"And if the feeling's below my waist—"
"By segueing into a discussion about your debauched—"
"Then I'm perfectly comfortable with it."
"And perverse male needs—"
"Perverse male needs?" he echoed, suppressed laughter lacing his words.
Jillian bit her lip. She always ended up saying too much around him, because he had the bad habit of talking over her, and she lost her head time and again.
"The issue at hand is feelings—as in emotions," she reminded stiffly.
"And you think they're mutually exclusive?" Grimm prodded.
Had she said that? she wondered. By the saints, the man turned her brain into mush. "What are you talking about?"
"Feelings and feelings, Jillian. Do you think they're mutually exclusive?"
Jillian pondered his question a few moments. "I haven't had a lot of experience in that area, but I would guess they are more often for a man than a woman," she replied at length.
"Not all men, Jillian." He paused, then added smoothly, "Exactly how much experience have you had?"
"What was my point?" she asked irritably, refusing to acknowledge his question.
He laughed. By the saints, he laughed! It was a genuine uninhibited laugh—deeply resonant, rich, and warm. She shuddered, because the flash of white teeth in his shadowed face made him so handsome she wanted to cry at the unfairness of his miserly dispensation of such beauty.
"I was hoping you'd tell me that anytime now, Jillian."
"Roderick, conversations with you never go where I think they're going."
"At least you're never bored. That must count for something."
Jillian blew out a frustrated breath. That was true. She was elated, exhilarated, sensually awakened—but never, never bored.
"So are they mutually exclusive for you?" she dared.
"What?" he asked blandly.
"Feelings and feelings."
Grimm tugged restlessly at his dark hair. "I suppose I haven't met the woman who could make me feel while I was feeling her."
I could, I know I could! she almost shouted. "But you have those other kind of feelings quite frequently, don't you?" she snipped.
"As often as I can."
"There you go with your hair, again. What is it with you and your hair?" When he didn't reply she said childishly, "I hate you, Roderick." She could have kicked herself the moment she said it. She prided herself on being an intelligent woman, yet around Grimm she regressed into a petty child. She was going to have to dredge up something more effective than the same puerile response if she intended to spar with him.
"No you doona, lass." He uttered a harsh curse and stepped forward, doffing the shadows impatiently. "That's the third time you've said that to me, and I'm getting bloody sick of hearing it."
Jillian held her breath as he moved closer, staring down at her with a strained expression. "You wish you could hate me, Jillian St. Clair, and Christ knows you should hate me, but you just can't quite bring yourself to hate me all that much, can you? I know, because I've looked in your eyes, Jillian, and where a great big nothing should be if you hated me, there's a fiery thing with curious eyes."
He turned in a swirl of shadows and descended from the roof, moving with lupine grace. At the bottom of the steps, he paused in a puddle of moonlight and tilted his head back. The pale moon cast his bitter expression into stark relief. "Doona ever say those words to me again, Jillian. I mean it—fair warning. Not ever."
Cobblestones crunched beneath his boots as he disappeared into the gardens, comforting her that he was, indeed, of this world.
She pondered his words for a long time after he'd gone, and she was left alone with the bruised sky on the parapet. Three times he'd called her by name—not brat or lass, but Jillian. And although his final words had been delivered in a cool monotone, she had seen—unless the moon was playing tricks with her vision—a hint of anguish in his eyes.
The longer she considered it, the more convinced she became. Logic insisted that love and hate could masquerade behind the same facade. It became an issue of simply peeling back that mask to peer beneath it and determine which emotion truly drove the man in the shadow. A glimmer of understanding pierced the gloom that surrounded her.
Go with your heart, her mother had counseled her hundreds of times. The heart speaks clearly even when the mind insists otherwise.
"Mama, I miss you," Jillian whispered as the last stain of purple twilight melted into a raven horizon. But despite the distance, Elizabeth St. Clair's strength was inside her, in her blood. She was a Sacheron and a St. Clair—a formidable combination.