"I guess we're both lucky I'll be dead soon," she returned.
"You won't be. I will find a way to stop it, now that Wynn told me what's wrong. In the meantime, I know how to slow the inevitable."
"Because spending eternity with someone who hates me is better than leaping off a building how?" she snapped.
"Does it matter?" he returned, irritated. "You'll find it hard to kill yourself when I'm the one who determines who lives and dies."
"You've made your point, Gabriel." She didn't believe for one minute he was going to find a way to prevent her from dying in three months. But if she challenged him on this point, she saw him making it impossible for her to die on her own terms.
"My offer is good whether you expire in three months or an eternity. You can have everything I own, Deidre," he said. "I won't deny you my protection, assistance or my bed. It's a better deal than you gave me the first time around."
"I'll take your word on that, since I don't remember," she said. "What do you expect from me?"
"Everything," he said. "I want all of you. Mind, body, heart and soul."
"And I get what? Your body? A fourth of you? That's not the way a functional relationship works," she said, anger building.
"It's the way ours will."
He was so calm, as if they were negotiating over a car and not eternity together. Deidre sought some flicker of warmth in his dark gaze and saw none. He was wearing his poker face. No part of her thought he was bluffing beneath it. He was accepting his obligation to her while shutting off everything but the physical side of him.
On the surface, what he offered her wasn't bad. But she didn't want to be in a loveless, emotionless relationship with anyone, especially one where she had no partner. With the bond between them all but shoving her into his arms, was it possible to deny their fates together for long?
After a week of knowing him, she already had to concentrate hard to resist leaning into him whenever he was around. She ached to feel his warm embrace, to sink into his dark spices and let him take her where he would. Their one night together made her feel alive, and his dark gaze alone was enough to make her body hot from the inside out.
If he felt the same, he gave no indication. He wanted her to surrender, because past-Deidre forced him to do the same. Eternity in such an unequal partnership wasn't even worth considering.