“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Being kissed by anyone else. And in front of my family. I just felt –,”
Hot. Turned on. Like she wanted to blot everyone else out and make love to him on the breakfast table.
“Weird,” she whispered softly, dropping her eyes forward.
“Ah.” He made his way around the bed, coming to stand in front of her, so she held her breath, waiting, hoping, ashamed of the contradiction between what her body was wishing for and what her mind knew she should prefer.
“And did it feel weird when you undressed for me last night?”
Heat bloomed in her cheeks. She groaned, not giving into the temptation to shake her head. Because it hadn’t felt weird at all. “I’d been drinking.”
“I know.” A gruff admission. “Which is why I put a stop to it.”
Her heart turned over in her chest. Not because he didn’t find her attractive? “I thought –,”
He moved closer, just by a fraction, but enough that if she made the same movement, they’d be touching. “What did you think?”
She swallowed. This was too much. She’d come in here preparing to draw some important lines in the sand and now she was losing herself to a whirlpool of physical need and impulses. No lines in the sand, as it turned out, just impulses she needed to tame.
“Did you think I wasn’t interested, Bronte?”
Her eyes flew wide. Was she that obvious?
“Because if so, you’re wrong.”
Her heart squeezed. This shouldn’t – couldn’t – be happening.
“But you work for me.”
Her spine flooded with ice. Her pulse trembled. She did work for him, he was right. And she loved her job – far too much to jeopardise it with some stupid, ill-conceived flirtation.
“I know.”
“And you’re in a vulnerable position right now, which is something I make a point of steering clear of.”
Her mind couldn’t keep up. “What, exactly?”
“Women with complicated emotional issues.”
“I’m complicated?”
“You’re…heartbroken.”
She frowned at the description. It was a word she might have applied to herse
lf, but somehow it felt wrong. She shook her head infinitesimally.
“I don’t do heartbreak.” He pressed a finger beneath her chin, lifting her face so that her eyes met his. “I don’t do heart.”
It didn’t make sense.
“Emotions.”
She blinked. “You don’t do emotions?”
He moved a whisker closer. She drew in a juddering breath. “Not in relationships, no.”