Madly (New York 2)

“You’ve not borked anything.”

Yet. She would, though—he could feel the energy coming off her, self-destructive, self-pitying, and a habit of caution told him to leave it. Avoid whatever conflict was in front of him.

But she would go back to Wisconsin sometime—tonight, tomorrow, the day after—and it made him unaccountably irritated to think it might end like this.

“Enough.” He laced his hand through Allie’s and hauled her to her feet. “Come with me.”

“What for?”

“Just come with me.”

He led her down the stairs to his bed. “Stay here a moment.” In the kitchen, he retrieved some items from the cabinet where he’d hidden them and returned to find her lying down, staring at the ceiling with her arms laced behind her head.

He dropped the bag in the middle of the bed, stepped out of his shoes, removed his cuff links and his shirt, and climbed atop the mattress beside her.

“You’re not going anywhere until we finish the list.” He glanced at her face. “Unless you want to. Obviously, I wouldn’t force you to. But this is my proposal. Number six and number ten.”

“We can’t do number ten.”

He crawled across the bed, planted his hands on either side of her face and looked into her eyes. “Can’t we?”

He wanted to make her see him. He wanted to force her to acknowledge it, if not aloud, then to acknowledge it between them, implicitly: the contract they’d made with each other and everything it meant. Everything she wanted to abandon.

“You’ve not done a single heedless thing since you arrived in New York,” he told her. “But if you walk out of here tonight and take your father home, that will be your heedless decision.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Stay.” He dumped the contents of the bags onto the bed and threw the empty plastic on the floor. “Be with me. Finish this list. Talk to me. Figure out what comes next for us.”

“Fine.”

Her eyes shone bright in the dim room, and she’d squared off her face, clenching her jaw. When he shifted to his side to take her face in his hand and kissed her, she let him, but she didn’t yield.

Beatrice had told him to help this woman. That it was his duty to help her.

He no longer wanted to help her. He wanted to force her to come to her senses, to trick her if he had to. He wanted to cage and imprison and keep her.

But he’d already done that to Rosemary, and it hadn’t made him happy.

He kissed her again, carefully, pushing away the anger and fear that had inspired his worst decisions, reminding himself why it was Allie who made him feel so much.

Allie, with her wild hair, her interesting clothes, her mad schemes.

Allie, with her big heart, her fascination with the world, her arms flung wide to take in everything she possibly could.

Allie, who was lost.

When he kissed her again, she let out a sigh, and he urged her onto her side to locate the tie that held her dress together. There was only one bow. When he pulled it out, the dress fell apart. Beneath, she wore a breeze of crinoline, which he pushed down into a ball at her feet.

He kissed her again, deeper, longer, until she twined her arms around his neck and arched her back to draw him closer. “Tell me you want to,” he said.

“I want to.”

“Number six.”

“Yes.”

“And number ten.”