stifled into the air between them. He was not a man to mince words, and he had proven that every chance he got. Still, it exasperated her that he continued to do it knowing how it bothered her.
“It is interesting,” he murmured, glancing down at his hands. The thing he’d been fiddling with turned out to be a coin, which he now flipped end over end across his knuckles—back and forth, back and forth. “The fact that I am contracted and beholden to you shouldn’t stop me from pursuing any woman I want.”
Calliope frowned. “It doesn’t. You are free to do what you like, though I’d hope you would be discreet until our time has run its course.”
He huffed a little laugh of disbelief. “While I thank you for being so magnanimous, there is only one problem, goddess. Though I have tried, I haven’t been able to manage a bit of interest in the women available to me. It’s the damnedest thing.”
She had no notion how to respond to him. Had he been so free with his attentions in the past that any woman would do? Or had being a courtesan accustomed him to expect the favors of the woman funding his lifestyle? Calliope was so ignorant to such matters, a fact that never ceased to frustrate her. It made the man difficult to understand.
“Perhaps it is a good thing your courtship with Lewes seems to be progressing so rapidly now. The longer I am in your company, the harder I find it to think of anything else except …”
Calliope’s hands shook, and she clenched them together in an effort to still them. Something within her reacted strangely to his words. Part of her retreated, having an inkling what he might say and knowing it was wrong of her to want to hear it. Another part of her leaned into the inevitability of those words with bated breath, a tiny shiver going through her with the anticipation of it. Because, perhaps she wasn’t the only one who had been affected by that moment in the drawing room. If he’d felt it too, then she wasn’t seeing something where there was nothing, imagining things that weren’t there.
Her mind told her she should steer clear of this conversation and where it might lead. But, she was having a difficult time heeding to logic just now. She’d been stalwart and pragmatic for so long, ignoring the part of her that craved something more.
And so, she asked the question she knew would damn her.
“Except what?”
He flipped the coin into his palm and closed his fingers around it, his eyes swiveling toward her. There wasn’t a trace of humor on his face as he held her gaze and rose to his feet.
“You, goddess. I watch you with Lewes and wonder how the man can stand it. How can he look at you and not want you to distraction?”
Calliope swallowed past the fist-sized lump in her throat and pushed aside the impulsive urge that had caused her to step where she never should have dared to tread. This conversation, this man was dangerous, and she would do well to remember that if she wanted to make it out of this with her virtue and her reputation intact.
“Desire is inconsequential,” she stated, hoping her voice was steadier than her shaking hands. “Giving in to our baser urges with no control or thought to the consequences would make us no better than animals. Passion fades, and then we are left only with the things that truly matter. Companionship, compatibility, commonalities that bind people together and create lasting bonds rather than passing fancies.”
Her last word broke off on a gasp as he stood just before her, so close she could see where the rims of his irises bled into a darker green along the edges. The urge to back away warred with her determination to face him, and not back down from the challenge he presented. She wasn’t some silly young girl who would swoon in his arms. She could face him and withstand this.
Couldn’t she?
“I wonder if you think of desire and passion that way because you’ve never experienced them. If you had, you might see things a bit differently.”
“I highly doubt that.”
He smiled, reaching up to stroke one finger down the side of her face. “Then you would be content with a bland, passionless marriage just for the sake of having a husband? Do you think you would be content with a man like Lewes, who can