“Why do you want to stay? You were desperate to get away last night.”
She flushed. “You know why I ran away.”
He sighed and turned, but not before she caught a flash of desolation in his face. No, he wasn’t nearly the furious monolith he wanted her to believe. A fragile tendril of hope unfurled toward the light and stopped her retreating.
“I know I pushed so far that you were desperate to escape.”
Guilt weighted her belly. Why, oh, why, had she been such a henwit? “I wasn’t running from you.”
He cast her a disbelieving glance. “Looked that way.”
“What happened… frightened me. I was running from myself.”
She waited for some hint of understanding. Instead he strode across to the window and rattled the curtains wide to reveal the starlit cliffs. “It makes no difference.”
“Yes, it does.”
“Sidonie, listen to me.” He was back to sounding tired and sad and dauntingly immovable. “Go to bed. In the morning, take my carriage and go wherever you will. Hades, for all I care. I don’t know what you hope to achieve by this confrontation, but whatever we shared is over.”
Right now she was glad he didn’t look at her. She suspected her face betrayed her despair. The question she forced through her tight throat emerged husky and uneven. “How can it be over when it hasn’t started?”
Jonas stared out at the cold world and wondered just what hell he’d wandered into. How strange that tonight all was calm beauty outside when his inner landscape was a blasted wilderness. He should have kept riding and never come back.
“What do you want, bella?” he asked with an idleness he didn’t feel. “Blood?”
He heard her step nearer. Her hand curled around his arm. She rarely touched him—unless he tricked her into it. Now when it could lead nowhere, confound her, she lost her shyness.
“I want… honesty.”
He fought the urge to shake her off. Even through his coat sleeve, her touch burned. He yearned to sink into the numbness that had possessed him before her advent into his existence. What he wanted didn’t matter. Long ago he’d learned that lesson. He resisted the impulse to touch his scars.
“Why?” he asked despairingly, his hand clenching in the gold velvet curtains.
“Jonas, talk to me. Yesterday you wanted me. Is that no longer true?”
She did want blood, it seemed. Reluctantly he turned to her. “I’m sending you away for your own good.”
“Does that mean you still want me?”
What to say? He could lie but he had a nasty feeling she’d never believe him. “I don’t want to want you.”
She stepped so close that her haunting fragrance teased his senses. Her face was pale and intense. “I don’t want to want you either.”
This time Jonas managed to shake off her hand and step away, telling himself he controlled this encounter. When he knew he was at her mercy.
How ruthless a sweet woman could be.
She still wore his greatcoat. It lent her appearance an incongruously stately air. Her hair was rumpled and tendrils curled around her beautiful face. The sight was powerfully sexual, as though she started to undress for a lover.
He stifled a groan. Exactly what he needed to think about when he tried so desperately to be noble. All his animal instincts shrieked that Sidonie was here; for once she didn’t appear unwilling, and the carpet was soft enough for what he had in mind. “I’ll destroy you,” he said bleakly.
“You might prove my salvation.”
His lips twisted in an unamused smile. “I’m nobody’s salvation, least of all yours.” He knew it was unwise to prolong this encounter, but he couldn’t let it go. “Last night you were convinced I was the devil incarnate. What’s provoked this self-sacrifice?”
“It’s not self-sacrifice.” The look she shot him contrasted with the innocence of her pink cheeks. “If you touch me, I promise not to run.”
Dear God…