“I’m fine,” I say, but I don’t know if it’s a lie or not.
“You look like a ghost,” he says.
“Why did you leave?”Me.I leave that part off.Why did you leave me?
He groans and pushes himself more upright. “Because I don’t think I’m strong enough to stick around and watch you win.”
“Why’d you come back?”
“Because I wasn’t strong enough to stay away.”
“I thought you didn’t like me,” I gasp.
He pulls back enough to look me directly in the eye. “Like you? Ivy Benton, I am obsessed with you. It’s going to kill me.”
I lower myself to the edge of his bed, too far to be touching but close enough to feel the heat of him.
“You’re confusing me for someone with strong resolve,” he says.
“Emmett, please.” I can’t shake the masochistic desire to feel something, even if it’s pain.
My breath catches in my throat. I want him to lean in, pull me closer, do anything other than stare at me like he knows he can undo me.
He jerks his hand back as if he’s been burned. “I can’t touch you.”
My face burns red with embarrassment. “Because I’m Bram’s? Because we’re friends? Because I’m the only one stupid enough to think that night in the coaching inn meant something?”
He shakes his head almost imperceptibly and leans in. “Because if I start touching you, I don’t think I’ll be able to stop.”
His brows furrow as he finally looks down at my gauzy white nightdress.
“They pulled me out of bed in the night,” I explain. “I was just with the queen. I’ve lost.”
“What?”
“We have to—” But before I can finish, sayfind Bram, he circles his fingers around my wrist, tugs me toward him, and, in one fluid movement, crushes his lips to mine.
I think of what has come before, not what will come after.
And I kiss him back.
He slips his tongue between the seam of my lips, and I open for him, taking everything he’s willing to give. His hands fist at the hair at the nape of my neck, and he pulls like he can’t have me close enough.
“I’m not strong enough to be under the same roof as you,” Emmett confesses against my mouth. “I am sick with the knowing I cannot have you.”
I sigh. “You have me now.”
He rolls, caging me in with his arms, and tugs at the ribbons of my nightdress.
He takes both my hands in his and clutches them to his chest, right against his breastbone, where I can feel his heart beating. “We could be together, Ivy.”
“That’s not the plan,” I say weakly. It would be so easy to give in. “I can never marry.”
“That doesn’t matter to me. We’ll run away. I’ll tell anyone who will listen that you are mine. I’ll shout it from rooftops around the world.”
For a moment I picture us on a ship’s deck, sea spray in our hair, going somewhere far from England.
“You’re a prince.”
