She couldn’t blame him for erecting an emotional wall. In fact, the wisest thing she could do was follow suit, but she missed that magical sense of connection they had shared. She missed it desperately.

As she looked at the strong lines of his throat where his shirt lay open, she had to swallow again. And oh gods, the desire she felt for him was stronger than ever.

I want this too much.

The quiet force behind his words ripped through her memory. She should respect the closed wall she saw in his face and leave him alone. She had to let go of him. Their brief time was over. The sun would be up in a matter of minutes, and she needed to find her son.

Her feet didn’t understand any of that reasoning. Acquiring a will of their own, they carried her over to him. He watched her approach with a dark, brooding gaze. She thought of half a dozen things she might say, but everything seemed to run the gamut between needy and banal.

In the end, she simply shook her head at him. Her mouth twisting, she walked forward and put her arms around his waist, hugging him tightly. He stood rigid, neither denying her embrace nor responding to it.

The sweetness had left her heart, until all that remained was pain. She buried her face in his chest, muffling a sob.

Finally he moved. His arms closing around her, he bowed his head over hers.

Her voice thick, she managed to say, “I am experiencing a great deal of difficulty at the thought of letting you go. I probably shouldn’t tell you that, but I can’t seem to help myself, because among other things, over the course of this night you’ve become my dear friend, and I’ve cherished confiding in you. And I want this too much, too.”

He held her tightly with his whole body.

“I shouldn’t have left you so abruptly like that,” he said into her hair. “Bel, I don’t want to let you go. Because I can’t control my emotions, I’ve spoiled the last few minutes we had together. I’m sorry.”

She ran her hands along the broad expanse of his back. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I understood.”

She hadn’t yet rebraided her hair, and he ran his fingers through the length compulsively.

He muttered, “Maybe this doesn’t have to be over. You said that you and Calondir often spend weeks apart, and you don’t always reside in the Wood, right?”

The world stilled. She nodded.

“When I take leave from my position, I could fly down to South Carolina,” he whispered. “I could meet you anywhere you like.”

As she listened, her heart began to pound. His words sent her across another boundary, to a place where the pain might become manageable, and the sweetness might return.

She shouldn’t agree. She should make a clean, complete break, but the thought of trying to deny the part of her that had come back to life was unendurable. She would do almost anything to hold onto it.

To hold onto him.

“Do you really think it’s possible?” she whispered.

“We’ll make it possible.” His warm breath stirred the tiny hairs at her temple. “We may have run out of time right now, but I’m not ready for this to end. It’s no use telling myself I should walk away from you – I can’t. I won’t.”

His words banished the chill that had crept into her. Hardly daring to hope they could work something out, she said slowly, “Perhaps I could rent a place in Charleston.”

Sinking his hand deep into the hair at the back of her head, he tilted her face up and kissed her, quick and hard.

“Don’t misunderstand, I’m not ashamed to be with you,” he said against her lips. “If our lives were even marginally different, I would shout about this from the rooftops. But as things stand, I’m not sure Charleston would be the best idea. If word got out, frankly, I believe the world would put a great deal of pressure on us to stop seeing each other, and I don’t ever want to give you the slightest reason to turn me away.”

“No, I could never be ashamed of being with you either.” She stroked his rough face as her mind raced over options. “And you’re right. While Calondir might have no interest in the fact that I may be sleeping with someone else, he would hate to know that I had developed a liaison with one of Dragos’s sentinels, let alone… oh lord and lady, let alone how everybody else would react. Perhaps I could buy property a short distance outside the city, a small house with enough of a garden so that you could land or launch in privacy.”

His gaze seemed to turn inward. “I might be able to live with that,” he murmured. “This might give us a solution that we can both live with.”

The way he had phrased that first sentence seemed odd. Her brows drew together, but before she could puzzle at it too deeply, he kissed her again, slanting his mouth over hers and driving deep into her mouth with a rapidly escalating hunger.

His kiss was so scorching, it burned away coherent thought. Clinging to his shoulders, she kissed him back wildly, causing him to growl low in his throat. Instead of cradling her head, he gripped her neck, a gesture so possessive, it thrilled through her.

He pulled away just far enough so that he could talk, nose to nose with her and staring deep into her eyes with a fierceness that set her heart to pounding. “I don’t want to wait to see you again. You’ll be in London at least for the next couple of days, correct?”

She nodded, as much as his hold would let her. “I have engagements for at least the next week,” she told him unsteadily. “When we return to London, I’ll look at my commitments and cancel everything I possibly can.”

“I will, too. And as soon as you return to South Carolina, you’ll begin looking for that house.”

“Absolutely.”

“I’ll pay for the house.”

“Thank you, but there’s no need.”

He frowned. “I don’t like for you to assume all the financial burden.”