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“That’s the only way the world changes,” Conrad replied. Maybe a little too gruffly.
And he shouldn’t let himself do this. He was good at the usual banter. The usual game. Easy conversation, nothing too demanding, keeping everything light and easy so it was no hardship at all to cross back over to the real world.
“Come here,” he said, his voice stern as if it was an order. Though he feared it was something far closer to a request.
And she did, skimming her hands over the water as she crossed the tub. When she reached him, she stood there before him, achingly beautiful, her gaze open and her mouth soft.
Conrad reached over and pulled her close, so he could curve his hands around her neck and rest his thumbs on either side of her throat. He could feel her pulse kick into high gear—and his did the same, to match.
And then he did his job.
“You seem to spend a large quantity of your life doing things so that others see you in a certain way. But you can’t curate the best parts of life, Rory. You have to live them.”
“You live in a converted a Gothic church,” she whispered, because of course she was going to argue. “Talk about a curated life.”
“Answer me this,” he said, because this was what he did. He opened them up and they told him how they were broken, and then he fixed them. Even if he couldn’t seem to recall the face of another woman, just then. There was only Rory. “What would you do if you had nothing to prove?”
She jerked in his grip as if he’d spanked her again. The look in her dark eyes was something like betrayal. “What would you do?”
He held her gaze. “I’m doing it. I don’t have anything to prove.”
“Really?” she asked, too solemnly for his peace of mind. She shook her head. “You keep a dungeon in a church, Conrad.”
“I’m perfectly comfortable with my life, Rory,” he gritted out, and he knew as he said it that it wasn’t as true as it should have been.
Worse, he thought she knew it, too.
“What is...” She pulled in a breath, and he could hear that it was ragged. He could see emotion in her eyes. And more, he could see the reflection of himself, not quite as composed as he should’ve been. “What is this, Conrad?”
“You tell me,” he said, in a voice so low he hardly heard it.
But she did. Because something shifted, there on her pretty face. She smiled, which was bad enough.
And she leaned forward, as if pushing herself farther into his grip.
Or deeper into your heart,something in him contradicted.
And then she ruined everything, and kissed him.
CHAPTER TEN
SHEHADN’TMEANTto do that.
Or maybe she had, Rory thought, in the last seconds that she was even capable of thought, because kissing Conrad was like magic.
That stern mouth of his was so hard. So impossibly ruthless and beautiful. And even though she felt him stiffen, he kissed her back.
And of all the things that had happened since she’d met him, all of it so confronting, life-altering, and impossible to get her head around—this was almost...sweet.
Or it would have been, if she couldn’t feel the tremor in the air between them. The hush of anticipation. That little spark that reminded her that what was between them was fire, not sugar.
She capitalized on the little moment before the flames kicked in. She kissed him because she could. Because she’d wanted to since almost the first moment she’d laid eyes on him. Because he was letting her.
Because he tasted like everything she’d ever wanted.
And then he made a low noise, grasped her head firmly between his hands, and took over.
And all that sweetness skyrocketed into something else.
