But I think you do.” He moved his fingertips to the edge of her mouth, then back down the side of her neck, coming to rest on her pulse. “This feels just as I remember it. I make your blood run faster. This makes me wonder if I still make you wet.”
She gasped, and he waited for a slap across the face that didn’t come.
“I’m frightened,” she said, her voice breathy.
“I don’t believe that. A woman who would dare set foot in London, into a place where you had to know I would be, so soon after her father’s death... Well, I don’t believe she’s afraid of anything. No. I do not believe this is fear, Charlotte.”
“What you believe or don’t believe doesn’t automatically become truth.”
He chuckled. “See, that simply isn’t true. I’m richer than your father ever was. People do my bidding, not because they fear me but because of what I can do for them. What I wish often becomes truth easily enough.”
Five years. Five years since he had touched a woman. Longer since he’d had sex with one. There had been no one else from the moment he’d met her. And he’d held back out of deference to her innocence.
Now it had been five years since he had touched her.
“I can make you want me,” he said.
And he hated that, for the first time in years, he doubted himself. Because as certain as he was of a great many things, he could not be certain that she would want a scarred, blind man in her bed.
“What exactly are you proposing?” she asked, her words cool.
“I’ll make it very clear. I don’t care what you’ve been doing for the past five years. I don’t care that you married Stefan. I don’t care what you do tomorrow, for that matter. I care about tonight. Tonight, I want to make sure we finish what is between us. Tonight. I want you in my bed.”
He jerked back when trembling fingers touched his lower lip. The shock of it immobilized him. It had been so long since he had been touched. So he stood, absolutely still as she traced his lower lip, his upper lip, mimicking what he had just done for her. She traced his jaw, and then moved her fingers featherlight down the side of his neck, where they came to rest on his pulse.
“Unless you’re afraid of me,” she said, “then it appears I still have the same effect on you that I once did.”
He held her chin, keeping her still. “That may be. But one thing has changed. I do not love you, Charlotte. Quite the opposite. If I take you to my bed, you will be giving yourself to a man who hates you. Though, I wonder if that matters? Because it certainly doesn’t matter to me. I find that I want you regardless.”
“One night?” And this time, a slight tremble worked its way into her words.
“Just one,” he responded.
She let out a long, slow breath that echoed in the corridor around them. “Okay. One night.”
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