Coward.
She looked away, her features tightening into an expression he’d never seen on her before. Anger? Hurt? His gut rolled. Had he done that to her?
“Skye?”
She shook her head, teeth biting into her lower lip, face in profile now.
“I have to leave,” she said finally, forcing something that looked like a smile to her face even when he could tell it wasn’t genuine. “I don’t belong here.”
His eyes bore into hers. “This again? My family loves you.”
“I don’t mean that,” she said after a heavy pause. “I mean, with you.”
He ignored the sensation in the region of his heart, as though a knife was being plunged into his chest. “I’m not asking you to marry me,” he said after a loaded pause. “Just to stay another week. We never agreed exactly when you’d leave.”
“After Christmas,” she supplied, contradicting him.
“New Years is technically—,”
“Stop.” She cut him off, the word a warning every bit as icy as the air that swirled around them. “Please.”
But her refusal only made him want to push harder, to find exactly why she was refusing to stay, and what he could do to change her mind. The weight of this was pressing down on him. True, he hadn’t planned to ask her to stay but he realized now, he’d never been ready to let her go after Christmas. It was just too soon.
“We can go away together,” he said after a moment. “Somewhere different and beautiful.”
Her throat shifted as she swallowed. “No.”
“Tell me what it would take for you to agree.”
Her eyes narrowed as she spun back to face him. “What are you offering?”
He lifted his shoulders, as his gaze dropped to the necklace. “Anything.”
Skye’s eyes drifted closed. “No, you’re not.”
Wasn’t he? Terrifyingly, in that moment, Matthieu felt like he’d offer his fortune for just one more week with her—no strings nor complicated promises, just another week of simple, satiating sex, and the companionship they’d been enjoying. Safe, non-threatening pleasure.
“What do you want?” He pushed, wondering just what his limit would be? He couldn’t let her go yet; he wasn’t ready.
Her chest moved with the sharp rise and fall of each of her breaths, and when she spoke, it was with a voice he could barely hear. “I want you to admit this is no longer pretend.” She moved closer, pressing her palm to his chest. “I want you to admit that you feel something for me: something real and true and—bigger than either of us could have imagined.”
She gnawed at her lip, eyes beseeching him, silence swirling around them and for the first time since making his offer, he sensed the danger and stilled.
“I want you to look inside your heart and ask yourself if maybe it isn’t beating, just a little bit, for me?”
Panic turned his gut to acid and his eyes ravaged her face as the meaning of her question took hold of him.
“No.” His response was instantaneous. He looked away from her, because to see the wounded expression on her face was more than he could bear. He didn’t want to hurt her, but wild horses wouldn’t drag him where she was trying to go. “I can’t.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
He ground his teeth together. “It’s the same thing.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Fine. I can’t,” he said decisively. “This isn’t about you, Skye. I’m just not wired that way.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s such a cop out.”