His lips compressed into a straight line.
“You wanted to then, and you want to now.
You’re just too stubborn to admit it.” He paced. “Ignoring me won’t help. Putting distance between us won’t help. The hunger will always be with you. Forever.”
He crouched in front of her and leaned forward, his hands planted on the arms of her chair. He leaned in close, his face inches from hers, his full, masculine lips within kissing distance. Her skin prickled from his nearness, the heat of his body stoking her desire.
“Having a soul-mate can bring you the greatest happiness in the universe—or the greatest misery.” His intense, turquoise eyes burned through her. “You decide which.”
He pushed himself to his feet, then strode from the room. An ache started deep in her stomach and echoed through her entire body at the loss of his closeness.
She slumped deeper into the chair and buried her face in a cushion, unable to fight back her tears. She simply couldn’t accept being tied to a man for the rest of her life. No matter how miserable it made her to be away from him, the reality of depending on a man would bring her greater misery.
For the next few days, Eva continued to keep to herself. She felt a little guilty that Larson prepared and served all her meals and cleaned up after them, but then, she hadn’t asked to be kidnapped. There was little to do but read, and she found herself getting caught up in the passionate romances, despite herself.
She glanced up from her book when Larson entered the room.
“Eva, how long are you going to ignore me?”
She closed her book and laid it on the table beside the bed.
“No matter how long you keep me here, I will never accept this bond you insist we share.”
His mouth flattened as he stared at her intently. She fought the impulse to squirm under his scrutiny. He pulled up a chair and sat across from her.
“Eva, I’ve been asked to do a favor for a fellow crewmate.”
Silence hung between them. She gazed at him quizzically. Why was he telling her this?
“This favor… It involves making love with another woman.”
The words sliced through her. Old wounds puckered open. Memories of her adulterous ex-husband, Roger, strolling in the front door with another woman’s perfume wafting around him, of finding lipstick marks on his shirt collar and the occasional stray earring embedded in the car seat.
Yet the blistering ache in her heart at the thought that Larson might leave her for another woman far outweighed any pain she’d ever experienced at Roger’s indiscretions.
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked.
“So you can tell me not to do it.”
He was giving her a choice.
Images of Larson taking another woman into his arms, of him kissing her, then thrusting into her body, stabbed through Eva like a jagged blade.
All she had to do was say one word. Don’t.
Her insides coiled. She wanted to scream it out loud at the top of her lungs…but she couldn’t.
“I have no right to stop you.”
His eyes flashed.
“You have every right. You’re my tanash’ae.”
Her hands twisted together, and she turned away from him.
“This is no game, Eva.” His hard-edged words sliced through her. “I will do this unless you say not to.”
A twinge of despair crackled through her at the thought of him in another woman’s arms, but she couldn’t exercise a control she didn’t believe in.