His blue eyes went dark, and my breath caught. He held me in his gaze. "It is safer here."
"Safer," I echoed, somehow believing him even as I didn't understand.
"Look around you."
I did. Half a dozen servers bustled among twice as many tables in the warm candlelight.
"There are so many witnesses," he said, the words so soft I almost felt them more than heard them. "Too many witnesses to lose control."
I turned back to be caught up in his gaze again, knowing what he meant, the words calling up a shadow of the sensations that I had felt then to rush over me again. I saw my need reflected in his intensity, and I bit my lip hard. He felt it too, this connection between us. And that was far from reassuring.
"In my office, I nearly did something that I had sworn never to do again," he said.
"Attack me?" I said, my throat suddenly dry. The words came clumsily off my lips, and I knew they were wrong even as I said them. It hadn't felt like a potential attack, not then or in any of the thousand replays I'd tried to keep out of my mind.
Not even close.
His face tightened, though whether in anger or scorn, I couldn't tell. "I would do nothing to you-to anyone-that you wouldn't want me to. But it would still be wrong."
"How do you know what I'd want?" I whispered furiously, even as prickles of heat ran over my body to pool deep in my center. I shifted slightly in my chair, ignoring the tugging sensation between my thighs. "How dare you-presume to tell me what I want?"
I could have drowned in the darkness of his eyes. He reached across the table. I could not move. He took my chin in two fingers and rubbed his thumb along the line of my jaw. I leaned forward, into his hand, toward him. Every nerve sang in the wake of his cool touch, reaching so deep inside me that I whimpered, my hands curling into fists on the tabletop.
The corner of his lips lifted, and my heart stuttered. "You would have begged me."
I jumped when he released me just as the server set the next course in front of us. "Mascarpone stuffed date with olive oil and sea salt."
"Thank you," I murmured hoarsely. I did not lift my eyes from my plate until I had eaten it clean, embroiled in my sudden confusion and acute, excruciating awareness of the man across the table from me.
He was right. I knew he was right. I would have begged him-begged him for everything. But I didn't know why. What was wrong with me? Had I lost my mind?