“Please tell me you remembered the condom.”

“I did.”

“So, you planned this?”

“I woke up touching you and had enough foresight to realize I’d best be prepared for when you woke up, too.”

“You could have stopped touching me.”

“No. I could not.”

“I thought you said no sex.”

“That was last night.”

Funny, she’d been pretty sure he meant until after the interview. “What time is it?”

“Almost dawn. We have plenty of time to get ready and eat breakfast before we have to drive to the coast.”

She snuggled into his chest, reveling in their closeness, even if it was nothing more than postcoitus tenderness. “Mmmm…hmmm…”

“You fainted. Only for a few seconds, but you were definitely out.” He sounded bothered by that fact, almost accusing.

But wouldn’t a man feel smug that he’d had such an impact on his lover? She would have thought so, but then she wasn’t him and he obviously saw the world through a different set of binoculars.

“It was intense,” she ventured.

“Too intense.” He pulled away and stood up, his frown readable even in the thin light starting to fill the room from the crack in the curtains.

Then she remembered. That was his whole problem. He wanted to keep sex between them light. He’d made his feelings clear the night before and ultimately she’d agreed with him, but she still felt bereft as he left the bed. On the edge of rejected, but not quite there. Like she had the morning before.

She didn’t like the feeling, but wasn’t sure what to do about it. Especially since she agreed with him in theory.

Feeling at a disadvantage still lying there with her nightgown hiked up to her waist and her most intimate flesh bare to him, she hastily pressed her legs together and sat up. Grabbing the sheet, she pulled it over her and drew her knees to her chest in a defensive posture under it. “What do you want to do about it?”

He ran his hand through his hair, his own nudity not seeming to bother him at all. “Abstaining definitely doesn’t work.”

Relief coursed through her, but she tried not to let it show. She’d been half-worried he was going to say no sex altogether and she hadn’t known how she was going to keep her hands to herself. Though she still thought that abstaining would have been more doable than trying to keep a lid on the passion that roared between them when they started touching.

“So, what do you suggest?”

“We’re obviously going to have to make love often, but keep the encounters from getting too intense.” He sounded perfectly serious, like he really believed what he was saying.

She stared at him, choking back a snort of derision. Did he really think they could do that? She didn’t think it would matter how many times they had sex, her body was going to respond to him like it had never done to anyone else. Every single time. She knew it.

He had to know it, too, but the man really thought he could keep things light. He’d just given her a climax so intense, she’d fainted and yet somehow he believed he could pull back from that level of connection. Maybe he could, but it certainly seemed like he’d been with her all the way this morning.

And he was the one who said he couldn’t stop touching her once he woke up and realized what he was doing. That did not sound like a response easily modified.

“We can try,” she said doubtfully.

“It will work.” He spoke with certainty that should have been comforting, but just made her feel funny in the region of her heart. He really didn’t want deep involvement with her.

She just shrugged, unwilling to lie and say she agreed or argue with him and say she thought he was nuts. Which she did.

He nodded, as if it was all settled. “I’m going to take a shower. Why don’t you go back to sleep for a while? You don’t have to be up quite yet.”

He was in the bathroom, the door firmly shut behind him, before she could even take a breath to respond.

Apparently, they weren’t going to share a shower like they had the morning before. She grimaced and hugged her knees tightly to her chest. He probably considered doing so too intimate. Too intense. They’d gone from cuddling to no touching in a heartbeat and that sense of rejection was growing more solid.

There was a frozen lump inside her chest and it was spreading over all her feelings like an icy blanket. She didn’t know why, but she couldn’t push the pain away. It grew inside her until she was so cold she grabbed the blanket and huddled beneath it and the sheet, trying to understand why it hurt so much. Where the pain was coming from.

She didn’t want involvement that would be too hard to walk away from. She knew she didn’t. Just like she knew that eventually, she had to walk away from him. So why did his attitude bother her so much?

Why was it making her feel like she couldn’t breathe?

She stared around the nice, but nondescript hotel room as a memory surfaced. She’d been about eight years old. Her dad had missed her school play. Again. So had her mom this time. Beth had been in her bedroom, huddled much like she was now under a purple princess comforter. She’d been crying like her heart was broken when her mom came in from one of her important meetings.

She’d laid her hand on Beth’s back and tried to soothe her, but Lynn Whitney’s words had left an indelible impression on Beth’s heart. “You’re so intense, Elizabeth. All of this emotion is exhausting…for both of us. You take everything far too much to heart.”

Beth had turned tearstained eyes to her mom and flinched at the look of annoyance on the grown-up’s features. “Your dad and I don’t know what to do with you. This is not a tragedy, sweetie. You’ve got to learn to deal with disappointments without letting your emotions become so distraught. I swear sometimes, your father and I wonder if you are a changeling.”

She’d laughed softly and ruffled Beth’s hair, but the small girl had not shared her mom’s humor. She already knew she wasn’t like her parents. She’d never seen her mom cry, but Beth felt like crying a lot. Both her mom and dad acted like it shouldn’t matter if Beth was the only girl in her class who didn’t have any parents at the play.

She knew that if either of them had been little like her, they wouldn’t have cared. Her mom was always telling her stories of what it was like growing up the daughter of a famous politician and the sacrifices that had to be made. Beth hated making those sacrifices, but often wondered why she had to care so much. At eight, she wasn’t sure what a changeling was, but she thought it meant she didn’t fit her family. As she’d grown older, she’d learned she was right.

Then she’d met Alan and assumed that finally, her intense emotions would have a safe outlet. It was okay to love him, to need him. He’d said so. Only she’d mistaken his sexual desire for her for a matching strength of emotion. When he talked about need, he didn’t mean the soul-deep need she had to belong to someone else and have them belong to her.

He meant sex…and maybe the occasional moment of comfort. Not a daily living of two closely joined halves of the same whole. She’d discovered her error as their relationship progressed, but she’d hidden from the knowledge. He hadn’t wanted her to make emotional demands on him any more than her parents had and the aborted wedding had been the ultimate object lesson in that regard.

She’d woken up in a pain-filled hurry on her wedding day and had refused to hide from the truth any longer. Once her eyes were open to reality, she’d realized immediately that she wasn’t capable of settling for something less than her dream. It wouldn’t have been fair to either of them and she’d stood beside her decision even when he pleaded with her to give them another chance.

But she’d recognized that what she needed might not be out there and rather than be hurt again, she’d pulled away from any male-female involvement at all. Her fantasies about Ethan had helped her to do that, but now he was telling her that even her sensuality was too intense and that made her angry.