“Then why... why did you... why do you...”
He drew in a sharp breath. “Because you’re beautiful. And your body is beautiful. The way you inhabit your skin, the sway of your hips, the set of your shoulders, the way your neck flows into your collarbone. Because your eyes are sky blue and when you look at me it’s like that first sunny day after weeks of rain. Because your breasts fit perfectly into my palms, and I have imagined the sound you would make when I take them into my mouth. Because I know that you want me to.”
It was a measured, articulate assault of raw, tortured truth. But it was only part of the truth.
Did he mean to frighten her away? Overwhelm her into keeping a safe distance?
Or did he simply take the opportunity to tell someone, anyone, something of what he’d been feeling?
She pulled in a sharp, audible breath.
But she didn’t back away.
After a moment, she brought her hand up to her cheek, as if to soothe the heat flaring there.
Or to see if she could feel what he felt when he touched her. How she felt in light of how he experienced her.
She dropped it.
He didn’t ask her why she desired him.
He was somehow afraid the answer to that would be “because you’re you.”
And she didn’t look away from him. Not once. She faced things head-on, Keating did.
He liked that so bloody much.
“Desire is an appetite.” His voice was a little steadier. “And sometimes... for whatever reason... it demands appeasing in no uncertain terms. Both for people married and unmarried.”
He was lying through omission. He had only recently come to understand that desire was more than that. Desire could be a gift and a curse, especially when you traced it back to its origins, and realized it was less about a body shaped like it was designed to fit against him, as though it was the missing part of him. And about a laugh, and an inner light, and a smile that could cut a man in two with its sweetness, and a presence that was somehow both peaceful and crackling.
He didn’t know if he forgot himself or remembered himself when he was with her.
Her expression told him that she knew there was a good deal he was leaving out.
“Before we met, believe it or not, I had some knowledge of what desire is or can be, though I have never acted on it. I’m not a child,Dominic. And nowI believe there is the kind of appetite which can be appeased, as you say. And then there is a sort of... craving. That just... it just never ebbs.” She paused. “Is this different?”
Holy Mother of God.
It was more of a statement than a question.
For a moment he couldn’t breathe for imagining her lying awake in the throes of wanting him. Of the two of them, in the rooms stacked one atop the other, staring at their ceilings, and wanting.
Mutely, he gave his head the slightest of slow nods. Resigned.
He wouldn’t have her believing she was wrong. And his ego was such—and he loathed himself for it—that he wanted her to know that what they felt was incendiary. Extraordinary. He wanted her to believe there was no one else like him.
“So by your way of thinking, we can be lovers after I’m married.”
“Christ,” he exhaled on a gust, as though she’d rammed a plank right into his stomach.
“I won’t, you know. Have lovers when I’m married.”
“Good,” he said evenly, when he could speak again. “You deserve to have everything you want from a marriage. And from a husband.”
“If everyone can go about breaking their vows, what is the point of making them? Isn’t that what gives marriage its meaning?”
“Life is long if you’re lucky,” he said shortly. “And people are complicated and flawed. And even saints are not immune to temptation, Keating.”