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His thumb moved on her nape, up and then down. Again, of its own accord. And he felt how she shivered, though he wouldn’t have known it to look at her, so well did she hide what he could feel with his own flesh.
And Crete could not help but feel a powerful sense of loss, because once she would not have hidden her responses from him. Once, she had been all untutored enthusiasm, artless and sweet, running through his hands like sunshine.
He knew full well what had changed. And more, who had changed her.
But he concentrated on the heat instead. “Surely you and I can find a way to entertain ourselves, can we not?”
Again that smile, too sad for his tastes. “Is that what you want?”
Once more, Crete knew this was some kind of test. Like the stories she had demanded he tell her before. The answers she had needed him to give. Only this time, he had the distinct impression that this was not a test he could master.
And having her here again, in this space that he had always kept pristine, crisp, and utterly devoid of anything soft or even comfortable, brought it all back.
All of it, like a good blow to the head.
“You broke all the rules,” he found himself saying, though he knew he should keep such things to himself. He had done his best to keep from saying such things for half a year while she’d lived here. He stood there, half in the dark and half lit up from London below, but all he could see was Timoney. “I do not indulge in public displays of passion in clubs. There’s too much risk that it will all end up in the tabloids. But one look at you and it was as if I had no choice.”
Her lips moved as if she meant to speak, but no sound came forth.
That was just as well, because Crete could feel a storm in him, gathering force. Driving rain, booming thunder.
Or maybe it was only his voice, telling her the things he had not told her the last night she’d been here. The things he’d had no intention of ever telling her.
The things he barely admitted to himself.
“There is an extensive vetting process,” he told her as if he couldn’t stop himself. He couldn’t. “But I moved you in within the week. And the purpose of allowing a woman here is to make my life easier. So that I can concentrate on my work, give my all to my many business concerns, and have a woman here to fulfill my needs when and if I have the time. But you did not slot neatly into place here, Timoney. You...took up space.”
This time her smile seemed something like rueful. “I suppose I did,” she told him, her voice light but that intensity in her gaze. “But I had no choice. This flat is grotesque.”
“I think you will find it is one of the most sought-after properties in London.”
“It is grotesque,” she said again, very distinctly, though her blue eyes gleamed. “Not only because of the fingerprints of too many mistresses before me, but because it might as well be a prison. Too much steel and concrete. Too many angles and cold expanses.” She looked away as if she could see all the sharp corners and deliberately empty spaces without the lights on. “It’s inhospitable to human life, Crete. I assume that’s by design.”
She was obliquely calling him an alien now, and it was astonishing to him, how deeply he disliked it. The whole world could line up to tell him how unnatural he was. How little he fit in. He took that as encouragement. As a challenge.
But it was different when it was Timoney.
Still, she needed to understand. Somehow, he needed to explain all of this to her. What it had really been like, those months she’d lived here. How he had felt so unlike himself. Careening from one meeting to the next and yet hardly paying attention. Instead of feeling pleasantly set, all of his needs taken care of in their appropriate compartments, he had rushed home whenever he could. He had changed his schedule so many times his secretarial staff had been driven round the bend.
Crete had changed his whole life. Worse, he had been aware of it while he was doing it, aware of every step away from the man he had always been before her—but he hadn’t been able to stop. He hadn’twantedto stop.
Still, he had been horrified that last night, when she’d told him that she loved him—when she’d cried it out in bed as if she couldn’t keep it in another moment—that his first reaction had been a kind of mad thrill.
Because he could not seem to get enough of this woman. Of the total disregard with which she treated this ascetic sanctuary of his. How she left her clothes scattered about, so that he found buttery-soft scarves in improbable pastels lying about on his cold marble, his brutally minimalist steel. She was fluffy and bright, and seemed hell-bent on leaving her careless mark everywhere she went. She left dirty dishes by the sink. She plopped down mugs of tea wherever she happened to find herself, wholly and utterly heedless of any rings of moisture she left behind.
His housekeeping staff had been relieved when she’d gone.
But he had discovered quickly that without her, this luxurious, aspirational flat felt more to him like a tomb.
“I don’t like mess,” he said darkly now, to her claim that this place was designed to be inhospitable. “I don’t like complications.”
“And yet you were singing the praises of war earlier, weren’t you?” she asked, lightly enough. Though her blue eyes seemed dark. “I have yet to hear tell of any clean and uncomplicated wars, Crete.”
“That very much depends on whether or not you are winning it, I think.” His hands had moved now, without his knowledge. He was gripping her shoulders, holding her there before him, and he really could not have said if he meant to push her away or draw her closer.
He had never known.
“The trouble with you,” he managed to grit out at her, though it seemed far harder than it should have, “is that you never fit here. You never slotted into place.”
