As it was, Severin rarely came inside, and hadn’t spoken to her, even though they were the only ones in the house.
He didn’t look up as she entered, but the shift of the muscles in his neck made it obvious he knew she was there.
“I brought your dinner,” she said, putting the plate on an unused workbench. She gathered the dirty dishes from lunch and piled them to take back to the house with her. “If you want, we could watch a movie or something tonight?”
“No.” He didn’t turn to look at her, but it was the first word she’d gotten out of him in days.
She smiled cheerily at his back. “Well, I’m going to start watching something after I clean the kitchen, so if you change your mind you know where to find me.” She moved closer and he whipped his head around to watch her, his gaze wary.
“I said no.” He frowned. “I have work to do.”
“Okay.” She moved closer yet, and he turned to face her.
“What do you want?”
She shrugged, wishing she could run her fingers over his beard. His eyes were bright and half-mad in the flickering light from the forge. With all of the electric lights off and him stripped naked to the waist, his skin sheened with sweat, he looked like Vulcan from the leather-bound illuminated book of Roman mythology she was reading in the library. It was easy to imagine Severin depicted in the style of the book’s illustrations, burnished golds and dark shadows lit by the crimson and orange of the forge’s flames.
Although she’d tried to stay and watch him several times, he’d kept rushing her out. This time he only watched her. Sexual tension thrummed through the air like an electric charge, making her blood feel like it was buzzing through her veins. Everything about the man said ‘crawl to me and lick my boots.’
“So what are you working on today?”
He glowered at her. Not ready to talk, apparently.
“It’s nice and warm in here. I hadn’t realized how cold it had gotten.” She lingered, running her fingers over his tools but not going so far as to pick anything up. Even this, she could tell, was difficult for him to accept.
“Why do you keep trying, Miss Korsgaard? Why don’t you just go home?”
She frowned. “I let go of my apartment, remember? If I leave, I’m on the street.” Things had seemed so pleasant and relaxed before Sutton left that she hadn’t worried about becoming homeless at the time.
“Call Rodrigo and ask him to take you in for a while.”
What the fuck?
“Mister Leduc, I don’t even know Rodrigo. Why would I want to live with him? Why would I even have his phone number?”
“Like you didn’t fuck him after I left?”
“What? No!” She stalked right up to him, her fists balled at her sides. The man was insufferab
le.
“Why not? You seemed to like each other well enough.”
She forced her hands to relax. He didn’t respond well to battles of will. Instead, she ducked her head and pushed her hair back from her shoulder. She didn’t want to fight with him anyway.
This close, she could feel the heat coming from his heavily muscled torso.
“Your pleasure was the whole point. That was about you, not about him and I.”
“No, that was about you and the fact that he wants you.”
She rolled her eyes. “No, he doesn’t – but even if he did, so what? He can’t just take me. I’m a human being with free will, Mister Leduc. He can’t just throw me over his shoulder and walk off with me.”
“Why not? I would.”
The dangerous look in his eyes made her want to lick him.
“So why haven’t you then?” she asked, finding it impossible to stop the words from coming out. “Besides, if you think Rodrigo would jeopardize your long-standing friendship over a woman he’d just met, that you’d marked as yours, you don’t have a very high opinion of the man.”