Isabel shook her head. He wasn’t wrong. She must return to the main conversational thread. If not tended properly, she had a feeling it would unravel in her hand before she understood the substance of it.
“It’s like you’re—” Understanding broke upon her like sudden dawn. “It’s like you’re addicted.”
Slowly, he uncrossed his legs and sat forward, elbows on his knees, his focus square on her. The very portrait of a wolf ready to spring into action. She swallowed. This hadn’t been her best idea.
Still, she would see it through. “You’re addicted to privation.”
His brow knitted for an instant and released. Had she read confusion there? One second ticked by, then another, the room shrouded in a stillness that couldn’t hold indefinitely.
“I’m not sure,” he began, the words rough and low in his throat, “how you could be so right and yet so wrong at the same time.”
“Pardon?”
“You are correct in one regard. I am addicted.” He shifted back in his chair, which moaned its displeasure, and placed his hands behind his head as if taking a stretch. She wasn’t foolish enough to think he was relaxing.
“But I am most definitely not addicted to privation.” He spoke his shocking words casually. They were anything but. “Do you not suspect the true source of my addiction?”
“Should I?” Oh, that she could control the quiver in her voice.
“I’ve observed you to be a logical woman.”
“But what you’re saying makes no logical sense,” she countered. “A fact cannot be wrong and right at the same time.”
He smiled across the ten feet that separated them. The smile of a wolf fixed on his prey, primed for the chase. A shiver ran through her. “Can it not? Just as a coin has two sides, so, too, is my addiction privation’s opposite. You’ve simply been viewing it from the wrong angle.”
Breath held, she waited.
“It’s pleasure I’m addicted to.”
Chapter 15
Isabel’s body went hot.
Here she stood, in the middle of this room, exposed, the sole focus of this man who was now looking at her like he could devour her whole.
Who needed an external heat source? Her internal one was up to the task.
“You should turn and run,” he said. “Wouldn’t that be the logical course?”
Yes, she should say yes, but the word stuck in her throat and her feet remained rooted to the floor.
“You see, Isabel, a shift occurs inside me when my control is broken and my addiction unleashed.” He unfurled his long, lean body and rose. “I do nothing by half measures.” He took a step forward, more of a prowl. Now nine feet separated them. “My appetite for privation is equal only to my appetite for pleasure.” Another step. Eight feet. “A wickedness courses through my veins.”
“Oh,” Isabel breathed.
Why, oh, why wouldn’t her legs move? As quick as she thought it, she knew the answer.
Because they didn’t want to.
She trembled and quaked, oh, yes, but not from fear.
“I want”—seven . . . six—“and I want”—five . . . four—“and I want.”
Two more steps, and he stopped a foot shy of her. He tucked his thumb beneath her chin and lifted. Her eyes had no choice but to meet his.
“That wanting had been under control until . . .” he trailed.
“Until?”
A dark smile lit within his eyes, curled about his mouth. “Until you.”
“Are you trying to frighten me away?” It was possible.
“Not anymore.”
His hand formed a light caress. She swayed forward, into his touch. Her eyes opened—when had they closed?—to find his steady upon her.
“Is that all you do?” she asked. For some reason, she wanted to push him.
He lifted an inquisitive eyebrow.
“Think of your own wants?” She threw the question at him like a challenge.
The air went electric. His eyes narrowed. She’d intrigued him. Head canted subtly to the side, he took her measure, deciding if she meant what she’d said.
Her every last cell pulsed with sincerity.
“The pleasure I give is equal to the pleasure I receive, I can assure you.” He closed the remaining distance between them. The banked heat of his body reached out to her. “Shall I demonstrate?” he asked on a low rumble. “Would you die if I don’t?”
He was tossing her words back at her. “I think I would.”
Now, if only he would demonstrate.
He cupped the nape of her neck, his head angling as he drew into her. She closed her eyes in anticipation of the press of his mouth against hers. Instead, his lips touched her ear, raising goose bumps along her skin, tightening her nipples into hard buds.
“For example,” came his hot whisper, “I take great pleasure from kissing this sensitive bit of skin.” His lips touched her neck, and she gasped. She felt the scratchy brush of his smile. “I believe your pleasure to be commensurate with mine. Correct me if I’m wrong.”
She grabbed his shoulders for support, tense muscles bunched beneath her fingers, and angled her head to allow him more access as he trailed kisses down its length.
She wouldn’t be correcting him anytime soon.
“But it’s not enough to touch you. I would taste you, too.” His tongue flickered along her collarbone up her neck to her ear.
And she thought she would die if he didn’t kiss her?
“Soon, I’ll show you what more I take pleasure in tasting.”
A shiver rippled down her spine, down to the core of her sex. She pressed into him, her body urgent with need, unable to take much more of his slow seduction. He took her cue and reached around to undo the buttons of her dress and the laces of her short corset in a few efficient motions, the garments falling to a hushed puddle at her feet.
He angled back to take in her breasts. “Magnificent,” he said, a rough utterance. Long, masculine fingers caught the delicate gold chain hanging from her neck, lifting it to reveal Mama’s hamsa pendant. Isabel met a question in his eyes, but her hand wrapped around his and he let it drop.