Not an apology, then.

“You make me hard, Bennett.” His cultivated accent cracked like kindling. “So unbearably, ceaselessly hard I’m in agony. I can’t think, can’t do my job, can’t—”

He released me and turned away. I spun toward him, watching the frock stretch across his back as he ran his hands down his face and over his mouth.

“Ashley.”

He shifted back and pinned me with an accusatory glare. “I will not fall for your trickery.”

“Trickery?” I squared my shoulders. “You think I want to feel affection for a man who intends to watch me hang?”

Something flickered in his eyes. Then they cleared, and his jaw worked side to side.

“Don’t play games with me.” He strode toward the exit. Big surprise.

“You’re the one playing games.” I raced after him and caught his arm in the day cabin. “You touch me and kiss me and work us both into tangled knots. Then you run away.”

He swung back, his ocean eyes bright and deep, as he clutched my face in his hands. “Who says I’m running?”

I didn’t understand his meaning.

Until he kissed me.

His mouth paralyzed all thought as his assertive tongue delved between my lips, past my teeth, and straight through my heart. I moaned at the heady contact, the emotional intimacy, gulping down the force of his ravenous intensity.

Tongues twining, hands sliding, his mouth, his potency, his overwhelming masculine presence consumed me. Then he hooked a knuckle beneath my chin, lifted my face, and did something no man had ever done to me.

He kissed the tip of my nose, soft, lingering, deep in its affection.

“You feel me running, Bennett?” He rested his forehead against mine.

“No.” My chest rose hard, my voice barely a whisper. “I feel you falling.”

He closed his eyes. When they opened again, he stared at me with sullen austerity. His mask locked in place.

Stepping back, he straightened his frock, turned toward the dining cabin, and left.

I pressed a hand against my mouth, trapping the heat from his lips.

It was hard to love a man—much less tolerate one—who would choose his career over my life.

But it was impossible not to love Ashley Cutler.

He was complicated, iron-bound, steadfast, and passionate. Like Priest in the best of ways. Not better. Just… He was everything I longed for, for so very long. To give up on him would be to give up on myself.

I looked around his empty quarters, debating whether to go topside for a stroll in the ocean breeze. But I shouldn’t strain the stitches in my foot. Infection was the last thing I needed.

My gaze snagged on the unfinished gown on his desk. Fabric and sewing supplies scattered every surface. I’d left his day cabin in total disarray.

And he’d left me painfully, miserably, completely unsatisfied.