My skin went hot.
He looked away first.
Again.
Always that control.
Always that maddening, careful retreat that somehow felt more intimate than if he had touched me without thinking.
“And your father,” he continued, voice rougher now, “respects me right now.”
“I know.”
“I’d like him to keep doing that.”
“That matters?”
“It matters if I want to keep breathing.”
A weak laugh slipped out of me.
He didn’t smile.
“I’m not going to be Troy,” he said.
I frowned. “What?”
“You’re not Helen, and I’m not starting a war because I’m too stupid to know the difference between love and lust.”
The word love hit like a stone dropped into deep water.
I felt the ripples everywhere.
“I didn’t say love.”
“No,” he said. “You didn’t.”
“But you did.”
His jaw flexed.
I should have felt victorious.
Instead, I felt sad.
He looked down at me, and whatever lived in his eyes was too old for me, too hard, too controlled.
“As beautiful as you are,” he said quietly, “I’m not dying for lust, baby doll.”
Baby doll.
The words should have sounded cheap.
They didn’t.
They sounded like something he regretted the second they left his mouth.
“My job is to keep you safe,” he added.
