After last night, would things be different between them? For better or worse? She reached his study door and drew a long breath.

There was only one way to find out. She knocked on his door and then pressed it open slowly. He was seated as his desk, a quill clenched tightly in his fingers, his forehead lined with worry as he pored over a letter before him.

“What do you want?” he snapped without looking up.

Chapter 13

Thomasina started at the cold, dismissive tone. Did he know it was her at his door?

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Jasper.”

He jerked his head up and looked at her. For a moment his irritation remained, but then his gaze flicked over her from head to toe and she saw some of the tension leave his mouth and eyes.

“My apologies, Thomasina,” he said as he set the quill aside, shoved the letter under a pile of papers and got to his feet. “Did you need something?”

She stared at him, his hands clenching and opening at his sides, his posture stiff and uncomfortable. He was nothing like the wicked man who had claimed her the prior night. Held her and kissed her and shattered her over and over.

“Do you?” she retorted with an arch of her brow as she entered the study fully and shut the door behind her.

The action changed his countenance entirely. Now he tracked her movements. His pupils dilated a fraction when they were alone together. He wanted her, instantly and powerfully. That was something. “Do I what?” he asked.

“Need something,” she repeated. “You seem out of sorts.”

His lips thinned and the desire fled his face. “No, of course not. I was just in the middle of some—” His gaze ceased to hold hers. “Some business.”

She kept moving forward, even though everything in her screamed to stop. To avoid any potential rejection. To keep from upsetting him if he truly wished her gone.

And yet the drive to support and help and comfort was so much greater than the fear.

She moved around the opposite side of his desk and leaned back against the edge so she was just next to him. He stared down at her, swallowing hard enough that she saw his Adam’s apple work with the force.

“Shared troubles, remember?” she whispered as she reached out to catch his hand. She threaded her fingers through his, stroking the rougher skin, tracing the lines of his knuckles as their hands folded together gently.

He cleared his throat, and for a moment she felt him lean into her. Want to give to her, not just in pleasure, but something for her to hold and to support. That longing was written all over his handsome face, as was an intense loneliness she had never seen in him before.

But then he shook his head, clearing the vulnerability, and instead bent to kiss her. She let him, for what other choice was there? Her desire for him hadn’t been tamped down the night before. If anything, it increased with every moment. And if that was what he needed, to drown in pleasure, she wouldn’t deny him.