Twenty-Eight
Lukas
Amelia is stunning in the dress I’ve chosen for her.
Sheer lace covers her arms without concealing her smooth skin, while the rest of the dress is a tight-fitting ivory that brings out the green of her eyes. It’s modest enough to suggest elegance, but with a plunging neckline that hints at indecency.
She descends the stairs, graceful and poised, her makeup perfect and her scowl only for me, and I can’t breathe. She’s exquisite, she’s fierce, and she’s mine.
“You’re a vision, Amelia,” Bastien says before I’ve found my words, and I hate him a little for that.
“Thank you, Bastien,” she replies, giving him the smile I didn’t get.
I step forward, offering her my arm. “If I’d seen you like this on the night of the gala, I might’ve skipped the terrace and gone straight to the proposal.”
“Cute,” she says dryly as she hooks her hand around my elbow, “except you still haven’t proposed.”
“True,” I admit, then pull out the jewelry box I’ve saved for this moment, cracking it open to present the diamond ring within.
“Is it too late? Amelia Anderson, my beautiful Little Stray, I’ve lived so long without happiness before you came into my life, and you turned that around in one night.
Will you marry me and make me the happiest I can ever be? ”
“No,” she replies without hesitation, then plucks the ring from the box, pushing it onto her finger without even glancing at it. “But I’ll marry you to keep my sister safe, and me away from your dirty war.”
Bastien chuckles, heading outside to where the cars wait, along with a full contingent of bodyguards.
I pause, taking this moment of relative solitude, holding her left hand and letting my thumb brush against the ring she now wears. “I will never let anything happen to you,” I tell her. “You were mine from the first day I set eyes on you, and I’ll keep you safe with my last breath.”
She bats her eyes at me, dripping with insincerity. “So charming. Tell me, what of love in a marriage? Is it overrated in comparison to obedience and a good spanking?”
“I know this is… unorthodox,” I say carefully, “but love can develop once we’re married.”
Amelia pulls back her hand. “Usually it happens the other way around.”
“For centuries, women have married for reasons other than love. Status, money, protection.” I incline my head. “My offer isn’t without merit.”
She pats my chest condescendingly. “I know you’re about a million years older than me, but I didn’t know you were still living in the dark ages. Such a fossil.”
I clench my jaw, wanting to grab her by her slender neck, push her against the wall and pull that dress up, showing her here and now what it means to be married to me.
But instead, I straighten my suit jacket and clear my throat. “We should go,” I say, with a gentle tug in the direction of the door. “Bastien’s waiting.”
“And all my guests, too,” she adds airily. “You did send the invitations, right?”
She knows full well it’ll just be the three of us.
“You can tell your sister when this is all done.”
“Oh, my gosh, you shouldn’t have!” she cries in mock delight. “Is that my wedding present? A phone call?”
I clench my jaw as we walk outside into the chill, but she’s not finished needling.
“So thoughtful, such a nuanced choice,” she says as I open the car for her. “You take every opportunity to make my life seem like a prison.”
It’s an effort to shut the door carefully and not slam it.
I take a breath as I walk around to my side. It’s just her way, I remind myself. She only pushes because she yearns to see my dominance.
Though that’s more convincing when she’s aroused and naked, and less so when it’s in the cold light of day.
Once this is done, we’ll be married, and she’ll be mine in name as well as body. In time, she’ll come to love me.
And if she doesn’t? asks the voice of doubt in my head.
She will.
I climb in beside her, giving Tony the go-ahead. He peels out down the drive, Bastien following in his armored Rolls.
I’ve heard the way she whimpers my name. I’ve seen the unguarded look in her eyes when she comes. She needs a protector, I need a wife.
No, not even need. Want. And not just any wife, either.
Her.
I glance across at her and she’s looking straight ahead, feigning ignoring me.
But I don’t mind; it allows me a moment to enjoy her profile.
This woman is my obsession. She has been since that first night.
I thought I was punishing her because I could, because it amused me to, and because she so badly needed to be fucked.
But in truth, she was punishing me, showing me the loneliness and emptiness of my life.
Not anymore. Not after today.
“Stop staring at me,” she mutters.
“I’m admiring you,” I reply, meaning it.
She almost glances at me, a hint of color tingeing her cheeks, then she calls forward.
“Tony, how long until we reach the church?” A breathless little laugh. “Oh, how silly of me. The clerk’s office. So romantic.”
“About twenty minutes.”
“Thank you. Then I only have to endure nineteen more of this uncomfortable scrutiny.”
“A man is allowed to look upon his wife,” I murmur.
“We’re not married yet, Van Wyk.”
“During the ceremony, the officiant might expect you to know my name. It’s Lukas, by the way.”
“Does it matter? I didn’t think I had anything to say but ‘I do,’ when I don’t.”
“Pretend,” I suggest. “The more convincing you are, the more orgasms you get tonight.”
She glances at the back of Tony’s head as if to say we’re not alone then glares at me. “Is that supposed to be an incentive?”
“We could go the other way.”
“What, no sex if I behave myself? Now that is an incentive.”
“Not quite,” I say mildly, “and we both know that was a lie. No, I meant that if you don’t behave, I’ll force you to come again and again, until you’re an exhausted, sweaty puddle.
” I pause just long enough to enjoy her reaction.
“And then, when you’re begging me for a break, I’ll make you come some more. ”
Amelia finds something fascinating out of her window, but not before I see her cheeks burn red. “Why is everything a competition with you?”
“I have high standards. Just like you do.”
“Clearly not,” she replies. “Otherwise I’d have the day free.”
Tony turns a laugh into a cough, then catches my eye in the rearview mirror and snaps his attention to the road.
But I don’t mind Amelia talking to me like this. I like to see the fight in her. Some part of Amelia will never stop fighting me, and I’d be disappointed if she did.
It’s become a habit, like it’s our thing, our game.
In that, she’s so different from Juliette.
Maybe I shouldn’t be thinking of my dead wife on the day of my wedding, but I can’t help it. I’m certain she’s watching, wherever she is, smiling her blessing. She loved me, and it was always a regret I couldn’t love her back. But after twelve years together, I miss her. I always will.
Years of Juliette being ill, hollowed out by her deterioration, increasingly unreachable. The guilt of her death lingers, even though it’s mixed with relief. I should’ve been there, I should’ve stopped her. I should’ve seen it coming.
Yet part of me can’t help but feel it was an inevitability.
“Remember me as I was,” she tells me in one of her ever-rarer lucid moments, “not as I’ve become.”
She’s sitting in the sunroom, which she always found calming. We knew, by then, that her episodes were worsening, despite the best doctors Bastien could find.
“I’ll remember you as you are,” I reply. “Always so bright.”
She shakes her head. “Not so bright anymore.” She reaches for my hand and grips it with a strength that belies her frailty. “I’m so sorry.”
“Whatever for?”
Tears fill her eyes. “For leaving you. For not being the woman you need… or love.”
“You’ve been all I could ask for.”
“Always so carefully phrased,” she says, patting my hand. “We both know this is nearing the end. When I’m—”
“No, it’s not.” I drop to a knee beside her chair. “There’s a new experimental treatment in Switzerland…”
She gives me the look she always gives when I’m being indefensibly optimistic. “When I’m gone,” she continues with a firm voice, “I want you to mourn me for… about five minutes. And then go and find yourself someone you can love.”
I shake my head. “I’m not a man others want.”
“I want you,” she says wistfully. “Find someone to make you smile, Lukas. The way I used to. Do it for me, if not for yourself.”
“You’re smiling,” Amelia observes, breaking me from my reverie. “Why are you smiling? It’s not dark.”
“Am I?” I say wistfully. Maybe I was. “Just a memory.” One I’ve thought of several times in the past months, but it’s never made me smile before.
“Of what, torturing a kitten?”
“No, not exactly.”
Amelia gives me a strange look but doesn’t push again.
A few minutes later, Tony pulls up at the town hall in Rhinebeck, an attractive brick building in a small village, far quieter than the busy county clerk’s office. We’re the only ones here; I took pains to ensure that.
Tony climbs out, swiftly checking the area, and I walk around to Amelia’s side. She tries her door, discovers it won’t open, and glares at me when I open it for her.
“Child lock?” she says contemptuously, ignoring my offered hand as she climbs out. “That’s affirming.”
“I should’ve gone with the cuffs, shouldn’t I?” I take her hand and place it on my arm, holding it there while Bastien’s Rolls pulls up behind my Maybach, and his security spills from the third vehicle.
Amelia gives me that cute deer-in-the-headlights double-take she does so well, a slight tremble running through her. Then her jaw clenches. “I cut them all up.”
“Two weeks ago,” I murmur as the six security guards fan out, dividing the area between them with competent efficiency. “You don’t think I’ve bought more since then? They gave me a loyalty card.”
Amelia doesn’t respond. Instead, she watches our bodyguards with a furrowed brow. “Are we… safe?”
“Just a precaution.” I don’t want her worried. Not today.