CHAPTER NINE
EVERYTHINGHADBECOME clear to him the moment he had buried himself deep inside of her.
She was his.
There was no question, there was no hesitation. Once he had claimed her, he would never go back to not having her.
“Your father will appreciate that,” she said, turning away from him.
He gripped her arm, and didn’t let her scamper across the room. “Are you implying that I only did this to try and secure access to the company? To try and secure some sort of approval from my father? Have you listened to nothing that I’ve said to you.” Rage was a living flame in his chest. But then, it always was.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Understand one thing, Ariadne. I have wanted you from the first moment I knew how a man could be with a woman. As certain as my brother ever was about his desires, mine were just as fixed. It was you. Why do you think I kissed you even knowing you were engaged to my brother? Why do you think I risked the spectacle? Because there was no risk. I either had you or I didn’t, and everything else was collateral damage. The only reason I didn’t steal you away is that you didn’t seem as if you wanted to go. I want you. I am also realistic enough to know that I would have destroyed us at least seven hundred different ways by now. I do not regret the way of things. I can’t. But you are mine now. After all this time, and if you think that has anything to do with money, or pleasing anyone but myself, then you are a fool.”
He released his hold on her.
“If you want me so much then why can’t you be civil for five blessed seconds?”
“Because there is nothing simple about desire like this. It has teeth. If you don’t understand that...”
She stood up, and he was overwhelmed by the sight of her naked body. He had seen countless women. They didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but her.
His sexuality had belonged to her from the first. He had not been lying or exaggerating when he’d said that.
But he also wanted her to be clear not to confuse that with softer, more refined feelings.
Theseus hadn’t felt passion for her, apparently. He felt nothing but passion for her.
And when he said that it was painful, he did not lie.
If he was a better man it might bother him that she didn’t feel the same. Or it might deter him. He wished that she did. He wished that she would burn right along with him.
“I have never been free, Dionysus. I married your brother when I was so young. And I committed myself to it long before we walked down the aisle. You’re asking me to chain myself to another man.”
“And one who looks just like the other one. People will think you have no imagination.”
“Stop it. You’re nothing like him. You’ve never been identical, not to me. I lied. I lied the night that you kissed me. Not just to Theseus, but to myself. I wanted to think that I imagined it was him. I didn’t. I knew that it was you, and I hated it. It terrified me. I never wanted... I don’t want this,” she said. “It hurts, you’re right.”
The beast within him was gratified to hear her say that.
“I have pushed it down, and pushed down all this time. All this time, Dionysus, because I was afraid that if I let it out I would... Am I my father? Or am I his endless succession of lovers, who can say? And I don’t like either one. I have never seen lust dressed up as romantic love become anything other than a weapon. You either destroy people with it or are destroyed by it, and I don’t want it. I chose what I thought was safer. I chose what felt...you just can’t be safe in this world, can you?”
“Perhaps not,” he said. “But I won’t leave. You have my word on that. If I could have let go of my need for you, then I would have done it a long time ago.”
“You sleep with women interchangeably. How could you possibly say that just because you’re attracted to me, and that attraction has endured, that you have experienced any kind of...”
“I was a virgin the night that I kissed you,” he said. “I wanted you. I didn’t want sex. When it became clear that I would never have you I gorged myself on sex. To prove to myself that it didn’t need to be you, to prove to myself that it didn’t have to mean anything. I have had all the partners that I could ever care to have. It didn’t take it away, Ariadne. Nothing did. I wanted you all the same, every time I saw you.”
It was his turn to stand, and he began to pace the length of the room. “You, my brother’s perfect wife. So buttoned up, so demure. You have any idea how badly I wanted to wreck that fa?ade? Do you have any idea how badly I wanted to... I thought about it. Kissing you, in your own home. With your husband in the very next room, I thought about it. I thought about violating your marriage vows in a hundred different ways, because I wanted to rid myself of that demon. Don’t tell me what I want. Don’t tell me what will fade. Do not try to minimize what I have felt for you because I chose a way to handle my solitude in a fashion you can’t quite understand.”
She shifted, her breasts moving along with her, and he couldn’t help but let his eyes drop down to their perfection.
“We don’t know each other,” she said. “Not anymore. I’m not certain we ever did. You thought all this time that I was in love with your brother. That I was... His lover, and I wasn’t. And I thought... I thought the kiss was a game to you.”
“Then you’re right,” he said. “We never knew each other. I thought we did. I thought here, in this place, you knew me in a way that nobody else did.”
“Did you love me, Dionysus?”
The words cut him like a knife.
“I thought I did. Yes. I got over it.”
“You just never got over the desire to see me naked?”
“What I got over was the idea that life might be a fairy tale. I was tempted to believe it when I met you. Because you were... Something bright in what had been darkness until that very moment. So yes, I thought it was love. It was the first blush of lust, and I didn’t know better. I stayed a virgin until I was twenty years old because of how badly I wanted you. I told myself that had to be true love, because what else could it be? But you are right. I also have never seen any evidence of romantic love being anything other than painful. Anything other than a shifting tide. Lust, that’s honest. The things that our body say that we want, that’s real. But it is a hunger like any other. And perhaps like your love of chocolate cake, my desire for you is simply innate. A preference. One that I couldn’t change if I tried. It will always be the thing that I want the most. But that is not love.”
“You don’t believe in love?”
“No. Not in any fashion. Life is a series of bonds that can be broken always. Depending on which angle you come at them from. I was a twin, Ariadne, there is no longer bond. I was formed in the womb with my brother, and in the end, we didn’t trust one another. I felt betrayed by him when he took you, even though he could not have known that I wanted you for myself. I didn’t tell him. I held back. Then I kissed you, and he felt like that was a betrayal, when to me it felt like being true to myself. But he was harboring his own secrets, and he didn’t tell me the truth. I would have said that bond was the closest thing to love, but was it? To have been given a brother that close, so close we even share facial features. And to not even be able to maintain that, that says more about Theseus and myself than anything else ever could.”
She was silent then, staring at him. “How do you see the marriage, then?”
“I will support you. As you run the business. I will be a role model to our child. You can tell my father whatever you need to. It doesn’t matter to me. As long as we know. You had a marriage based on friendship with Theseus, why should we be different?”
Because they were never really friends. They had been something different. He knew that. But maybe she didn’t feel it. And maybe she wouldn’t admit it now.
Even if she had.
“You will be faithful to me?”
“Of course. Have you listened to nothing that I’ve said?”
“I just find it hard to believe. You have seemed utterly uninterested in me these past years, and now you’re telling me... I don’t know how to look at you.” She repeated his own words back to him.
“You and I are both filled with secrets. We will have to start over.”
She nodded. “Yes. I would... I feel that we should wait to marry. An appropriate amount of time. We should wait until after the baby is born.”
“The baby we have yet to conceive?”
In spite of himself, he felt his body begin to harden again, at the mention of working to conceive a baby.
She was ruinous to him.
“You think in that way we can create a narrative that will make it appear as if we simply... Fell for one another in the absence of your husband?”
“Well, it’s better than making it look as if I jumped into your bed immediately following his death.”
“You did, though.”
“But I was never in his bed. Which you now know.”
“I don’t understand why the two of you didn’t carry on affairs,” he said.
She blinked. “I told you. What I wanted was to be safe. I wanted security. I didn’t want all of the dangerous things that came with passion. Not in the least. What I wanted was to have... I wanted to have safety. He was my safety. He was... He was meant to be everything. He would give me a home, he would give me a family, he would give me a baby. And he was my friend.”
“And that was enough for you.”
“It was. It was until it wasn’t enough for him anymore. It was hard to watch him struggle but he did find love. It wasn’t going to be forever but at that point I trusted that I wouldn’t lose him even if we divorced. We were making a family together. I was supposed to have that.”
“And now you have me,” he said, somewhat ruefully.
She met his gaze. “I knew exactly what being married to Theseus would look like. He was very clear on it. There was not going to be any sex. In private we were best friends and in public we played our roles expertly. I knew exactly what it would look like, I could imagine it clearly even when I was younger. But I can’t imagine marriage to you.”
“More of this,” he said.
She looked away, her cheeks turning pink. “I’m having a hard time embracing this is something... Something it’s okay for me to want.”
“Here is what I can promise you. And don’t dismiss me this time. I will never trade you in for anyone or anything else. When I make vows I keep them. And I protect what’s mine. There is no greater truth than that.”
She moved closer to him, and his heart froze in his chest. Then she reached out and put her hand just there, over where his heart had ceased beating. And it started again.
“I’m tired of being lonely.”
Her words hit him strangely. Loneliness was simply part of life. At least, as far as he could see. As far as he could understand it. He didn’t know if there was any real way to fix that. Except when she touched him, he felt something quiet inside of him. He felt like he could breathe.
As if he was drawing a full breath for the first time in many years.
She leaned in and pressed her mouth to his. It was slow, achingly deliberate. There was no mistaking that she had chosen this. No mistaking that she meant to kiss him.
And when she pulled away, her green eyes were shining. “Yes, Dionysus. I’ll marry you.”