“Look,” he shot back, “I am immovable in a sick bed.Youavoided me. That’s not what I mean.”
She laughed at this. “You are the strongest, heartiest man I’ve ever known to claim a sick bed.”
“Thank you, I think, but that’s beside the point. I want to be clear—” He stopped and took a deep breath. “Please be aware: I will never pursue you after we... after the—”
“Because you dislike it,” she guessed.
“Because I want it too much, Sabine,” he breathed. “I want it with a ferocity that you cannot fathom. May you never fathom how much I want you. Yes—I am a strong man. Yes, I am determined to resist you. But please be aware, when it comes to how much I relish the look of you, tothe yearsI have fantasized about touching you and how much I want to take you to bed, I don’t believe that I have the strength to resist you forever.
“So,” he continued, his voice rising, “if you continue to test your curiosity on me, when I am in this bed and cannot escape you, I would ask you torethinkthe way you view our marriage, because it will rapidly cease being ‘convenient’ or ‘detached.’ We will also cease thinking of each other asfriends. It will become a marriage in every sense.”
Sabine stood very still for a moment; her expression was thoughtful, almost placid. A tantalizing pink color rose on her cheeks. After a moment she asked, “A marriage like Willow and Cassin or Tessa and Joseph?”
“No,” he said. “Notlike our friends’.” He slid his legs off the bed and shoved up, biting back a growl of pain. “Cassin is a gentleman and Joseph is almost a member of bloody Parliament. I am no gentleman or politician, Sabine. I’m from the streets, with no notion of manners or refinement or gentility. My needs are raw, my desires are wholly untamed, and I have discovered during my time here that I have only the loosest hold on my self-control.”
He expected her to back away, to collide with the wall and slide toward the door. Instead, she took a step toward him. He continued, “Do you remember what I said about a transaction, Sabine? About sex being a man’s pleasure in exchange for some item or aid a woman requires?”
“Of course.”
“Because if you continue on, if you instigate these provoking conversations and encourage the kisses and the proximity, I will, eventually, crumble. Your innocent curiosity will spark, catch fire, and flame into something not innocent at all.”
Sabine’s eyes grew huge and she put a hand to her throat. Stoker hated speaking so coarsely; he hated threatening her, but this could not go unsaid.
“It turns my stomach to say this to you, of all people, but if you continue to press me, Sabine, then select your bauble or your property or whatever your heart desires, because Iwillowe you. When it’s finished. I will take you, and I will not be able to hold back, and I will be in your debt.”
He was sweating now, unsteady on his feet. He flung his arm out to take hold of the headboard and Sabine jumped. Stoker swore and closed his eyes, hating to unsettle her.
Better with words than with deeds,he thought.
Now she understands.
Now she will leave me in peace.
The room fell silent; his breathing was the only sound. Even the dog had gone still on the bed, staring back and forth between them.
After a long moment Sabine said, “Alright. Let us call on the Courtlands. Will you write to them? How correct you are. It has been shortsighted of me not to invoke more help.”
Stoker dropped back onto the bed. “That’s it? You’ve decided?”
“Let us just say that I’m...satisfiedwith your answer.”
What answer?Stoker remembered only growling and threatening and flailing?
“About wanting to remain here, with me,” Sabine said. “Satisfied,” she repeated, “puts it very mildly, I’d say.” She turned back to her mural. “We are on the same road, if not at the same place at the moment. Luckily, I am a cartographer of some merit, and I know how distance can be drawn to scale.”
He shook his head, looking at her through narrowed eyes. “I was serious, Sabine, about... about the potential of our intimacy.”
“I believe you are very serious. I shall be very serious too. We shall both be so very serious. In fact, I’ve already begun to think about the thing.”
“What. Thing?”
“The thing that I want. In exchange for the moment you stop.”
“Stop what?”
“For the moment you stop holding back.”
