24. Jamison #3
I sat on the other side of the bed instead of crawling over her, which deserved recognition. “Three to five hours most days.”
Her hand lowered. “That much?”
“Combat training, weights, endurance, sparring, range work. Depends what the day needs.”
“Every day?”
“Most.”
“How do you have time?”
“I make time.”
“For exercise?”
“For being difficult to kill.”
She considered that with an earnest seriousness that almost made me laugh. “That makes sense.”
“Thank you.”
“I didn’t mean it as a compliment.”
“I’m taking it.”
She studied me again, less shy now. “Ballet takes that much time too. More sometimes.”
I turned slightly toward her. “Tell me.”
She seemed surprised by the request. Then suspicious in the way she became when words mattered too much.
“It’s just training.”
“Then tell me just training.”
Her fingers moved along the top edge of the blanket. “Class, rehearsal, conditioning, physio, stretching. A lot of repetition. A lot of tiny corrections that make you want to scream because nobody in the audience will ever know your shoulder was two degrees wrong for three weeks.”
“I’d know.”
Her eyes came to mine.
I had said it because it was true, not because it was kind.
I had watched enough clips in the past month to understand her shoulders, her ankles, the placement of her wrists, the frightening discipline beneath all that softness.
I had watched her dance long after midnight in my office like a man looking for evidence at a crime scene, irritated every time the evidence proved she was extraordinary.
“You would?” she asked.
“Yes.”
A silence followed.
She looked away first. “It’s all I have.”
The words were soft, almost lost beneath the rain.
My body went still.
“That sounded dramatic.” She drew the blanket higher, regret crossing her face.
Her lashes lowered. “My sisters have actual lives. Useful ones. Liora married into money with medical corridors attached, so she hosts dinners that move decisions. Amabel married shipping influence, and everyone pretends her salons are social when her guest lists change votes. Sabine married sweetly and still has education trusts, estate councils, a husband people want at tables, babies everyone counts before they’re born. ”
Her mouth curved without humor.
“They’re useful. Placed.”
Placed.
The word entered the room with all the ugly elegance of dynasty language. A daughter sent somewhere profitable. A wife turned corridor.
“And you?” I asked.
“I can’t carry anything important.”
My jaw tightened.
“If you ever marry me,” she said, careful now, “anything attached to my name becomes vulnerable to Crow claim. Business seats, voting trusts, shares, land-linked foundations, corridor authority. If it comes through me, Crow can touch it. Father says it would be reckless to build influence in my name while the merger sits unresolved.”
“So they left you empty.”
“They let me keep ballet.”
“That was yours already.”
“It was allowed because it didn’t threaten anyone.”
The anger that rose in me was patient and black.
Sienna kept speaking because she had not seen my temper shift. Or maybe she had and trusted it would point elsewhere.
“For three years, my social outings were with you,” she said. “Balls. Benefits. Launches. Cars. Tables. That made it look as if I still had a place.”
I looked at her.
The bed between us became a ledger I did not want to read.
She had been placed beside me because Bellemere couldn’t place her anywhere else.
I had made the placement miserable. I remembered cars where she tried to tell me about rehearsals while I took calls.
Ballrooms where she held out her hand because I had never given mine first. Bars where she ordered what I drank because she remembered details I had offered by accident.
Doorways where I left her behind with a polite smile frozen on her face.
Her social life had been a corridor I controlled without even caring.
“I thought you were waiting for Damius to die,” she said.
“That was your theory?”
“It made sense. Damius forced the old terms. Once he died, maybe you could negotiate your way out. End the debt. Offer my family something else.” She gave a tiny shrug. “But he won’t die. Too much biotech.”
“Too much spite.”
“That too.”
“His doctors call it longevity management.”
“That sounds prettier than refusing death.”
“Damius refuses everything until it signs.”
A small laugh escaped her.
She turned slightly toward me. “You’ll find another way.”
“You have faith in me escaping our merger?”
Her brows drew together. “I mean you’re clever.”
“To get away from you.”
“No.” She sat up a little, alarmed by the way it sounded. “No, I mean… you managed three years before we had our first dinner alone. That takes dedication. If anyone could find a way out of something impossible, it would be you.”
She was trying to comfort me.
That was the fucking horror of it.
Sienna Bellemere half naked under the sheets, was comforting me with the belief that I could free myself from marrying her.
I stared at the ceiling because looking at her became difficult in a way that had no use.
I could not find an easy place to put the knowledge that she had survived three years by believing I would eventually abandon her properly.
“Jamison?” she said quietly.
I looked back.
Her hair had fallen loose over one shoulder. She was trying to gather it without lifting the blanket too high. The ribbon she used for sleep sat on the bedside table near me.
I reached for it. “Turn around sweetheart.”
She hesitated, then turned her back to me.
I gathered the dark length carefully, threading it through my fingers.
It was cooler than I expected, thick and soft, holding the faint scent of her shampoo.
My hands looked wrong with it. Too large.
Too scarred. Accustomed to more violent work.
I took my time anyway, pulling it together at her nape, keeping the touch gentle because gentleness from me still felt new enough to startle her.
She sat very still.
I tied the ribbon once, then twice, making the bow sit straight. The memory of another bow tried to surface, pale blue satin around her waist, her thanking me as if one decent movement from me deserved worship.
She reached back and touched the ribbon. “You’re good at bows.”
“I have many talents.”
“How many involve tying things?”
My hand paused.
She froze as if she had surprised herself with the question. Heat moved through the room so fast it could have been another lightning strike.
I leaned closer, mouth near the side of her neck. “Enough to make that a dangerous question.”
Her breath caught.
I let her sit with it for one second.
Then I kissed her.
Only the side of her neck. Only once. A tiny inhale from her that nearly ended my saintly era on contact. I drew back before I turned worship into conquest.
“Good night, baby.”
She did not move for a moment. Then she turned only enough for me to see her cheek.
“Good night, Jamison.”
No Jamjam.
No hand.
Still, my name sounded less cold than before.
That would do for tonight.
She lay down facing away from me. I switched off the lamp and lay on my back with a measured distance between us, though every part of me wanted to drag her into the curve of my body and lock the world outside until it learned manners.
Sienna slept first.
It took time. Her breathing stayed light for a while, changing every time I shifted, then gradually settled when I kept my hands to myself and my mouth shut.
I stayed awake.
Fucking feelings found me in the dark.
Guilt came first, thick and useless. I hated useless things.
Anger could be aimed. Desire could be fed or denied.
Guilt simply sat in the chest and made a man listen to echoes he would rather bury.
Sadness followed, quieter and more offensive, because it had no enemy attached. No throat to close a hand around.
Beside me, she slept.
I did not. She was inches away and years away at the same time. I stared up at the ceiling.
Emotional growth was fucking disgusting.