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“Fine, don’t answer,” he says. “Tell me instead why you’re so worked up over that serving woman.”

No, I want to groan. “I’m not worked up. It doesn’t matter to me how many women throw themselves at you.”

“So you wouldn’t care if I went down there and flirted with her?”

“Nope.”

“How about if I spent the night with her?”

A pause. “Nope.”

“What if I wanted to stay in the village and become a hunter so I can see my new true love every day?”

At those outrageous words, I finally spin in the bed and plantmy feet on the floor. I’m prepared to give Kellyn a tongue-lashing, but I pause when I see the laughter he’s just barely containing.

“What are you doing?” I ask him.

“Witnessing you not worked up.”

I lean forward. “Stop playing games with me, Kellyn. I don’t like these conversations. Tell me straight. Why did you reject her invitation?”

He leans his elbows onto his knees. “How do you still not know? How can you still doubt?”

“How about, instead of belittling me, you tell me what it is I don’t know? Just make the point you want to make instead of dancing around it!”

“That’s rich coming from you.”

I stand, thinking to storm out, before I remember the tub is still in the way of the door. And there’s nowhere for me to go.

I let out a growl before settling right back on my bed. My heart is racing, my breath is heaving, and I just want to be alone. Somewhere he can’t see me or read me or try to poke fun at me.

Instead, Kellyn grabs my hands, stilling the fidgeting I hadn’t even noticed I’d been doing. Our knees touch in the small distance between the beds. He looks down at that point of contact, looks to my hands, where his warm fingers wrap around my palms. His gaze settles on me.

He lurches forward, catches himself when he’s only a breath away. “I’m going to kiss you,” he says. “If you don’t want that, pull away now.”

I cannot even process the words before his lips are on mine. It’s not his fault; he waited a good three seconds, and I could tell even that cost him. It was all me and my inability to think when he’s so close.

Never mind what happens to my brain when he’s touchingme. Kissing me. His lips are so desperate as they move against mine, trying to get a reaction. Meanwhile, my head is spinning, and my chest is constricting, and why can’t I do something other than just sit there?

After a few seconds of no response, he pulls back, but not far. “Ziva, I still want you. I haven’t stopped wanting you since I first met you in your smithy shop. You were so quiet and ridiculous.” He laughs at the memory. “I don’t want anyone else. I don’t even see anyone else because I’m too busy obsessing over you. If I seem distant or uncaring, it’s only because I’m trying my damndest to be okay with the fact that you broke things off. But I’m not okay. I’m constantly wondering what you’re thinking. I’m trying to guess how you’re feeling. Sometimes, I can read you as plainly as a book. Sometimes, you’re a complete mystery, one that I love trying to solve.

“But I want you, Ziva. I don’t want there to be any confusion on where I stand where we’re concerned.”

My eyes drop so I can think, but I feel the burn—or glow?—of my cheeks.

He says, “You don’t have to say anything in response. I know it makes you uncomfortable. I just wanted you to know. Since you’ve clearly got it into your head somehow that I don’t want you anymore.”

My next breath hurts as it leaves my lungs.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

He wants me?

Doesn’t he know he’s the only person I’veeverwanted?

But I can’t have him.

Because…