Because he couldn’t summon that kind of anger toward her if his life depended on it. Because every time she looked uncertain, something primitive in him wanted to close ranks and remove the source. Because the thought of her walking back into Donati hands was already intolerable.
He gave her the cleanest version.“Because none of this is your fault.”
She stared at him as if the sentence itself was a luxury she didn’t know how to accept.“That’s not how my world worked,” shesaid.
“I know.”
“Then stop saying it like it should be obvious.”
That sharpened him, not in anger, but in focus. He stepped closer until there was nothing accidental left in the space between them.“Fine,” he said. “Then I’ll keep saying it until it does become obvious.”
Her breath caught.
He felt it against his mouth now, warm and unsteady, the rush of it brushing his lips as if the distance between them had already disappeared.For a second neither of them moved.The world had narrowed to the space between their bodies and to the faint tremor where her hand rested against his chest.
“Magnus...”Her voice came out quieter than before. Not hesitant exactly. Aware.
“What?”
“You’re doing it again.”
His brows tugged together. “Doing what?”
Her fingers tightened in the fabric beneath her palm, as if the answer mattered more than she wanted it to.“Looking at me like I matter.”
The honesty in the statement hit him like a blow.Not because she said it, but because she’d said it with such certainty that it was clearly not a joke, not a flirtation, not even a question. Just a statement of something she’d noticed and couldn’t quite believe.
His hand shifted from her waist to the center of her back, drawing her fully into him. Her body came willingly, warm and tense all at once. The shape of her shifted against him now. The delicate press of her breasts against his chest. The curve of her waist under his hand. The faint tremor running through her that had nothing to do withcold.
“You do matter,” hesaid.
She shut her eyes briefly at the words, then opened them again, and what he saw there nearly undidhim.
Longing. Fear. Hope she didn’t trust enough to letfree.
The ballroom vanished for him then. So did the contract, the Donatis, the layered problems waiting inside the larger war. There was only her and the impossible ache of wanting to take away every hand that had ever taught her to doubt her worth.
Her palms slid higher along his chest, up to the lapels of his jacket, fisting there as though she needed the leverage. The movement brought her mouth within an inch of his.“This is probably aterrible idea.”
“Probably.”
Neither of them movedback.
“You didn’t even hesitate,” she said, and there was something almost dazed init.
“No.”
“That should frighten me.”
“Does it?”
Her eyes held his. “No.”
For a heartbeat neither of them moved. The air between them grew thinner now, charged with the dangerous awareness of how close they were standing. Magnus watched the slight rise of her breasts, the way her mouth parted as if she already knew what he was about todo.
The answer stripped the last of his restraint.
For one brief second Magnus looked at her as if measuring the distance between what he should do and what he was about to do.Tommaso’s face flashed through his mind. The memory sharpened the hunger already burning throughhim.
