Chapter Eleven
Rafael
I’m lying in bed, Olympia’s warm and very naked body sprawled over mine, her hair a silky black storm over my chest as I sift long strands of it through my fingers.
I want to be furious about the promise she made me give her, to leave that bastard brother of hers alone, but she surprised me.
I wasn’t expecting her to shoot back a demand of her own, though I should have.
She told me she wasn’t a doormat, and even though I didn’t need the reminder, I clearly underestimated her.
It was only that lying beneath me, naked and hungry, she should have been at my mercy.
I didn’t think I’d end up being at hers and yet she got that promise out of me somehow.
I could have taken what I wanted—she wouldn’t have been able to stop me, not with her hands tied—and I’d told her so.
Yet she’d only looked at me and said with absolutely no doubt in her voice that I wouldn’t, as if she knew me better than I knew myself.
And maybe she does. I’ve long since lost the privilege of having scruples or lines in the sand, and so one woman’s request to stop chasing the revenge that has driven the last ten years of my life shouldn’t have given me pause.
Yet it did. And looking into her dark eyes I knew she was right.
I wouldn’t take what she wasn’t willing to give, not without the promise she wanted, a promise she’d already given me.
But still, I wanted her and in that moment I wanted her more than I wanted to take Ulysses Zakynthos down.
So I’d given her my promise, telling myself that I didn’t mean it. That it was a lie, because after all I’d lied before and without any regrets whatsoever.
You meant it then and you mean it now.
Her hair slides like black silk through my fingers and I shove that thought away. What I will do is make sure of her promise to me before I take any action against Ulysses. I’ll marry her, secure my heir and look at my options then.
‘So,’ I say into the heavy silence. ‘Are you going to tell me what you meant?’
She shifts on me, hot silky skin sliding against mine, and my cock stirs, ready for another round.
But I won’t be distracted again so I ignore it.
She said she’d been through ‘things you can’t imagine’ and, since my imagination is excellent, I want to know exactly what she meant by that.
It can’t be anything bad, not when she’s been sheltered all her life in her brother’s villa on the Greek Riviera.
‘About what?’ She’s sprawled over my chest, her fingers drawing little circles on my skin, her body warm and soft against mine.
‘You said you’d “been through things”.’
‘Oh, that.’ Her attention is on my chest, her fingertips tracing the scars from a knife fight I got into years ago. ‘Seems like you’ve been through some things too.’
‘A knife,’ I say dismissively. ‘I’m going to be your husband, dragonfly. Which means I need to know everything there is to know about my prospective wife.’
She glances up at me. ‘Do you though? Do you really?’
‘Olympia,’ I say with a hint of impatience. ‘You made me a promise.’
‘To be your wife. Nothing else.’
Her eyes are full of challenge and I can sense the barrier behind them. A blank brick wall to keep people out.
Yes, they were bad things.
Something in my chest constricts. Her reluctance to tell me says it all, and suddenly I very much want to know what happened to her and make sure that if someone hurt her, I would hunt them to the ends of the earth to make them pay.
‘Did your brother—?’
‘No,’ she says sharply, cutting me off. ‘I told you, Ulysses would never hurt me.’
‘Then who? Someone hurt you, didn’t they?’ Letting her hair go, I reach out and touch her cheek gently. ‘Tell me, dragonfly.’
Much to my surprise and probably to hers too, her eyes fill with tears. She pushes herself away from me, making as if to leave, but I’m not letting her walk away again, especially not with those tears, so I reach for her, pulling her back into my arms and leaning against the headboard with her.
I don’t want to press, because clearly this is painful, but also I want to know. I want her to trust me enough to tell me, even though I don’t precisely know why I want that.
She’s stiff in my arms, resisting, but I don’t let go. ‘If you don’t want to tell me, that’s okay,’ I say in a gentler tone. ‘I won’t make you tell me. But I don’t like to see you cry.’
She’s silent, her head tucked under my chin, her cheek pressed to my chest. The stiffness in her body slowly ebbs until it’s gone and I feel the dampness of a tear on my skin.
The constriction in my chest tightens still further.
‘It’s all right,’ I murmur, pressing a kiss to the top of her silky head. ‘You can keep your secrets, dragonfly. I won’t force you.’
She takes a shaky breath and then says, her voice slightly muffled, ‘It’s been a long time since it happened. Years.’
I don’t say anything, leaving her space to talk if she wants to, but I keep my arms tight around her, letting her know she’s safe.
‘My mother died when Ulysses and I were very young. We had no relatives so we had to go into foster care. Ulysses tried to make sure we stayed together, but we were split up in the end. My foster parents were…not kind.’ Her voice is slightly hesitant, but there is a certain strength to it.
‘They took me in because they wanted the money the state paid them to look after me, not actually me. My foster father used to drink a lot and he was a monster when he was drunk. He would beat me for no reason, just for the pleasure of it, I think. My foster mother would tie me up at night and lock me in a closet because she didn’t want me “wandering around” at night. ’
Nothing gets to me these days. I’ve seen and heard things that would scar the hardest of men, but the words Olympia says, in a clear, calm voice, chill me to the bone.
Then, a second later, rage wells up inside me.
My muscles tense and clearly she can feel it, because she suddenly shifts in my arms, pulling her head away so she can look up at me.
Her cheeks are wet with her tears, but there’s no fear in them, only a calm strength that takes my breath away. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Don’t be angry.’
‘I’m not angry at you,’ I force out, my fingers already curling into fists, wanting to hit something.
‘I know you’re not.’ She’s very calm. ‘But I don’t want to have to reassure you about something that happened to me.’
That stops me in my tracks and I have to recalibrate. Because no, she shouldn’t have to deal with my anger on her behalf. Not given what she went through.
‘I don’t need you to reassure me,’ I say, forcing back my anger. ‘I’m just so sorry that happened to you, Olympia.’
She eyes me a long moment, then relaxes a little. ‘It’s okay,’ she says. ‘It’s just… I had to deal with Ulysses’s anger about it for years and, after a while, it’s just another burden I have to bear.’
I can only imagine. Her brother might be a bastard but it’s always been clear that he cares very much for his sister.
I tighten the lid on my fury and lock it. ‘How long were you there?’
‘In that foster home? A couple of years, I think. Ulysses actually rescued me in the end. He and some…associates of his stole me away. He was old enough by then to look after me and I’ve stayed with him ever since.’
I hate Ulysses Zakynthos, but right in this moment I don’t hate him. No, I’m thankful to him that he managed to rescue her and take her away from the people who were hurting her.
‘I had nightmares for years afterwards,’ she goes on.
‘And I was…quite fragile for a long time too. But…’ Her amber eyes darken as they meet mine, but her gaze is very steady.
‘I know what people are capable of and I know what cruelty looks like. I wasn’t ever sexually assaulted, because my foster father preferred girls over the age of twelve and so I wasn’t quite old enough for him.
But if I’d stayed there much longer, I would have been.
You think I’m a sheltered, spoiled girl, but I’m not. I’m not innocent, Rafael.’
I am trying very hard to keep the lid on my fury and failing.
And this time the fury is at myself for thinking that she was spoiled and sheltered.
Because now I’m looking into her eyes and I can see the strength there, the brick wall, the iron at the centre of her.
Whatever she went through as a child has hammered her on an anvil and made her into a sword, sharp and dangerous.
‘I can see that,’ I say. ‘But just so we’re clear, I never thought you were a doormat, Olympia Zakynthos. And you made that very obvious from the second we met.’
Her gaze flickers as if I’ve said something unexpected and colour flushes her cheeks. ‘I am sheltered,’ she says. ‘That much is true, but that’s because Ulysses was kind of a helicopter parent as I was growing up.’
‘Why?’ I ask straight out. ‘Did you need him to be?’
She sighs. ‘I did… At first. I don’t think any kid can go through something like that and not be traumatised in some way, and I was traumatised.
But Ulysses got me some great doctors and I came through it.
’ Her gaze holds mine. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful to him.
I love him for rescuing me and for looking after me.
For making sure the rest of my childhood was a good one.
But I’m stronger now and I’m tired of being cosseted.
I’m tired of being protected like a hothouse flower, and, more than anything else, I’m tired of being a living reminder of his failure to protect me and a receptacle for his guilt. ’
Of course she’s strong. I never thought of her as anything less and the evidence of that strength is sitting before me now, naked as the day she was born.
I have a feeling that what she just told me was the tip of the iceberg of what those pathetic excuses for foster parents had done to her, and, if so, no wonder her brother is consumed with guilt. I would feel the same.
But now I truly understand why she doesn’t want rage. If she’s had to bear her brother’s guilt and his anger for years, then she really doesn’t need mine, no matter how hot and strong it burns.
‘Then don’t be,’ I tell her. ‘You’re not his responsibility any more. When you’re my wife, you’ll be mine.’
She scowls. ‘I’m not anyone’s responsibility. I’m not a child.’
‘I didn’t say you were.’ I scowl back. ‘You’ll be my responsibility, which means that whatever you want, whatever you need, just tell me and I’ll give it to you.’
She eyes me. ‘Ulysses used to say the same things to me, you know.’
Abruptly I understand why she’s been so suspicious of me, not to mention so resistant.
Her brother was protecting her, I can see that from what she said, but he’s also been holding her back.
He’s been keeping her just like the hothouse flower she complained of being and now she’s afraid I’ll do the same thing.
I can’t deny that a part of me agrees with her brother, wanting to keep her safe and protected and away from all harm.
But I can also see the strength in the woman sitting on the bed.
She had a horrendous thing happen to her, but she went through the fire and came out the other side, battle-hardened and even stronger.
You can’t keep a woman like that trapped in a castle like Rapunzel.
She’s not a princess, she’s a knight, and knights are sent into battle, not kept within castle walls.
‘But I’m not Ulysses,’ I say flatly, meeting her stare. ‘And I won’t treat you like a cosseted child or a hothouse flower. I’ll treat you like you’re my wife, which you will be as soon as I can manage it.’
The darkness in her eyes flickers, the shadows in them moving, and I realise that I want to banish those shadows.
I want to banish that look of suspicion, of guarded wariness.
I want her to smile at me the way she did back in Singapore when our eyes first met.
She’s doing something to me and exactly what I don’t know, but there’s a part of me that doesn’t care.
‘And how would you treat a wife?’ she asks, still confronting, still challenging. She’s not going to let me get away with anything, is she?
And you like it.
Yes. I do. It’s been a long time since I’ve been challenged by anyone, let alone one pretty, young woman, and the feral part of me is excited by the thought.
‘I’ll have to think about that,’ I say. ‘Since I haven’t had a wife before.’
‘You’ve never had a child before, either,’ she says. ‘Or perhaps you do and you’re just not being honest—’
‘No,’ I say, cutting her off. ‘I don’t have any children. Like I told you, children have never been part of my plans.’
‘I suppose having revenge and having kids are mutually exclusive,’ she says and it’s not a throwaway line. She means it.
She’ll hold you to that promise you made her.
For the first time since I can remember, a cold, sharp doubt slides through me.
I wanted it all, revenge, her and my child, but…
using the baby in this way… That was the catalyst for all of this, my way to finally claim the justice I need for my father and my mother.
To take what is important to Ulysses away from him the way he took my family from me, and yet…
It feels wrong to use her and the child as a weapon against her brother. To use their lives to hurt him. It feels petty and punitive and…selfish, almost. A betrayal of trust.
That shouldn’t bother me, though. Who cares if I’m selfish or untrustworthy? After my father died, no one else’s opinion mattered. I don’t know why I’m letting it matter now, but I am.
‘Don’t you agree?’ she prompts and her stare is unflinching. ‘I mean, if you’re going to use our child as a way to hurt my brother then I don’t care what I promised you, I won’t marry you, end of story.’
My God. Why did I ever think she was an easy mark? Easy prey for me to feast on? She’s nothing but iron all the way through.
She will be an excellent mother for your child.
The thought winds through me, making the beast in me growl with approval at her strength. Because yes, she’s standing up to me and challenging me, and that can only mean double the protection for our baby.
She and I will make a formidable team.
I decide there’s no reason to prevaricate over this promise, since the only step I have to take to set my plan in motion is to marry her.
Those vows will ensure that my child is heir to Vulcan Energy.
Of course, it could be that Ulysses might have children of his own at some point, but I can reassess when the time comes.
‘I won’t ever use our child,’ I say and I realise that even as the words come out of my mouth, I mean it. In fact, I’ve never meant anything more in my entire life. ‘I give you my word.’
She stares at me a moment longer, then she nods. ‘Okay, good. So, back to the subject of being your wife. How exactly is that going to work?’