“And yet we are.”
She arched away, her features hard with a frustrating denial. “No.”
“Emma, I have apologized for not putting Anya before my revenge scheme, but I truly believed we would easily be able to find the girls once Sanderson was captured.” He struggled to maintain his patience. Why did she have to be so damnably stubborn? “What more would you have of me?”
She tilted her chin. “Your promise that you will let me make my own decisions even when you do not agree with them.”
“You mean I am to turn a blind eye when you wish to charge into danger?”
“It is my right.”
“It is madness.”
With a sudden surge, she wiggled out of his grasp and slid off the bed, grasping her satin robe and pulling it over her beautiful body before he could halt her. His lips twisted as he rose to his feet and pulled on his own clothing.
With her exotic surroundings and strange garb, she looked moons away from the prudish spinster who had entered his coffee shop in St. Petersburg. He wondered if she realized just how much she had transformed over the past weeks?
“You comprehend how impossible this is?” she was demanding, tying her hair in a braid with shaking hands.
His brows snapped together at her husky words. “Dammit, Emma, you seek to unman me.”
“Because I will not become a meek, biddable creature who is grateful to obey your every command?”
Biddable? He swallowed his instinctive laugh. He had never encountered a woman less biddable than Emma Linley-Kirov.
“Because you will not allow me to protect you.”
“I do not want your protection. I want—”
He stilled as she hastily bit off her words, a hint of panic in her eyes as if she had nearly revealed something she was determined to keep hidden from him.
“What do you want?”
She turned away, pacing toward the towering Oriental vase that was set in the corner of the room.
“It does not matter.”
With three long strides he was at her side, grasping her upper arm and turning her to meet his searching gaze.
“Tell me, moya dusha. What do you want of me?”
She shook her head, her eyes dark with an unreadable emotion.
“What you cannot offer.”
Dimitri refused to be bothered at the conviction in her voice. He would regain this woman’s fragile trust. Eventually, she would put the past behind them and look toward a future together.
He would accept no less.
“Do not be so certain.” He skimmed his hand up her arm, cupping the back of her neck in a possessive motion. “I have not traveled such a distance to return home without you.”
She shivered, the pulse at the base of her throat fluttering with an unmistakable reaction to his touch.
“The choice is not yours.”
He allowed a wicked smile to curve his lips. “Perhaps not, but there is nothing to curb me from convincing you that your place is at my side.”
She studied him, her delicate features troubled. “Why?”