Fitz had made her feel wicked and wanton, and all woman. And suddenly Elle wanted to experience that again. If only once more. She tried telling herself it was a fantasy that would never happen, but instead she opened her mouth again. Breathy and seductive and nothing like her usual self.
‘I do. So what are we going to do about it?’
Chapter Eight
HE SHOULD STOP THIS.
He had to stop this.
He wanted to pull away but he couldn’t, he was rooted to the very spot. Her husky, seductive tone scraped inside him, through him, along his very sex.
It was why he’d closed the gap between them in a move that was infinitely more dangerous than he’d thought. He was drawn to her like a planet to the sun, just as he’d been that night. But it was an illusion. He’d been plagued by ghosts that night, the anniversary of his mother’s death, and he’d been looking for something, anything to fill that void and help him stuff back the pain. If it hadn’t been Elle, it would have been someone else. The connection they felt wasn’t real.
And yet, however many times he told himself that, Elle was all too real.
Which had been part of the magic of that night.
‘You were going to leave me your phone number the next morning,’ she breathed, playing it like it was her trump card. Which, he supposed, it was. ‘I know you wrote it on the hotel notepad before throwing it in the bin.’
He couldn’t answer. There was no response that wouldn’t confirm everything she already thought. That one night hadn’t been enough.
‘It was a mistake. That night was all we could have.’
‘So tell me to stop,’ she whispered. ‘And I’ll walk out of here and we won’t ever speak of it again, if that’s what you want.’
He couldn’t even bring himself to open his mouth. The way she was staring at him now, so intently, was infinitely better than the way she’d been watching him a few moments earlier. With such an expression of hurt clouding her lovely features that he felt like a complete coward. He hadn’t felt that way since Janine’s father had ordered him to get out of their house and never return—and he’d been only too happy to oblige.
That was why he didn’t get involved. He let people down, he betrayed them. He hurt people. One look back on his past proved it.
He didn’t need Elle as further evidence.
And then he’d given himself away and she’d realised it was all a show, she’d seen exactly how rattled he was.
He’d never been rattled before Elle had come along.
The relief on her face had fired everything back up inside him. Seeing how much it mattered to her, that their one-night stand hadn’t been meaningless.
But that didn’t mean it was meaningful either, and that was the problem. He couldn’t offer her a future. Even if he wanted to, he lacked the ability; it wasn’t the kind of man he could ever be.
‘What do you want from me, Elle?’ he rasped.
He didn’t know whether he was challenging her because if she couldn’t say the words then it gave them an out, or because he so urgently wanted to hear them from her lips.
She swallowed.
‘One more night.’
One more night. Not a relationship. Not a future. It seemed like such a reasonable demand, and one his whole being ached to consent to.
He’d never wanted any woman the way he’d wanted her from the moment he’d seen that damned thumb-lock. He’d never felt so out of control. His entire career had been built on adhering to rigid rules, whether military or his own. Now he couldn’t seem to find a valid reason for either.
But he had to. He had to end this now.
He didn’t move.
A slow smile toyed with the corners of her mouth, a game-changer smile, and he knew he’d given too much away. With a deep breath she crossed the room and locked the door, ironically one of the few things in this place still to work. Then, swinging back to face him, she advanced, hesitantly at first.
And then she was standing in front of him, her breathing as ragged and shallow as his felt. They stood, motionless, watching each other for the longest time. Finally, she lifted her hand and placed it on his chest, over his heart. He felt a droplet of emotion swelling inside, and it plinked onto the frozen glacier of his heart. But he knew only too well that the icy block was so big, so compact it would take a river of warm water and more years than he had on this earth to melt it.