"Then you will marry him?"
"No," she said, dipping her chin coyly. "That I cannot."
He tightened his arms around her. "Those are your only two choices."
But she knew better. There was a third option as well. "We could run away together." She pressed his hands closer to her skin. "Just the two of us. We'd be free, and no one-"
"I have responsibilities." His tone sharpened to a dagger's edge. "Would you have me turn my back on them?"
"Yes," she answered honestly.
He clenched his teeth. "No."
That word wounded her deep in the heart that beat only for him. "Don't you love me?"
"Of course I do."
She turned in his arms so that he could see her desperation for himself. "Then come away with me. Now. Today."
His eyes glowed with warmth as he watched her giddy playfulness, and that succeeded in taking the anger from his tone. "I can't." He gave her chin a gentle caress. "You have to tell him about us."
Guilt stabbed her breast as she thought about the man who loved her as much as she loved the one before her. A man who had proven exactly how much she meant to him in a way no one ever had.
Why can't I love him? It would be so much easier if she did, and she'd tried. She really had.
Unfortunately, the heart played its own tune, and it was deaf to what the head tried to tell it.
"It will crush him, and that's the last thing I want to do. He's given me so much and been so kind..."
Anger slapped at her from his dark eyes. "Then marry him."
Those words stung her like a slap. And she didn't deserve them. "You shouldn't say that if you don't mean it. What if I did what you said?"
His nostrils flared. "I would cut his heart out and feed it to him."
Now he scared her. Was this the real him that he was showing to her because her love had made him comfortable? "What's happening to you?"
"The woman I love won't come to her senses. That's all."
She shook her head as every instinct she possessed denied his words. "There's something else. You're ... different."
"I'm the same as ever."
But she knew better. This wasn't the man who'd conquered her defenses and laid siege to what no other man had ever claimed. "Is your post corrupting you?"
He scoffed. "I'm stronger than that."
Everyone had a weakness. Everyone. "Where is your arrogance coming from?" She didn't understand it.
"The truth isn't arrogance."
She gaped at him. "Who are you?"
"I'm the man you love."
And those words hurt her most of all. "Are you not the man who loves me?"
"Of course."