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Her stomach squeezed.
“I was married.”
She made a husky groaning sound.
“On the brink of divorce, but I took my vows seriously. Until the divorce was official, I had no intention of sleeping with anyone, Elodie. You were the first – and only – woman I was with during that time of my life.”
He stared at her but she felt like he was staring through her, looking at all the pieces that made up her whole, trying to fit them together in a way he could make sense of.
“Why?”
“I told you, I took my vows seriously.”
“I mean, why me?”
His expression darkened, but his lips twisted into a mocking smile. “I wish I knew.”
His eyes drilled into hers intently.
“I have been asking myself that for six weeks. Why you? What was it about you that made me ignore the black and white morality that had guided me all my life?” His eyes narrowed and he moved infinitesimally closer, so her hand was the only thing between them.
“What is it about you that makes me want to kiss you even when I am so angry with you, even when a part of me is filled with rage for what you’ve taken from me?”
Goosebumps lifted across her body. “I don’t know.” A whisper. A gravelled, pleading sound.
His thumb padded over her lower lip.
“How can I be driven crazy by thoughts of taking you to bed after what you’ve done to me?”
Her lips parted in silent invitation and he responded, his eyes dropping to her lips, his expression sombre.
“Do you remember what I said to you in the hospital?”
She frowned, unable to think clearly, far less remember something that had happened days earlier.
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
Her frown deepened, his words coming back to her with an unwelcome, roiling inevitability.
And you will know that if I kiss you, Elodie, it is because of the same chemistry that drove us together that night, and nothing more. You will know that I will never like you as a person, that I will never forgive you for your decisions.
“My wanting you is just biology. Nothing more.”
She felt as though she’d been punched in the gut.
“I –,”
He shook his head curtly.
“You told me not to kiss you once before. If you tell me not to now, I won’t. I won’t kiss you, I won’t touch you. I will walk away from you and hell, I’ll probably be grateful to you in the morning, grateful that you stopped me from doing something stupid and giving in to desire when there are a hundred reasons not to.”
She moaned softly, her body flushing with heat and need.
“But if you say nothing, I will lift you up and carry you to my bedroom, and I will make you cry my name again and again, until it is the only word you know, the only sound you can make.”
He lowered his head, so his lips were just a whisper from hers. “Well, Elodie? Are you going to tell me to stop? To push me away again?”
She said nothing.
