ended up in bed together. Those were the final words of the sentence. Poppy didn’t need to say them, she heard them in his aura. “You think the worst of me. The worst of my feelings for you. And I don’t know what it is. Do you think I can’t feel for you or that this is a game?”
“No.”
“Then what?” she asked, laying her hands on her chest. “The way I feel, inside, about this… the way I thought you felt too…” Licking her lips, Poppy almost couldn’t come up with words. “It’s so real, it has physical presence inside me… It’s like I met you and some part of me actually coded itself to you… A person who feels that way couldn’t…” Poppy couldn’t be subtle, she had to just say it. “It wouldn’t have been physically possible for me to give myself to another man, no matter who he was, for any reason… that’s how tangible this is to me.”
“I know,” he said. “I know that…” The frustration in his throat weighed his words. “I have responsibilities—”
“We are not going over this again.”
But when she tried to roll away, he grabbed her hip to pull her back. “You’ve never asked me to walk away from them, I know that. I know you wouldn’t…” He drew in a breath and paused, maybe her techniques were rubbing off on him. “Thing is, I don’t know how to do half measures. I never have. When I’m with a woman, I’m all in. Whether it’s for an hour or a lifetime, that’s what I am.”
Poppy had never asked him to be anything other than himself. “And you can’t do that with me because I’m your tenant.”
Feeling like they were going in circles, she tried to move away again. Instead of just pulling her back, he reached over to grab her opposite hip and yanked her right up against him.
“I don’t know how to make room for you,” he declared, scowling at her. “I don’t know how to make the room that you deserve… I haven’t sat down to a full meal with another person in… weeks, maybe more… And sex…” His hand left her hip to go up through his hair. “Baby, I don’t know when I would make the time to give you everything you deserve… everything you’re used to.”
Intrigued by those last words, Poppy wanted to know more. “What do you think I’m used to? Are you talking about my family? If they were giving me what I needed, I wouldn’t be here, would I?”
His eyes met hers. “And what happens when I don’t give you what you need?”
“Oh,” Poppy said, realizing his opinion of her was lower than she could’ve imagined. “You think I’ll leave you? That’s what it is? You’ll rearrange your life to include me and then I’ll embarrass you in front of your friends and family by running off… with another man? For better prospects? For money? How shallow do you think I am?”
“I don’t think you’re shallow,” he said, such simplicity in the words and the way his eyes wandered across her. “I think I don’t do enough for the people I have in my life… I disappoint someone every day… and when that someone is you… If you gave me everything and I gave you anything less…”
“I never needed all of you,” she said, softening as he stroked her hip. “I said we didn’t have to go through this again and we don’t… You have a lot of plates spinning and you can’t take your attention away from any of them. It was never fair of me to assume otherwise. We said it yesterday, we’re in different places.”
“You said it,” he said in a sufficiently grumpy way that she was reminded of their first meeting.
Giving in to the temptation, her fingers fluttered across his cheek. “If I knew how to make it better for you, anything better, I’d do it.”
Existing in the same moment, both of them appreciated each other. He wasn’t looking at her when his hand started to move, but when his fingers stalled over one of her buttons, his eyes ascended to hers.
They stayed right there when he began to unbutton her shirt. One button, then the next… There weren’t that many fastened so it didn’t take him long to loosen them all. Either he was giving her a chance to stop him or he enjoyed teasing himself because he was oh so very careful about snaking his flat hand under