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“Sure.” He used his free hand to reach for the door, but her words halted him.

“Good. Stay here while I nip out for something.”

“What is it?” He flexed his arm, keeping her beside him. “I can go.”

“Filomena told me where I could get your gift.”

“No, thank you.” He held onto her as she tried to slip away from him and leave the stoop.

“What do you meanno thank you?” She scraped at a tendril of hair that the breeze whipped across her face. “It’s for Christmas.”

“I told you I don’t need anything. But let’s get coffee. We can drink it while we shop. It won’t feel so cold once we’re in the alleys.” He started to open the door again.

She dug in her heels. “Konstantin. You didn’t ask me if I wanted three thousand gifts in four days. You just gave them to me.”

“Because they’re things I want you to have.”

She said nothing, only stared pointedly at him.

“I don’t like receiving gifts,” he admitted, shifting so he was at least forming a buffer against the wind, protecting her from it.

“Why not?”

In his mind’s eye, he saw a toy sailboat hit the stones of the chimney, smashing into pieces. “I just don’t like it.”

“So the gift you refuse to give me is the gift of giving you a gift?” she challenged.

“Yes.”

The amusement in her gaze turned searching. Troubled.

“It’s a lot of secrets and subterfuge. For what?” He tried to downplay it.

“It’s fun. Otherwise, you would tell me what’s being delivered while we’re out.”

He didn’t want to tell her. He wanted to see her reaction when they got home and found it there.

“I’m not getting you dance lessons or an ugly tie, I swear,” she cajoled. “It’s just something small that I want you to have because I don’t think you do. I think you’ll like it.”

That was the issue. If he did like it, and revealed that, it could be used against him.

She wasn’t like that. He knew she wasn’t. But there was still a hard wall inside him that wanted to stay firm and strong against even the possibility of cruelty.

She looked so earnest, though.

He sighed shortly. “It’s really that important to you?”

“I could have bought it by now if we hadn’t been arguing about it all this time.”

“Go, then. Be back in ten minutes or I’m coming to look for you.”

He went inside to order coffee, then he sat at one of the outdoor tables, watching up the street for her to return, irritated with himself for being so churlish with her.

He’d been feeling off-balance since their shower last night. The sex hadn’t been adventurous, but it had been intimate enough and powerful enough that he’d needed some time to put himself back together afterward.

Thankfully, she’d been fast asleep when he came to bed or he would have made love with her. He wanted to. Physically, his body was craving hers the way vampires craved blood, but on a more psychic level she was churning up his equilibrium.

He kept himself closed off for a reason, trying not to ruin lives through deliberate negligence, but otherwise he took little responsibility for how others felt. Eloise was different. Every emotion that emanated from her sifted through him in some way. If she seemed distressed, he wanted to remove the reason for it. If she smiled, he felt it like a thousand rays of sunshine bursting into life within him.