flat. They were... They were molten. The heat there a perfect reflection of the fire that was rioting through her core.
“Come on,” he said, his voice rough.
She could do nothing but follow him. Which was terribly telling. Not just of this moment, but of the past fifteen years or so.
And once they were outside, her breath caught in her throat, all of the sensations building in her chest, making it impossible for her to do anything but stand there and tremble. He was touching her. And right before them was a beautifully appointed table set for two, a candle at the center.
It was like something that had been torn from her fantasies. Her girlish fantasies. When loving him had simply meant aspirations of sweet romance, holding hands and making sophisticated conversation.
Back before she had realized that there was much more to the connection between men and women than candlelight and hand-holding.
“Is something wrong?”
She looked at him, at his fierce expression. There was an intensity behind his eyes that she couldn’t decode. All she knew was that she had waited most of her life to have him look at her like this. And for some reason he was looking at her this way now. She was... She was powerless to resist. Utterly and completely held captive by that look in his eyes.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she lied, making her way across the expansive terrace and taking her seat at the table.
She noticed then that Leon had a glass of water in front of his plate rather than wine. “I didn’t think you were on pain medication anymore,” she said.
“I’m not. But as I’m not entirely certain what my relationship is to alcohol I decided it best to continue to abstain. I seem to have done all right without it in the past week. Why start now?”
She nodded slowly. The truth was, Leon overindulged in everything. It was difficult to say what specifically he might have a problem with, and what specifically he just chose to indulge in to excess. But she was grateful that he was choosing to remain completely sober tonight. The idea of him being drunk and amnesiac made her feel far too much like the predator he had implied she might be when they had first left for the airport in Italy.
“Oh. Well. Maybe I should drink something else then.”
“You’re fine. It occurs to me that we’ve been talking rather a lot about me. I want to hear more about you, Rose. Because it isn’t only myself that I have forgotten about. I don’t remember anything about you.”
Her heart was thundering hard, her throat suddenly dry. “I’m not sure that I’m a very interesting topic of conversation.”
“I doubt there is anything more interesting to a man than the topic of his wife.”
“We don’t... We don’t have that sort of relationship,” she said, the truth stumbling out of her mouth uneasily.
“Why not?”
“I’m not sure that you are well suited to marriage.”
He frowned. “Have I been unkind to you in some way?”
“No,” she said, trying to dispel his fears quickly. She was afraid that he was imagining himself to be some kind of monster when that couldn’t be further from the truth. “You are independent. We do not live in each other’s pockets, as you have already noticed by virtue of the fact that we have separate bedrooms. We do not often take long meals together out on the terrace. We do not often share our innermost thoughts.”
“Why did you marry me?” The words were so confused, so utterly filled with disbelief. It was shocking. To hear him question why on earth she might have married him.
“I could give any number of reasons a woman would marry you. You are incredibly handsome. Successful. And as for me... I am... Well, let’s not be dishonest about the situation, Leon. I am quite plain.”
He frowned even more deeply. Then he reached across the table, the edge of his thumb touching the corner of her mouth. Her heart slammed hard into her breastbone, her entire body going rigid, every fiber of her being on high alert to see what might happen next. He traced the line of her upper lip, then dipped down to the lower one before sweeping his thumb up to her cheekbone, dragging it slowly across her skin.
“I will confess that my first thought was that you were plain. But as I have spent time with you, as you have cared for me... I can no longer see what I first did. The only real memory I have, the only concrete image in my mind is your eyes. You are what I remember, while everything else is vague impressions and hazy ideas. If it is not entirely absent altogether. Your eyes are my truth, Rose. How could I find them, or you, anything but incredibly beautiful?”
She had stopped breathing now. Any moment, she had a feeling she was going to tip sideways in her chair and lose consciousness completely. But to have him look at her like this, to have him say those things... This entire nightmare was being twisted into a dream. Perversely, she was enjoying it. Perversely, it was everything she had ever wanted. But not like this.
Still, she found she couldn’t turn away. “That is... It is an incredibly nice thing to say.”
“I’m stingy and arrogant, remember? I am neither generous nor particularly nice, to hear you tell it. I am not being kind when I say these words. I am being truthful. There’s a limit to the sorts of truths you can tell in my position. There are very few things I know for certain. But this is one of them.”
He shifted the position of his hand, cupping her face, his palm warming her. Igniting her. “You are my wife. I wish to know everything about you.”
He dropped his hand away from her face, drawing it back to his side of the table. She cleared her throat nervously, shifting the cutlery on the table in front of her as a displacement activity.
“Did you go to university?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“What did you study?”
She shifted, feeling uncomfortable and edgy beneath his intense dark gaze. “I was a history major. As you’ve probably guessed, I like old things. Really, the older and dustier the better.”
“Is that a jab at my age?”
She laughed. “Um. It wasn’t, but that’s an interesting point. No, I like the smell of books, musty pages and such. Aged velvet furniture that’s always a little damp.”
“Doesn’t sound too appealing to me.”
“No. Of course not. Your room here is all modernized.”
“I like things sans dust and mold, what can I say,” he returned. “So you did your history degree.”
“No,” she said. “I went for two years. And then I stopped.”
“Why?”
“I married you.”
Her answer settled uncomfortably between them. An accusation, when she hadn’t meant it to be one.
“Which begs the question,” he said, “that I have been dying
