Page 40 of Her Forbidden Bargain

“Don’t kiss me, because then we’ll be making love and I’ll find myself living with you.”

“I do not see the problem. You like making love with me, and you are going to be living with me either way.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to live you.”

“Give me one good reason why.”

She wrapped her arms around her waist and took two steps back from him. “I…well, let me just say that I have a really good reason and leave it at that.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and arched one eyebrow at her. “That might work if you had plied me with sex, but since you declined…I’m feeling stubborn.”

She just stood there, and he wondered if he was pushing too hard. Why was this so important to him? He wasn’t one hundred percent sure, but he guessed he wanted everything that Sheri had to give. She gave so willingly of her body, but she kept a tight rein on her soul. On the secrets that she guarded for herself. And he hated that there was a part of her that he didn’t know. He wanted to know everything about her. He wanted to possess her completely.

“Tell me.”

This had been the longest day of her life. And the most stressful. She had no idea what was going on with Tristan, not that she ever really had. She only knew that if he wanted to know what was inside her head, then they were both in trouble.

Tell me.

He wasn’t asking nicely, he was demanding. And when it came to Tristan, she had absolutely no willpower. She wanted him to know her secrets because she loved him. Because no matter what her mind tried to tell her heart…her heart still believed that if he knew all her secrets, he’d fall for her, too.

Which was so stupid. He was the man who’d told her that all relationships were temporary. That all relationships ended. And heck, she knew that. Everyone she’d ever cared about was gone. Even Aunt Millie, through death, just as Tristan said. Though that’s where she and Tristan differed. She knew the difference of having lived a life with someone you loved in it and having that person taken from you in death, versus having someone leave you because they couldn’t love you.

“Why is it important to you? Why do you care?”

“Because I’m not the type of man who would let my fiancée live in another house. I would want her in my bed every night.”

“You’d want her in your bed every night?” she asked.

“I want you in my bed every night. I want to wake up in the morning and see your face.”

Suddenly Sheri wasn’t sure what she knew anymore. Was Tristan simply afraid to admit his feelings for her? She knew he wanted her. No man had made love to her as often as he had. No man had ever said the things he did to her, whispering in her ear about how sexy she was and how much he wanted her.

But a part of her was afraid to believe it. She simply wasn’t the kind of girl who inspired that feeling in a man like Tristan. Yet now, here he was, saying he wanted to wake up with her every morning and…“Tristan, I want that, too.”

“Then why won’t you move in?”

She looked at him. Just stared at the face that had graced the cover of more magazines than she’d ever dreamed of. And realized that at some point in time, he’d become so real to her. The Photoshopped perfection of those magazine photos wasn’t the man she loved. This was the man she loved.

The man with a small scar under his left eye. And five-o’clock shadow on his jaw. The man who looked at her with exasperation at times, but always with honest emotion. Even if she couldn’t always identify that emotion.

The man she loved.

“I haven’t wanted to move in with you, because I love you, Tristan.”

He took a step back. His arms fell from his chest and he looked at her as if she’d surprised him.

What had he expected?

“Should I not have said that?”

He shook his head. Then rubbed a hand over his forehead. “I was not expecting that.”

“You weren’t? Everyone knows how I feel about you.”

Sheri felt so incredibly vulnerable right now. She wrapped both arms around herself, holding herself as tightly as she could.

“Everyone?”