He had to drag himself away. He was perilously close to spinning her around and pinning her to his mattress. He’d throw up her skirts and have her right here and right now. It was no way to treat her. She deserved a slow and gentle wooing. A lover’s kisses and sweet words. She deserved to be told how beautiful she was and how she made him feel as though he were the only man in the world. The last thing he wanted for her was a quick and brutal rutting.

His pulse pounded as he pulled his mouth from hers. “What you do to me, lass,” he whispered, each word painful through his tight throat.

It was as though he’d swallowed shards of glass. His skin felt too tight. His body was too heavy. His cock was about to burst out of his trews, and his wound ached like hell fire. And he wanted more of her with every breath he had.

This wasn’t him. What he felt bordered on obsession. Nay. Not bordered. It was true obsession. He’d nearly gone mad when she’d left his chamber and hadn’t returned. He’d gotten up from his bed, sweating and swearing with each movement. He’d paced his chamber, looked out his window, listened at the door, anxious to hear her light footsteps.

Finally it had been all he could bear. He simply had to get out of his chamber. Outside where he could breathe. Where he could feel more himself and shake off the insanity that gripped him whenever he thought of her. It had to stop.

She unmanned him. She made him feel like a boy who hadn’t proved his mettle.

“We can’t continue to do this,” she whispered back. “Please, Alaric. I don’t seem to have the ability to deny you anything.”

Her eyes burned bright with a multitude of emotions. Regret. Desire. The tiny golden glints glowed against the brown of her eyes, and her dark brows were drawn together in clear consternation.

They were the words he wanted to hear but not with the distress so evident in her voice. She looked to be near tears and it was his undoing. That she was so close to begging flayed his chest open. He hugged her to him, content to simply hold her as he cursed fate and duty and all the things that conspired to tear this woman from his arms.

“I’m sorry, Keeley. I find I haven’t the ability to deny myself the pleasure of your touch. You are an addiction. One I can’t readily be free of. I listen to your arguments and I understand them well, but then you look at me or I look at you and all reason flies out the window. I only know that if I don’t touch you, if I don’t kiss you, I’ll go mad.”