low, hoarse. “I’m not sure I understand you, and I don’t know if it’s cultural, personal or a language issue. But do you want me to beg? Is that what you’re asking me to do?” Her chin lifted and tears sparkled in her eyes even as her heart burned as if it had been torched with fire. “Am I to go onto my knees in front of you, and plead my case? Is that what it would take to win your assistance?”
He didn’t move a muscle and yet the vast living room suddenly felt very small. “I do like you on your knees,” he said cordially, because they both knew that on her knees she could take him in her mouth, or he could touch her or take her from behind.
She drew a ragged breath, locked her knees, praying for strength. “I haven’t forgotten,” she said, aware that she was in trouble here, aware that she ought to go. Now. While she could. While she still had some self-respect left. “Although God knows, I’ve tried.”
“Why would you want to forget it? We had an incredible sex life. It was amazing between us.”
She could only look at him, intrigued by his memory of them, as well as appalled. Their sex life had been hot, but their marriage had been empty and shallow.
Obviously that didn’t trouble him. It probably didn’t even cross his mind that his bride had feelings. Emotions. Needs. Why should it? Drakon’s desires were so much simpler. He just needed her available and willing, as if she were an American porn star in a rented Italian villa.
“So on my knees it is,” she said mockingly, lifting the hem of her pale blue skirt to kneel on his limestone floor.
“Get up,” he growled sharply.
“But this is what you want?”
“No. It’s not what I want, not like this, not because you need something, want something. It’s one thing if we’re making love and there’s pleasure involved, but there’s no pleasure in seeing you beg, especially to me. The very suggestion disgusts me.”
“And yet you seemed so charmed by the memory of me on my knees.”
“Because that was different. That was sex. This is …” He shook his head, features tight, full mouth thinned. For a moment he just breathed, and the silence stretched.
Morgan welcomed the silence. She needed it. Her mind was whirling, her insides churning. She felt sick, dizzy and off balance by the contradictions and the intensity and her own desperation.
He had to help her.
He had to.
If he didn’t, her father was forever lost to her.
“I’ve no desire to ever see my wife degrade herself,” Drakon added quietly, “not even on behalf of her father. It actually sickens me to think you’d do that for him—”
“He’s my father!”
“And he failed you! And it makes me physically ill that you’d beg for a man who refused to protect you and your sisters and your mother. A man is to provide for his family, not rob them blind.”
“How nice it must be, Drakon Xanthis, to live, untouched and superior, in your ivory tower.” Her voice deepened and her jaw ached and everything in her chest felt so raw and hot. “But I don’t have the luxury of having an ivory tower. I don’t have any luxuries anymore. Everything’s gone in my family, Drakon. The money, the security, the houses, the cars, the name … our reputation. And I can lose the lifestyle, it’s just a lifestyle. But I’ve lost far more than that. My family’s shattered. Broken. We live in chaos—”
She broke off, dragged in a breath, feeling wild and unhinged. But losing control with Drakon wouldn’t help her. It would hurt her. He didn’t like strong emotions. He pulled away when voices got louder, stronger, preferring calm, rational, unemotional conversation.
And, of course, that’s what she’d think about now. What Drakon wanted. How he liked things. How ironic that even after five years, she was still worrying about him, still turning herself inside out to please him, to be what he needed, to handle things the way he handled them.
What about her?
What about what she needed? What she wanted? What about her emotions or her comfort?
The back of her eyes burned and she jerked her chin higher. “Well, I’m sorry you don’t like seeing me like this, but this is who I am. Desperate. And I’m willing to take desperate measures to help my family. You don’t understand what it’s like for us. My family is in pain. Everyone is hurting, heartsick with guilt and shame and confusion—how could my father do what he did? How could he not know Amery wasn’t investing legitimately? How could he not protect his clients … his friends … his family? My sisters and brother—we can’t even see each other anymore, Drakon. We don’t speak to each other. We can’t handle the shame of it all. We’re outcasts now. Bottom feeders. Scum. So fine, stand there and mock me with your principles. I’m just trying to save what I can. Starting with my father’s life.”
“Your father isn’t worth it. But you are. Stop worrying about him, Morgan, and save yourself.”
“And how do I do that, Drakon? Have you any advice for me there?”
“Yes. Come home.”
“Home?”
“Yes, home to me—”
“You’re not home, Drakon. You were never home.”
She saw him flinch and she didn’t like it, but it was time he knew the truth. Time he heard the truth. “You asked me a little bit ago why I’d want to forget our sex life, and I’ll tell you. I don’t like remembering. It hurts remembering.”
“Why? It was good. No, it was great. We were unbelievable together—”
“Yes, yes, the sex was hot. And erotic. You were an incredibly skillful lover. You could make me come over and over, several times a day. But that’s all you gave me. Your name, a million-dollar diamond wedding ring and orgasms. Lots and lots of orgasms. But there was no relationship, no communication, no connection. I didn’t marry you to just have sex. I married you to have a life, a home. Happiness. But after six months of being married to you, all I felt was empty, isolated and deeply unhappy.”
She held his gaze, glad she’d at last said what she’d wanted to say all those years ago, and yet fully aware that these revelations changed nothing. They were just the final nail in a coffin that had been needing to be sealed shut. “I was so unhappy I could barely function, and yet there you were, touching me, kissing me, making me come. I’d cry after I came. I’d cry because it hurt me so much that you could love my body and not love me.”
“I loved you.”
“You didn’t.”
“You can accuse me of being a bad husband, of being cold, of being insensitive, but don’t tell me how I felt, because I know how I felt. And I did love you. Maybe I didn’t say it often—”
“Or ever.”
“But I thought you knew.”
“Clearly, I didn’t.”
He
