“I think I should go.”
“And what if I said your place tonight is here? In my bed?”
She felt light-headed, dizzy. It was anticipation, fear and, yes, even a certain kind of joy she found astonishing.
“I don’t think that’s wise,” she said, even though the voice in her head said something else entirely.
He moved toward her, took her hand and slowly pulled her into his arms. She went reluctantly, but she went. Her palms rested on his broad chest as his heat slid into her bones, her blood. Why did being held by Rashid feel so right? And why did she want to wrap her arms around him and comfort him? She wanted to know why he had that haunted look in his eyes, and she wanted to know why he pushed her away in the most tender of moments.
“I think it’s very wise,” he told her. “The wisest thing possible.”
His head dipped toward hers and her eyes drifted closed. But then she pictured how it would go. The delicious silkiness of his kiss, the inflammatory response of her own, the frantic revealing of bodies and the cataclysmic joining that would strip all her defenses and leave her heart bare.
And then the ice at the end. She couldn’t take the ice.
“I’d rather talk,” she blurted out.
He stopped, his lips a whisper away from hers. “Sheridan, you torture me.”
Her fingers curled into his shirt. “We can’t keep having wild sex like this, Rashid. We have to talk sometime.”
He straightened, looking perfectly dejected. Like a kid who’d just had a treat taken away. “I don’t see why we can’t have sex first and then talk.”
“Because you won’t talk then. You’ll run, or you’ll take me back to my rooms, and nothing will ever get said.”
He studied her very solemnly. And then he stepped back and drew her into the living area. She sank onto one of the couches and curled her feet beneath her. Rashid went to the opposite end of the couch.
“What do you wish to talk about?”
Sheridan bit her lip as she watched him. What did she wish to talk about? Anything. Everything. Only she’d never really expected he would do as she asked, so here she was with no leading question. No carefully thought-out phrase to begin prying into his life.
So she launched into it like a cannonball off a diving board.
“Why are you incapable of love?”
His eyes widened. And then his mouth flattened and she was certain he would brush her off. He did not, however, but she found herself almost wishing he had.
“Because it hurts. Because people die and you’re left figuring out how to live your life without them. It’s easier not to love.”
“But choosing not to love and being incapable of it are two different things, right?”
He rubbed a hand over his face and looked away from her. “Maybe so. But I’ve chosen what works best for me.”
“You will love this child, though.” She wanted to understand him. He’d lost a wife and that had affected him greatly. But surely he would love their baby. She needed to know he was capable of that much at least.