“I haven’t forgotten.”
“And in my dreams … in my mind … I have done so much more. Tell me, where is the honor in that?”
“Thoughts and actions aren’t the same,” she said, her voice trembling, and it had nothing to do with the cold. He was admitting to the thing she’d hoped was true. Admitting to wanting her. As she wanted him.
“Actions begin in our thoughts, Eva.”
“So not even your mind belongs to you? Even that you’ve given over to honor?”
He began to advance on her, his movements sleek and smooth. The movements of a predator. He came near to her, then stopped, turning and pacing in front of her. The tiger in a cage.
Her throat dried.
“I have tried,” he said. “But I have not succeeded.” Eva wanted to move to him. To touch him. To close the distance between them, a distance that wasn’t just physical. She wanted to wrap her arms around him, to hold him, wanted to so badly her entire being ached with it. She took a step to him.
“Don’t,” he ground out. “Not unless you want to find out just what sort of thing a man desires.”
She paused, her expression unreadable in the dim light.
Mak knew he should stop talking. That he should never have come out here in the first place. Eva was in no danger and he had never truly believed that she was. But when he’d heard her door open he’d been compelled to go to her. To see her. To take another chance. To test his honor.
He knew deep down he was hoping it would fail. Hoping his control would come to nothing.
“I have thought of you,” he said, speaking what he knew he should not. In the hopes of seeing desire in her eyes. In the hopes of knowing she wanted him as he wanted her. “Of touching you. Tasting you. I have thought of you in ways I have thought of no other woman. I was a boy when I married, and I knew lust, knew what it was to want in a very basic way. I did not know what it was to need more than simple satisfaction. To want the taste of a woman on my lips. To want to feel her desire coating my fingers. Do you know how much I want that?” The words came from deep in him, from a place he had denied all of his life. Finally, free rein given to the needs he had so long suppressed.
Eva did not back away. She did not flinch. She simply looked at him, her eyes fixed on his, her lips parted. She did not look frightened. She looked eager. Damn her.
“I would take you,” he said. “I would make you mine.”
Her breasts rose and fell on a sharp breath. “Take me, then.”
Her words stabbed him, a pang of lust assaulting him, breaking at the bonds of his control, stretching them to their limit.
“I cannot,” he said. And he was the one to retreat. To step back.
“Why? Will you be a servant all of your life? Held down by your desire to do what you think is right? What has it ever given back to you, Mak?”
“We are all slaves,” he said. “Whether it’s to our desires or to a code of honor, we all serve a master, Eva. And a man cannot serve two. I can’t serve myself and do what is right.”
“Is it so wrong to want me?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, the word bitter to speak. “I have promised to protect you. I gave my word.”
“You would show greater loyalty to my father than to me? You won’t give any consideration to what I want?”
He shook his head. “I cannot, Eva.”
She took a step to him, put her hand on his chest. He caught her wrist and pulled it away, holding her. “Don’t,” he bit out. “Do not tempt me. No more.”
She pulled her hand away. “Good night, Mak.”
Regret, as bitter as grief, rolled over him like a wave. “Good night, Eva.”
He turned and walked away, out of her room, closing the door behind him. He would go down to the weight room and he would exhaust himself. It was the only option he could live with.
He started to walk down the hall and then paused, closing his eyes against the sudden wave of rage that assaulted him, his hands tightening into fists. God help him but he didn’t have the strength to fight anymore.
More than that, he wasn’t sure he had the desire to fight any longer.
With any other woman, any other desire, it might have been possible. He had proven it was possible. But Eva was unlike anyone he had ever met, and what she made him feel far surpassed his previous understanding of sexual need.