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He shook his head. “If you have to ask, you wouldn’t understand.”

“Explain it to me then.”

He hesitated. Then, seizing her hand, he pressed it to his chest and lowered his voice. “Whenever I’m near you, my heart thunders. My mouth goes dry, my blood feels on fire, and all I want to do is carry you off to my bedchamber and make love to you.”

When her gaze warmed, he put as much coldness into his voice as he could muster, given that she was this close to him, making him want and need and yearn. “And although I know it’s only the result of my reckless desire for you, even that sort of emotion makes me uncomfortable. Such feelings lead a man to wish for too much, hope for too much … and then hurt too much when it all goes to hell.”

“What makes you assume it would all go to hell?” She lifted her other hand to caress his cheek, provoking such pleasure in him that he shuddered.

With a curse, he released her one hand to move the other away, telling himself not to be tempted to do something he’d regret. “Because it always does.” It always had for his parents, anyway. Horses and card games hadn’t been the only thing his father had wasted money on, after all.

“You don’t trust me with your heart,” she said, making him wish she didn’t read him quite so well.

“I don’t trust anyone with my heart,” he admitted. “It’s been crushed one too many times, first by my feckless father who made a hundred promises he never kept, before finally getting himself killed. Then by Natalie who … left me in the end, too.”

“That wasn’t her fault,” Eve said softly.

“Of course it wasn’t. But the result was the same.” He glanced away, unable to stand the pity in Eve’s eyes. “Sometimes I think I’d have been better off continuing to treat her like a pesky little sister. Then perhaps it wouldn’t have hurt quite so much to see her suffer.”

“Instead, you did the noble thing and tamped down your pain,” she said tenderly, “so she could have in the end what she’d always wanted—her beloved older brother around to give her solace and be there when she left this world.”

He swung his gaze back to her, unaccountably angry at those words. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking me noble, sweetheart.” Planting one hand on the wall, he leaned in close. “I am not the gentleman you assume. I may ache to be with you and kiss you and touch you and make love to you. But if I ever do, afterward I will also do the sensible thing and marry a woman who won’t make me ache ever again.”

She stared into his eyes, then grabbed her mistletoe slipper from his other hand and dangled it over his head. “Will you?” she whispered, then stretched up to kiss his mouth.

For a moment, he was too surprised to react. But how could he not respond when the lips he’d been longing for were pressed to his? It was too much to be borne. Besides, it was a chance to show her that he meant what he said.

You just want an excuse to satisfy your needs.

Yes, he did.

Ignoring his conscience, he caught her chin in his hand and opened his mouth over hers, practically daring her to kiss him intimately. And just like the saucy woman that she was, she rose to his dare.

So, he took his chance to devour her, unable to get enough of her. Her mouth was as sweet as fruit, as tempting as a nymph’s and twice as tasty. She dropped the slipper, only to wrap her arms about his neck as he gave her long, drugging kisses that fired his need higher and higher.

His hand drifted down from her chin to her throat and down farther still until it came to the fichu, which he drew out so he could unveil the tops of her breasts. Then he moved back just enough to stare at them.

They were perfect.

Even as she blushed furiously, he couldn’t resist the urge to trace a line along her bodice, that damned ill-fitting bodice that gaped open just enough to tempt him. He retraced the line, but this time with his finger beneath the edge, thrilling to the fact that she did nothing to stop him, that although she gasped, she also lifted her breast into his palm.

“God help me,” he whispered hoarsely as he fondled her breast through her gown, driving himself to madness. “You’re so soft, sweetheart, as soft as any man could want. I shouldn’t be doing this. You shouldn’t be letting me.”

“I like what you’re doing,” she breathed, covering his hand with hers to keep it there. “But if you’re so sure we don’t belong together, it shouldn’t take you too much effort to end it.”

The hint of challenge in her tone arrested him. Fortunately, it also jerked him right out of his haze of desire. His gaze shot to hers, and in her yearning eyes he read the truth. She meant to tempt him so thoroughly that he’d run madly into marriage with her without thought for the consequences.

And he couldn’t have that. Abruptly, he drew back mid-caress, fighting to control his rushing breaths. “You’re right, as usual,” he choked out. “Not much … effort at all.” Liar.

Disappointment filled her face. She didn’t—couldn’t—understand. He wanted her for his own. He needed her brightness to dispel the shadows in his life. And the sheer intensity of his wanting and needing her bloody well terrified him. In an unpredictable world, such desperate feelings could prove dangerous in the end. Some people did die of asthma, after all.

He refused to risk having his heart shattered again. Because if something happened to her after he’d made her his wife, he suspected he’d never recover.

It took every ounce of his will to leave her and head for the door. “I must see to James,” he said, retreating like the coward he was. Then he left the room.

But as he headed back to his study, he prayed he could hold fast to his resolve. Because if they had many more such sensual encounters, he would have her in his bed so quickly, they wouldn’t have time to think better of it.

CHAPTER 6