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serious, and she couldn’t help but laugh. “Why? It doesn’t make sense. Go … have a fling if that’s what you need before you get married. There’s a whole lot of women in bikinis down on the public beaches. Or hurry up and marry Victoria, so you can get to your wedding night. But why would you want to waste your time with me?”

      “I want you. And if you don’t want me, that’s fine, but I’m pretty sure your actions last night mean that you do. So if you want me, take some time with me.”

      “I … I don’t think I understand.”

      “Four weeks. Four weeks and I’ll ask Victoria to marry me, and until then, I want you.” He looked down. “I understand it’s not the world’s most romantic proposition, but it’s all I can offer.”

      Her stomach seemed to be cold inside, and she knew that wasn’t possible. “Yes, I know. I’m over twenty-eight, I can’t have children, I probably have an annoying laugh. The reasons why I’m wrong for you are many and varied. Those are just the obvious ones.”

      “Yes,” he said, the word flat, honest. “But that hasn’t stopped me from wanting you.”

      “I … I don’t know whether I’m flattered or insulted. Actually, scratch that, I don’t know if I’m supposed to be flattered or insulted. I think I’m flattered, I’m just not certain I should be.”

      “Because it’s a temporary offer?”

      She lifted her thumb to her lips and gnawed the corner of her nail, nodding.

      “I would never insult you by pretending I could offer something I couldn’t. My responsibilities won’t change. They are what they are. But I can’t get you out of my head. I can’t force myself to want Victoria when it’s you that I see every time I close my eyes.”

      “No one’s ever said things like this to me,” she said, looking up at him, trying to see some hint in his expression that he was joking because … it didn’t seem real.

      “Not even your husband?”

      “No. He uh … he was a college student when we got together. So was I. Young and stupid and very sincere, but not very poetic.” She cleared her throat. “It didn’t last, either, for all that we thought it would.”

      “Neither will this,” he said.

      She nodded. “But we won’t pretend otherwise, will we?”

      “No. I won’t pretend with you, ever. Promise to do the same with me?”

      “Yes,” she whispered, not sure if she was agreeing to his last request, or his request for the four weeks. She was lost anyway. No matter how much she pretended she was undecided, she was lost to him. To her desire for him. Her curiosity. Yes, she was afraid, but she wanted him more than she wanted to keep hiding.

      Because that’s what it really was. She wasn’t afraid of the pain of sex. She wasn’t even as afraid of failing as she’d thought. She was more afraid that she would have sex, and that it would be good. And then she would lose her excuse to hold men at arm’s length. She would lose that thing that kept her from seeking out another relationship.

      She swallowed, trying to push her fear down. Fear she didn’t want. Not now.

      “I need you,” he said, the words raw, lacking charm, flirtation, any kind of artifice. “I’m not sure if you realize how much. I’m not sure you could, as it’s something I don’t entirely understand. But I need … you. This. I hope you want me.”

      She did understand. She needed him, too. As much as she needed to escape from the confines she’d put herself into, as much as she needed to move on. He felt like a necessity.

      She hadn’t ever thought of herself as a temporary kind of woman. But then, when sex was such an ordeal it was hard to think of it as something she might do recreationally. Still … Stavros made her want a taste of the illicit.

      Of something she’d never really had, first because she’d met her husband at such a young age, and then because she’d developed endometriosis. And after that, because clinging to the past, wrapping herself in the memories of the pain, had become a shield against any sort of future hurt.

      It also kept her tied to her old life. Tied to who she’d been.

      She needed to be free of it. She finally felt ready to be free of it. It was all well and good to wish she could fully embrace her new reality. But she wasn’t. And that was no one’s fault but hers.

      “Yes,” she said again. “I want you, too. And now that you’ve given up on that fake flirting business I actually find you a lot more irresistible.”

      “What fake flirting business?”

      “You know. That’s not you, Stavros. This is. This is the man I can’t resist.”

      He swallowed visibly, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “As long as you can’t resist me.”

      “I could. But I’m not going to anymore.”

      He laughed, the sound as raw and ragged as his expression. “I couldn’t resist you. That’s why I’m here.”

      Her stomach contracted, her heart pounding faster. To have such a big, strong man admitting he couldn’t fight his attraction to her was … it was beyond her. And it restored something in her. Something she’d thought was so mangled beyond recognition it could never be fixed.

      “This is stupid,” she said, laughing, because if she didn’t she thought she might cry.

      “I know,” he said, taking a step toward her, cupping her cheek in his palm. “I know.” He rested his forehead against hers, his eyes closed.

      She tilted her face and touched her lips to his, a gentle kiss, a question. One he answered with his own kiss, stronger, more certain. His tongue teased her, and she parted her mouth for him, sliding her tongue against his, the friction igniting a wave of heat in her stomach that spread to her breasts, down to her core.

      “Wow. You really are an amazing kisser,” she said, a shiver sliding down through her.

      “And you are very honest.”

      She shook her head. “I’m not usually. I just do my very best to seem tough all the time and no one questions what I do or say too closely. They don’t want me to kill them with snark. And that way I don’t have to be honest. But for some reason, I am honest with you. I’m not sure why.”

      “You have the same effect on me,” he said. “I can’t fathom it.”

      “It’s the lust thing. It’s scrambling our brains.”

      A smile turned up the corners of his mouth. “Is that it?”

      She nodded. “I’m not familiar with it on quite this level, but I remember feeling this way in college a couple of times.”

      “Yes, that sounds about right. You’d think at our age we would be impervious.” He smiled slightly and it made her knees feel a little weak.

      “Hey, watch it. No age jokes.”

      He kissed her again. “You are a beautiful woman. I cannot imagine you being any more attractive to me. Your dress today is lethal.”

      She looked down at her demure yellow dress. “This?”

      “It has buttons,” he growled. “And all I can think of is undoing all of those buttons.”

      Her face heated. “Really?”

      “Oh, yes, really. I want to do it now, but I don’t want to move too quickly.”

      “It’s not even noon.”

      “So?”

      “Isn’t there a no-sex-before-noon rule?”

      He laughed. “Sex isn’t like alcohol. And if that’s been your experience

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