His jaw turned to granite and his eyes blazed at her. “Why not?”
“Because...” She hunted for the words, and as she did her feelings bottled, then frothed and exploded out in a rush. “Because you’re so supremely confident, and I lose myself when I’m with you and I need to stay in charge or I’ll let people down. That’s the way it is. It’s like a mountain I’ve had to climb and I’m there now, I’m on top of it, but I can’t cope when you unravel me. You are my undoing and I can’t risk that.”
“Okay, okay, slowly. I need to know about all of this.” He moved in and cupped her face in his hands. “Explain what the mountain is.”
Shit. Why did I even say that? Her stomach knotted, her backbone dissolving as vulnerability disarmed her. “Forget I said that.”
He was silent while he considered her.
Adrift on a tide of unleashed emotions, desperation gripped her.
“We’ll come back to it,” he said, “because if it’s something that’s stopping us being together I want to know about it.”
“For crying out loud, Rex,” she blurted, finding her mast and strapping herself to it again, “you aren’t ever going to truly be ‘together’ with someone, not for any length of time. It’s not in your nature.”
“I disagree. I do want that, and it’s you I want to be with, and I want that to be for a very, very long time.”
Her stomach flipped. “Please don’t say that,” she whispered, “not if you don’t really mean it.”
“But I do mean it, and we were warming nicely, we were getting close. So why don’t you start by telling me what were you thinking back there, before Kelly arrived. And after.”
She turned her face away, wrapping in on herself.
“I need to know.”
She was about to deny him, and then his hand snaked around the back of her neck. She balked at his control, knowing what it could do to her.
Wriggling in his grasp, she denied him.
Then he stroked her chin with his thumb and her head instinctively dipped back, absorbing the comfort he offered her—a seductive tactic he used while he probed deeper. She felt as she did when he was sexually demanding, but here on the edge of the pavement she wanted to get into a taxi and he’d taken over. “Rex. Don’t do this to me, please.”
“I’m here, holding you. I want it all, Carmen, tell me.”
What she wanted to feel was denial, but it was hope that overwhelmed her. Hope is futile. She stared at him, hating him for what she felt. I love you, and I hate that.
The need to let him know how much she hurt because of him reared its head, and she let rip. “I wanted to say, yes, I think of being with you often, fool that I am.”
r /> His attention sharpened. “And then. You were upset. I saw how upset you were. I want to know why.”
“Because I was right back there, damn you. I was giving in, wanting what you offered.” Blood rushed in her ears. There wasn’t any switching it off, not now. “Then your gorgeous ex walks in and I was right back there with women waltzing in when we were so right together, so full on, and then you were with them and...oh, bloody hell, Rex, we couldn’t be together, anyway.” Her legs had turned to water. “Eventually I gave in to that situation but it wasn’t easy...and...oh, fuck it, you know how it is, it’s hard to reverse that.”
Rex’s expression broke, his frown lifting. “But we were meant to be, you just said it...we were so right. The rest is just hurdles. We can get past them, together. Tell me again...you just said it.”
She squirmed and shook her head. Hearing him repeat her words left her feeling silly, her dreams exposed and raw.
He laughed softly. “I’m not going to ask you why you won’t repeat it because you’ll give me a load of bullshit excuses...when we were meant to do this all along.”
Had he really just said that, and was it true? Reason deserted her. Then it was back with startling clarity, as if a curtain had dropped. She stared at him, and saw a man speaking honestly—a man who had forced her to speak honestly, too.
He nodded, and then he looked away at the roadside and signaled. “Here we go.”
A London black cab pulled alongside them. He opened the back door and helped her in. For a moment she thought he was going to close the door, to let her go home alone like she’d requested—demanded—minutes before, and she felt a desperate sense of loss.
He spoke to the cabby, then climbed in after her, and the relief she felt was instant and obvious. There was no denying it. It made her heart ache, painfully so, but there was elation, too. She reached out for him.
Under her hand his heart beat fast and hard, and she felt his will and his fierce desire, so strong and sure—his yin to her yang—and she melted. She lowered her head, looking at him from under her lashes, eager to feel the intensity of his sexual domination again.
“I asked for your trust earlier today. You give yourself to me so totally when we are intimate. I want that level of trust in every aspect of our lives. I know I have to earn it, and I have some making up to do.” He lifted her hand to his lips, and kissed it. “Will you give me a chance to do that?”