“No.”
“Mak …”
He held her steady, his hands on her arms, and removed himself from his seat, depositing her in his place. The tram swung and her heart leap into her throat.
“Would you at least try not to kill us both while you run away from my scary, scary kissing?” she asked, putting her hand on her chest, feeling her heart throb beneath her palm.
When he looked at her, his eyes were blank, his mask firmly in place. “Trust me, printzyessa, it’s in your best interest for me to stop things.”
“Really?” she asked, crossing her arms.
“Yes,” he bit out. “You want a kiss, Eva. You want hearts and rainbows and whatever it is you imagine love to be. You don’t want sweaty sex and lust. It’s not you.”
She swallowed, her throat dry, her stomach tight. She was suddenly very aware of her breasts in a way she couldn’t remember ever being before. “Is … is sweaty sex on offer?”
“No,” he said.
“Then why bring it up? It’s a tease. A cruel one.”
He chuckled, dark and humorless. “How do you think I feel?”
“It’s impossible to tell. But you don’t seem to be that bothered by it either way.”
“My emotions might be numb, but I can assure you, my body is not.”
“You seem to assume that just because I am emotional my physical desire can’t be separate. It can be. It is.”
“And you desire me?” he asked, his face looking leaner, harder for a moment. More predatory.
The answer wasn’t easy, whether she answered honestly or not. She decided to go with honesty, because she really didn’t see the point in lying. Not when she’d been the one doing the kissing a moment earlier. “Yes.”
He swallowed visibly, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He let out a short breath, his top lip curving. “Isn’t that interesting.”
“I’m not sure if I’m flattered by that.”
“You probably shouldn’t be.”
“Too late. I am.” She nodded. “Yes, I’ve decided that I am.”
Mak looked down at Eva, his heart beating so hard he thought it would burst out of his chest. He wondered why he was still being tested like this. Hadn’t he passed already? Hadn’t he stayed faithful to his wife every moment of their marriage? Hadn’t he turned away from every temptation placed in front of him?
And now he was free. His marriage was dissolved by death and he was free to be with a woman if he chose to be.
But he wanted Eva. And she wanted him. And he couldn’t touch her. No matter how much he ached for her. It was torture, a new pain, fresh after so many years of blank nothingness in his chest.
But the futility of it … it was enough to make him want to rage at whoever controlled things. At least the things in his life.
“It doesn’t matter either way.” The words stuck in his throat, but he forced them out. For his own benefit as much as hers. “Nothing can happen between us. You’re under my care, you’re stuck here with me … it would be unethical.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do,” he said. “Anyway, you’re bored. You’re stuck here with me. Wouldn’t you feel the same about any man you were here with?”
She jerked back as though he’d slapped her. “No. But now that I know that’s what you think of me, I suppose it’s a good thing we aren’t going to do … anything.”
“Enjoy the view. That’s what we’re up here for.”
She looked out the window for a moment before looking back at him. “I don’t like heights.”
“Why didn’t you say something before we came up here then?”
“Because I appreciated the offer. And I thought I would try it. I’m all about having new experiences. Especially since I have to cram as many as possible into the next six months.”
“It isn’t as though your life is ending after you get married,” he said.
“It feels like it.” She blinked rapidly. “Do you know, and I’m sure this is slightly too much information, but here you are, that my underwear is chosen for me? It’s true. I mean, yes, I do go shopping in boutiques occasionally, but not often enough to supply my entire wardrobe. For the most part, it’s delivered. A whole new set of clothes every season, complete with undergarments. I’m not consulted, they have a stylist handle it all for me. He works off my color wheel, whatever that is. Whatever it means practically, I’m not allowed to wear brown near my face, that much I know.”
She leaned forward and tucked a lock of dark hair behind her ear. He had to fight himself, fight every urge in his body, to keep from going to her, to keep from sliding his fingers through the silken strands.
“Anyway, I don’t have any freedom now,” she said. “I don’t imagine it will change when I get married. It’ll just be new people ordering my clothes. That’s … the thought of that makes me feel sick.”
Mak felt his throat tighten, his chest aching, echoing what Eva had just said. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, Eva, but it doesn’t matter what underwear you’re wearing.”
Her dark eyes widened. “Oh, really?”
“No. Because no matter what you wear, you are Evangelina Drakos. There is no one, man, woman or king, who can change that.”
She stood, her hands locked in front of her. “But who is that? If I don’t know … I can’t expect anyone else to care. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe no one has ever really valued me because they didn’t know who I was. How can you love someone you don’t know?”
Propriety be damned, control too, if only for a moment. He moved to her and cupped her cheek, his eyes locked on hers. “Anyone who hasn’t treated you with the care you deserve is a fool, and the problem lies within them. Never with you. Never. You are strong, strong enough to fight against a system you were born into rather than simply accept it. You are beautiful and intelligent, and yes, you’ve made some mistakes. But haven’t we all?”
Her dark eyes glittered. “Do you really see all of that, Mak?”
He moved his thumb along the line of her high cheekbone. “Only a blind man could miss it.”
She put her hand over his, her skin soft. He’d been touched more times in the past few days than he could remember being touched in the past ten years. He hadn’t realized how much it mattered. How much a touch could soothe, how much warmth it could bring.
“I wish … I wish things were different,” she said, her voice a whisper.
In that moment, she was giving him honesty. He could give nothing less. “So do I.”
Telling Eva about Marina hadn’t been a part of the plan. Of course, a ride in the cable car hadn’t been a part of the plan either. Just as confronting her with the fire that was crackling between them hadn’t been part of the plan.
Yet it had all happened.
He was good undercover. The man no one questioned. The man who belonged at every event. And he felt naked. Exposed. And he was trapped in the damn tram until they made their way back down the mountain.
Bitterness tore at the edges of those exposed parts of him. Bitterness, not over the past, but the present. That he wanted Eva so badly, with a hunger that made him ache to his bones, and that he couldn’t have her, seemed one too many things to ask. He was only a man, and after trying so hard for so long to be more, he was becoming more and more aware of the fact that he was not.
He was human, even if sometimes he felt more like stone.
“I expect you have … calls to make or something when we get back,” she said, staying to her side of the car.
“I expect,” he said, not bothering to disguise the edge in his voice.
“Mak …”
He let out a breath. “Traditionally, I’m not the one who answers questions. I ask them. My clients don’t need to know me. I need to know them.”
“And according to you, you can know someone from a file. Do you still think that’s true?”
Spoiled. Scandalous. Shallow. He looked at Eva as the descriptions he’d read of her flooded his brain. “No.” She was none of those things. Well, she was a fit of two of them, but it only added to her charm.
“Then maybe your methods need shaking up. Anyway, I thought we were through pretending I was only a client?”
He looked at her dark, luminous eyes, the dull flush of rose staining her autumn-gold skin. “Then ask away.”
“Would you do it again? Would you marry her again if you could go back and do it all over?”
The question that plagued him. Not because the answer unsettled him, but because the possibility was a joke. It wasn’t possible. There was no change to undo a rash decision. No way to stop and turn onto a different road. No way to swerve out of the way of the oncoming car. To avoid one man’s brief loss of control.
No way to atone for his own.
“No,” he said, the word biting into his throat.
“No?”
“If I could go back, if I had a way of knowing what would happen, I never would have married her. I would never have taken that chance with her life.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
He knew that. But sometimes the weight of the past decade was so crushing he felt as though he would give anything to go back and undo it.