she were really his, he’d pull her to him and comfort her. But she wasn’t his. Couldn’t be his.
Cass knew Maximos was watching her, felt his ambivalence and his ambivalence just cut even deeper.
You have to be hard, she told herself, tough.
But she didn’t feel hard inside, she felt like glass. She felt fragile… ethereal. Her strength and resolve were gone. It was as if the warrior had broken, leaving her crumpled. Leaving her so damn small.
She couldn’t bear Maximos’s anger or indifference any longer. She could take the brutality from anyone but him. She’d been his…how could he hurt her like this? How could he continue to be so cold, so hard, so removed?
What she needed most was tenderness. Now. Right now. She needed his arms around her, holding her, needed his lips against her neck, her cheek, her mouth, warming her, soothing her. Loving her.
But he didn’t love her. And he felt no tenderness for her. He’d break her the same way he broke all his competition.
She pictured the luxury auto industry he’d so completely dominated these past ten years, recalled the sleek fast dangerous cars he’d perfected and realized he’d already broken her.
She was like one of his beautiful cars caught in a pileup. Twisted, crumpled metal marked by gritty piles of shattered glass.
Her head spun with the truth. She’d once thought she was so tough, so together. And yet now look at her…
She was nothing. She’d become nothing. Love had reduced her to this.
“Why do you still care?” Maximos asked after a long silence.
She made a rough sound in the back of her throat. “I loved you.”
“Why?”
He wanted to discuss this here…now? He wanted a rational conversation now? He wanted to discuss love after six and a half months of torture?
Yes, she did love him but how could this be love? How could love hurt like fire? How could love level like this, smash, destroy?
She’d always been taught that love was patient, love was good. Love was kind. Love wasn’t selfish.
But that’s not how she felt. She felt angry. Fierce. And it was the waiting that had done this to her…to her heart.
The longing to hear from Maximos made every uncertainty roar to life, and when the silence stretched, when he didn’t call, when the days and weeks passed without a word she felt her security slip, her peace of mind crack.
His distance left the door open to fear and doubt.
Was waiting this hard for everyone? Did other women feel this way when alone…did they wonder like she did? Did they worry? Doubt?
Did other women approach love with more confidence, with less fear?
If she’d felt deeply and truly loved would she have been more grounded, less nervous?
What would life have been like if she’d been his true love instead of a warm body in his bed?
And every time he left her, she prayed he’d say, I’ll call you. And then she’d pray, let him call. Let him call soon. But he never did. He made her wait. And wait.
And slowly it broke her. It was the waiting for love that reduced her to this.
“Maybe it wasn’t love,” Maximos said, his shuttered gaze resting on her face. “Maybe it was lust and you thought it was love.”
Her lips tugged, emotions sharp, too intense. “I know the difference,” she whispered, thinking that the past seemed light-years removed, their volatile relationship part of someone else’s life…someone else’s experience, and even though the good feelings seemed so far away, she knew there’d once been good feelings in this relationship.
She looked at him, seeing his dark beauty, the hard lines and edges of Maximos Guiliano. Tall, powerful, authoritative. A Sicilian man who didn’t compromise.
Her heart squeezed inside her chest. If only he’d compromised for her…
“I loved how I felt when I was with you,” she said after a moment. “I loved how I felt when I looked at you. You gave me joy. You gave me peace. When I was with you I wanted nothing else, nothing more. Every moment was precious, every moment meant so much to me.”
“Yet you never saw us in the future. You never saw us growing old together.”
She looked at him strangely. “Why do you say that?”
Lines formed on either side of his mouth and for a moment he didn’t answer. Then his head shook, his features tightening. “I know I wasn’t good for you, and I know I—and our relationship—had hurt you.”
The relationship had hurt. After awhile. After the limitations had become too narrow, too restrictive, too binding.
“You didn’t give me a future.” She couldn’t look at him anymore, the heartbreak back, the feelings so sharp and bittersweet. “You didn’t allow me to dream. You made it clear from the start it was sex, and I tried to be content with sex.”
She exhaled hard, and drew another breath, the air hot, aching inside her lungs. “But I fell in love with you anyway. I couldn’t help it. You’re not like anyone I’ve known before.”
“You’ve been pursued by many successful men.”
“It’s not your success that makes you fascinating. It’s you—your darkness, your complexity, your sharp edges. You’re… dangerous, Maximos. And I know it. I’ve always known it.”
“Danger’s that attractive?”
She looked out over the deep blue water, trying to think of an appropriate answer, but all she saw was the ad campaign Italia Motors had hired her to do for their European market. The ads had been dark, moody, sexual. Nothing light or playful in the Italia Motors branding and she’d gotten that directly from Maximos herself.
One look at him and she wanted to slide out of her clothes and into close contact with him.
One night alone with him and she’d wanted every night with him.
“You’re that attractive,” Cass answered, ruefully. “You’re that man every woman dreams about—the dark handsome stranger, the forbidden—and I wanted that.”
“Forbidden.”
She shrugged. “There’s always an appeal to that which is out of reach, to that which we can’t have.”
“But you did get me. You did have me.”
There was something in his voice, in his tone, that reminded her of how she used to feel when alone with him—desired, sheltered, adored. God, how she’d loved being with him, being loved by him. It was the best feeling in the world. “And I just wanted more.” She tried to smile, but couldn’t.
Maximos’s
