before. Well, not here, exactly because there’s been the hallway floor. The library rug. The kitchen counter, once, which the contractors are never, ever going to find out about.

But tonight feels different. Because tonight he told me the worst thing he’s ever done. And I’m still here. In fact, I don’t want to be anywhere else.

“Gabriel.”

He lifts his head. “Yes?”

I look at him. At his dark hair. His slate-gray eyes. The way he’s watching me, like I’m the only thing in the world that matters.

“I want you,” I say.

His expression changes. “April.” He studies me. “You have only just heard the very worst of me. We do not have to do this. We already know it’s not the key to breaking my curse.”

“So?”

“So I would not have you do this out of pity.”

I laugh. “Gabriel, I’m a grown woman. I know what I’m asking. And trust me, pity is not the feeling I’m having right now.”

His thumb brushes my cheek. “I know you are.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

He hesitates.

And for one terrible second, I wonder whether I’ve misread everything. Whether he’s been kissing me because he’s lonely. Because I’m here. Because I’m the only woman he’s seen in a hundred and forty-three years.

Then he speaks.

“Every time, the granite takes me before morning.”

I blink.

“I hold you afterward, and then I feel the cold begin in my fingertips, and I must send you to your own bed before it takes me.” His voice drops. “I have never once woken beside you, April. I find I want that more than I can say. And I am afraid to want it.”

Oh, my sweet, sweet man.

“So we try,” I say. “And if you turn into a lawn ornament at three in the morning, I’ll grab a pillow and sleep on the floor next to you.”

“Grotesque.”