Eve was halfway down the stairs, when she remembered she had no car. The small inconvenience had her pressing her fingers against her eyes and fighting back an urge to sob hysterically. Three deep breaths brought her back to order. Swearing, she decided that with the energy she had boiling inside, she could walk it.

“Eve. You don’t have a car.”

She stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked up at Alexander. Did he realize how solid, how powerful, how completely confident he looked? He stood like a warrior, more ready to attack than to defend. He looked like a king, more ready to punish than forgive. Like a man more ready to take than to ask.

As he came down the steps, closer, still closer, she realized that was what she wanted. The strength, the control, even the arrogance.

“I don’t want anything to happen to you.” Eve said it quickly, before common sense smothered the words.

He stopped on the step above her, rocked more than she could imagine by the breathless sentence. Her concern was a warmth that reached inside his skin and arrowed its way toward his heart. But he was a warrior, and his first move was always defense.

“My father gave you permission to worry. I did not.”

It was fascinating to watch her eyes, eyes so blue, go to ice in a matter of seconds. “Then I promise, I won’t offer it again. If you choose to take a dive into hell, I won’t even bother to watch.”

“You change from honey to vinegar quickly. Part of your charm.”

“I won’t offer charm any more than I will concern.”

“I don’t want your worry,” he murmured as he descended the final step. “But more. Much more.”

“That was all I was willing to give.” He had her boxed in neatly between himself and the banister. She wondered how he had managed it.

“I think not.” He cupped her face in his hands. This was what he needed, if only for moments at a time. To touch her, to challenge her, to forget there was a world outside the walls. “What you say with your mouth and what you say with your eyes are not always the same.”

She wouldn’t be obvious. She refused to be easily read. What she had felt that moment upstairs would be hers alone until she fully understood it. Perhaps the fact that she had felt it, and he had not, pushed her. “Have you forgotten Bennett?”

She didn’t wince, wouldn’t permit herself to, when his fingers tightened on her flesh. “You didn’t think of Bennett when you were in my arms. When you’re in my bed, you’ll think of no one but me.”