He had steeled himself to deal with her willful nature: the sweet yet stubborn essence of who Livy was. Yet he was wholly defenseless against the honest hurt glimmering in her eyes. He couldn’t stem the tenderness that welled inside him. The longing that he, too, felt for the easy closeness of their past.
“I have missed you too,” he said gruffly.
Hope lit her thickly lashed eyes. “You have?”
“You are my dear little friend.” Out of habit, he reached out and chucked her beneath the chin. It was the gesture of an older brother…or had been, at any rate. Now the silky glide of her skin against his finger caused a hot quickening in his blood, and there was nothing sister-like in her shiver of response.
He jerked his hand away. Fought for control.
Her gaze searched his. “Why can’t I be your friendandyourpetite amie?”
Her voice had a sweetly pleading quality that tested his self-discipline. Feminine entreaty never failed to set off a dominant drumbeat in his blood. Coming from Livy, a spirited and willful creature, it was doubly alluring.
And doubly forbidden.
Are you mad? This is Livy,he berated himself.Get your mind out of the gutter.
“Last time, you said that I am too young and impetuous to know what I want,” she went on. “While I cannot deny our age difference, youknowme. You cannot deny that I have always known my own mind.”
“Even clever misses can be fooled by an infatuation.” He strove for a brotherly tone. “Let it go, Livy. For the sake of our friendship.”
“It isnotan infatuation. I love you,” she insisted.
Her words elicited a tingle of pleasure…which he quickly quelled.
“At your age, a lady changes her mind as frequently as she does her gloves,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes. “Donotdismiss my feelings.”
“I am trying to spare your feelings, little one. To protect you.” He willed her to understand. “Livy, you deserve a better man than me. One whose honor is untarnished, whose life is not tainted by filth and darkness.”
His sins were too many to count, his hands stained with the blood of the people he’d destroyed. Redemption was beyond his reach, but through his work with Chen’s night watch, at least he was doing something good. The only area where he allowed his base nature to surface was tupping, and he always chose sophisticated partners whose carnal needs matched his own.
Livy knew nothing of this: the brutality of his past, the covert activities of his present, the depravity of his sexual tastes. She was pure and bright, and he wanted her to stay that way. To be the North Star that lit up his universe, whose shining beauty his darkness could never obscure.
“What if I do not wish to be protected?”
She tilted her chin up, and God help him, her defiance yanked at his dominant urges. That part of him that reveled in taming a lady…
“What if I want the same things that you do?” she persisted.
“You do not know what you want—”
“Dash it all!Youdo not get to tell me whatIwant.” She poked him in the chest with her index finger, her eyes flashing with challenge. “And if you will not give it to me, then I will find it elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere? What the bloody hell does that mean?”
Her lashes veiled her gaze an instant before she looked him straight in the eye. “Lord Sheffield finds me quite appealing.”
Did she think she couldmanipulatehim? Goad him into jealousy?
Icy rage flooded Ben. For years, Arabella, anactualexpert, had played him like a puppet. The idea thatLivythought she could pull on his strings with her transparent ploy made him want to laugh or snarl…he didn’t know which. Seeing that she was about to punctuate her childish threat with another poke to his chest, he captured her wrist in his hand. He backed her into the glass wall, caging her. Her awareness quivered in the sliver of air between them.
“Do not play games with me,” he said.
Arabella would have backed down at the quiet menace of his tone.
Livy, however? Her gaze sparkled with defiance.
