AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He opened his eyes.
It wasn’t a whirling storm, it was Juliet, spinning in the bed, her legs kicking at tangled sheets as she tried to escape his hold.
“No—no.” The flurry of her movements blurred in front of him but her voice was crystal clear. “You don’t say what you did to me last night and then find me and hold me—no.”
She shoved at him, disengaging herself from his arm, ripping the sheet away from the tangled hold it had on her feet. She sprang out of bed.
Directly into it, then.
Evan blinked, attempting to clear the fog from his mind.
Daylight was streaming in from the skinny window behind her, the glow of it setting her loose hair afire. She tried to right her wrapper and night rail, as both had tugged far to the side during the night, her right breast nearly popping free of the fabric.
The whole of her half-dressed rage struck him as utterly delectable and his mouth watered in spite of himself.
“No.” She stopped trying to right her night rail and her left hand swung in the air between them. “Don’t you dare look at me like that—not now. No.”
Evan sat up in the bed, the butts of his palms rubbing his eyes, still trying to come out of his deep slumber. Damn that he slept so hard when her body was next to his.
“I was wrong, Juliet. Wrong. What I said should never have formed on my tongue.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I was so wrong, and I’m sorry. So sorry.”
Her arms clasped across her ribcage and she stilled, looking at him. “You should be.”
“Yes.” He nodded. “But you were wrong too. You never should have tried to trick me.”
“Trick you?”
“You seduced me, took me to another place, all the while just waiting for a moment to pounce—to ask that blasted question when you thought you would get an explanation. You thought to seduce the answer out of me.”
Her hand flipped out from her waist. “So? There are a thousand things wrong about this place, and you won’t tell me what’s going on—what’s truly happening here. What am I supposed to do?”
He heaved a sigh, his glare settling on her. “Not treat me like one of your customers would be a great first step.”
Her head snapped back, her eyes going wide.
His hands flew up, palms to her. “Tell me I’m wrong, Juliet. Tell me that’s not what you were doing.”
“Even if it was, that gave you no right to say what you did to me. You knew exactly who you were crawling into bed with when we left the Willows. And for you to say that…” She paused, shaking her head as her look went to the ceiling. She exhaled a long breath, not looking at him. “I just never thought you would do that, I just thought…”
“That we were more?”
Her looked dropped to him, the storm in her blue eyes turning into ice. “It doesn’t matter what I thought.”
He moved across the bed, standing up, though keeping a swath of distance from her. “What if it does matter?”
“What?”
“What if I told you that I put you into a box in my mind after that first time we were together in the carriage. A box where I intended to keep you. This”—his hand motioned between them—“was to be an enjoyable entanglement that would last a few weeks, and then be fondly looked back upon once you left Whetland. That was where I placed you. A box where you would stay neat and tidy and out of my life.”
His hand ran across the back of his neck. Damn words. Why were words for Juliet so blasted hard? But his mouth continued to open. “But then you started crawling out of the box—seeping into every part of my brain, every thought I had, every hope for who would be standing around the corner in the hallways of this blasted pile of stones.”
Her head cocked to the side. “I’m in a box?”
“You were. But then ye escaped somehow, and I don’t think you even tried. But you’re out of the box now, and I can’t put you back in there no matter how hard I try.”
“What exactly are you saying, Evan?”
What was he trying to say? He stared at her, taking in the confusion on her face, yet she was still standing there, willing to listen to him even after he’d been an ass. The point of his barrage of words crystallized in that moment.
