Freya had been more than merely inexperienced. She’d been a virgin.
His chest tightened.
Why hadn’t she told him?
Slowly she rolled over, her black orbs fixing straight onto him.
The tightness in his chest turned into a cramp.
For a long time neither of them spoke.
‘You were a virgin.’ This time he posed it as a statement.
She gave the briefest, jerkiest of nods.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
She swallowed and blinked rapidly. ‘I couldn’t.’
‘Why not?’
Clenching her jaw, she shrugged.
‘If I’d had the slightest idea you were a virgin, I would never...’
‘Never have what?’ she interrupted, suddenly fierce, her neck and face turning the colour of crimson, the obsidian in her eyes spitting at him. ‘Stolen me? Blackmailed me? Wrecked my life? Forced me to give up my job in a company I love? Does my being a virgin somehow improve me? Does my innocence make me a better, more worthy person?’
The tenderness he’d felt towards her vanished as a flash of lava-like anger coursed through him. At her. At himself.
At himself for blackmailing a virgin into marriage.
At Freya for putting money above her own morals, or whatever it was that had caused her to reach the age of twenty-three years untouched.
‘Innocent? You signed a contract exchanging your body for money!’
‘No, I signed a contract of marriage. You read that contract without any context and made assumptions about me because it suited your agenda. Not once did you ask why I chose to sign it. You were determined to punish Javier and to hell with who got hurt while you did it.’
‘You wanted the money. You made that very clear.’ He leaned forward so his nose almost touched hers, delivering his words with ice-cold precision. ‘Paint yourself as a sainted martyr if you must but no one forced you to sign those contracts. No one forced you to marry me. No one forced you into my bed, and no one, no one, forced you to enjoy being in it.’
Her face became aflame with colour but she didn’t back down. ‘Who said I enjoyed it?’
He slid his hand around her neck and rested his cheek against hers, ignoring her attempt to rear out of his hold. Speaking into her ear, he whispered, ‘You came undone in my arms, ma douce, and that is why you are so angry now. You hate that you desire me and you hate that what we just shared proves the self-control you take such pride in is built on sand. If I were to kiss you now, you would come undone all over again.’
‘Get your hands off me,’ she said with such venom her words landed like barbs on his skin. ‘Do not forget my body belongs to me. I am not your chattel.’
He did more than move away from her, he threw the duvet off and climbed out of the bed to stride to his bathroom. Over his shoulder, as if delivering a throwaway comment, he said, ‘I’m going to take a shower. Feel free to use my absence to return to your own quarters.’
He could feel the burn of her stare as he locked the bathroom door.
Alone, he pressed the palms of his hands tightly against the cool white tiles and took a deep breath, then another, and another, fighting the urge to punch the walls until his knuckles bled.
The world had turned itself upside down in a matter of seconds.
Dieu, she had been a virgin.
Stepping into the shower, he turned the temperature up as high as he could bear and scrubbed vigorously at his skin, determined to rid himself of the grubby, scaly feeling cloying in his pores.
When he’d finally rubbed himself raw and returned to the bedroom, Freya had gone.
* * *
‘This is where you’ve been hiding.’
Freya looked up from the bench she was sitting on under the cherry tree, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand.
Benjamin walked towards her, a bottle of water in his hand, a wary smile on his face.
‘I’ve been looking for you,’ he explained with a shrug.
Feigning nonchalance at his unexpected appearance although her heart immediately set off at a canter, she stretched her legs out. On this scorching summer’s day, he’d dressed in black jeans and a dark blue shirt, his only concession to the sun his rolled-up sleeves. She couldn’t detect an ounce of perspiration on him whereas little beads trickled down her spine even though she wore a cotton summer dress.
‘I went for a walk.’ She fixed her gaze on the spectacular view surrounding her.
She had woken before the sun, everything that had passed between them that night flashing through her on a reel before she’d been fully conscious, sending her jumping out of the bed and into the shower.
So early had it been that when she’d hurried to the kitchen not a single member of staff had been awake.
She’d found an avocado and a banana that would suffice for her breakfast and forced them down her cramped throat and stomach. And then she had set off, walking the forests and fields of his estate, keeping her legs moving, needing to keep them moving, her usual way of expelling her emotions still denied her and would always be denied when she resided under Benjamin’s roof.
She had never needed to dance as much as she did then, never felt that the fabric of her being could fray at the seams without the glue she had learned to depend on.
He sat next to her and offered her the water bottle.
‘Thank you.’ She took it from his hand being careful not to let their fingers brush, instinctively knowing just one touch would be her undoing.
She needed to keep her focus. Had to. She would not let what was happening inside her derail the future she had worked so hard for and which her parents had sacrificed so much for.
But Benjamin awoke her senses so they all tuned into his frequency just with his presence. Her nose begged her to lean closer so she could smell his gorgeous scent better, her fingers itched to slide over and touch those muscular thighs inches from her own...
She didn’t want this. Not any of it. When he’d asked after the wedding if she wished she’d married Javier instead, the answer that had screamed through her head had been a resounding yes.
And that had been before they had made love.
If she’d married Javier there wouldn’t have been any of this angst tormenting her, there would have been only indifference. None of the hate. None of the passion.
None of the joy she had discovered in Benjamin’s arms...
Hands trembling, she drank heavily from the water bottle then wiped the rim and handed it back.
Silence fell between them until he broke it by saying, ‘This was my mother’s favourite spot.’
Freya had discovered this unexpected patch of paradise by accident a few days ago. The bench and its overhanging cherry tree were in a small clearing accessed through a short cut-through in his forest, sitting on the crest of a hill. Fields of all colours sprawled out for miles below them.
It was just a bench under a cherry tree but there was something so calming about the setting she’d sought it out again.
‘Was this your family home?’ she asked.
‘My family home was in a suburb of Paris. My mother always said she would move to Provence when her children were grown up and Clara retired from the ballet.’
‘Clara Casillas?’
He nodded. ‘My mother was her seamstress. She worked for the ballet company in Paris where Clara first made her name. Remember I told you of the closeness between them? Clara refused to let anyone else make her costumes. They denied it but I am sure they deliberately got pregnant at the same time so they could raise their babies together.’
‘You and the Casillas brothers?’ she asked cautiously, afraid to break their tenuous cordiality by saying the names she knew were like a red rag to a bull.
Another nod. ‘We saw the world with them.’
‘You were lucky. I would have loved to have seen her perform in the flesh.’
‘I found the ballet as boring as hell. I wanted
to play football, not be stuck in a theatre. But I had Javier and Luis. We would sneak off together and kick drink cans in theatre car parks or try and spy on the dancers undressing. We had the run of the backstage when performances were on and we made the most of it.’
A bubble of laughter burst from her lungs. ‘I can’t imagine Javier doing any of that.’
He met her eye, a tinge of amusement in his stare. ‘He joined in grudgingly—he was always the serious one. Luis and I were always the instigators of any trouble.’
‘Did Chloe not join in?’
‘We were ten when she was born. By the time she was old enough to get into trouble with us it was over.’
Neither of them needed to say why it had been over. The story of Clara Casillas’s death at the hands of her own husband was still a tale rehashed ad nauseam by the press and ghoulish television producers. The friendship between Benjamin and the Casillas brothers had endured...until mere weeks ago.
‘Did your mother buy the chateau after Clara died?’ she asked.
‘She was a single mother by then—my parents divorced when she fell pregnant with Chloe. I bought the chateau for her to end her days in when we learned the treatment for her cancer had failed. I would carry her here to sit on this bench when she was too weak to walk any more.’ He lifted his head to look up at the branches of the cherry tree hanging sweetly over them. ‘We planted this tree when she died seven years ago. Her ashes are buried under it.’
Freya jumped up. ‘I’m sorry. I had no idea...’
‘Sit back down, ma douce. This is not a shrine for her. It is a celebration of her memory, and if there is an afterlife I know my mother will be delighted that you, a dancer she would have loved, were sitting in the spot she loved so much and enjoying the same views that gave her such peace. Please, sit.’
She sat back down gingerly, trying to process what he’d just revealed to her.
Benjamin had said his mother died seven years ago. Hadn’t he said before that Javier and Luis had gone to him for the money they’d needed to buy the land for the Tour Mont Blanc building seven years ago too?
These were both things she already knew but only now did she put the two dates together.
Had they gone to him when his mother was dying? Had they taken advantage of the grief he must have been dealing with—and she knew what that felt like, a ticking time-bomb hanging over your head...?
‘Javier and Luis were with me when we planted the tree,’ he said, breaking into her thoughts with words that made her certain he’d been able to read what she’d been thinking. ‘She loved them. I thought they loved her too. The night Clara was killed, it was my mother who comforted them...’
‘You were there that night?’ That was not something she had known.
He nodded. His jaw had tightened. ‘It was after the performance. We were in a hotel across the road from the theatre babysitting Chloe so none of us were there to see or hear what went on between them. My mother woke us to tell the news. She held those boys in her arms the whole night. After they were taken to Spain by their grandparents, my mother made sure they still saw us. They stayed with us many times.’ Benjamin swallowed the bile forming in his throat. ‘After Clara died, Javier and Luis’s visits were the only things that could make her smile. She became like their second mother. They visited her when she was ill. Luis visited so many times the hospital staff assumed he was her son. She never corrected them. She liked them thinking that.’
He had no idea why he was revealing all this to her. These were things he never spoke of.
But the past had become so entwined with the present in recent months that he found it a relief to finally speak of it.
In truth, he owed it to her. Freya deserved to know.
What had she said that first night, about being able to sleep soundly? That his conscience should prevent it?
He understood now what she’d meant. His sleep had been fractured, in and out of wakefulness, his mind a constant whirl.
He still couldn’t believe she had been a virgin, did not see how it was possible to reach the age of twenty-three untouched, especially in the hotbed of the ballet world. But the proof had been there, undeniable.
He’d taken her virginity and the more it played on his mind, the worse he felt, sicker in himself.
Her husky voice carried through the humid air. ‘When did they ask you for the money?’
‘The day she got the terminal diagnosis. They knew I had the money.’ He looked at her, his heart tugging to see the glimmer of compassion ringing in eyes that normally only rang with loathing. ‘I knew my mother wasn’t going to survive it even before we had it confirmed. I’d already made up my mind to buy the chateau for her.’
He’d known the romance of its architecture and its spectacular views would be a tonic to his mother’s cancer-ravaged body and he’d been right. She had spent the last three months of her life there and slipped away peacefully.
He had kept the dire financial situation buying the chateau had left him in from her.
He cleared his throat before continuing. ‘I had the cash available to buy it outright. It was a lot of money. The chateau had undergone a complete renovation so was priced high.’
‘They knew?’
‘Of course they knew.’ He didn’t hide his bitterness. ‘They knew everything. They knew taking my money to finance Tour Mont Blanc meant I would have to take a mortgage to buy the chateau. They knew I overextended myself. They knew when I got into financial trouble over it and was on the verge of bankruptcy. They knew I only gave them that investment because it was them and I trusted them as if they were my own blood. I never blamed them for the situation I got myself in but I gave them that money in good faith and then I learned they had taken it in bad. They knew the terms we agreed verbally were different from the terms on the contract.’
‘So your revenge really wasn’t about the money then,’ she said in the softest tone he had ever heard from her lips. ‘They hurt you.’
‘They did not hurt me,’ he dismissed. ‘They betrayed me and kept the lie going for seven years. I was going to donate the profit to a charity that helps traumatised kids. Javier and Luis had to deal with one of the most traumatic things a child could go through but they had been lucky to have family and my mother to help pick up the pieces. Other children aren’t so lucky or resilient. They haven’t just stolen from me but those children too. I’m fortunate that all the hard work I’ve put into the business in the past seven years has left me with a sizeable fortune. I’m in the process of liquidating some assets so I can still donate the money but it should never have come to this. They are thieves. They have stolen my money and robbed me of my childhood memories. Everything is tainted now. I think of them carrying my mother’s coffin with me into the church and want to rip their heads from their necks.’
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Beside him, Freya remained silent but he could feel something new emanating from her that he had never felt before, something that was neither loathing nor desire and flowed into his skin like a balm.
‘Do you feel better now you have taken me from Javier?’ There was no malice in her voice, just simple, gentle curiosity. ‘Do you feel avenged?’
‘There is some satisfaction to be had but do I feel avenged...? When I have had my revenge on Luis too, then I will feel avenged.’
‘What are you planning to do to him?’
‘I am still thinking.’ Trying to think. His thought process had been awry since Freya had been under his roof, her presence even when not in the same room taking all his focus.
‘I don’t suppose there’s any point in saying that sometimes it is better for the soul to let things go,’ she said quietly. ‘But I will say this—please, for the sake of your soul, don’t involve anyone else in it. This is between you and the Casillas brothers. Don’t let anyone else suffer for it.’
‘I don’t want you to suffer.’ He took another deep breath and looked up at the cobalt sky, the distant
wispy trail of an aeroplane the only thing to cut through the skyscape, then got to his feet. ‘Come back to the chateau with me. I have something to show you which, I hope, will make you feel more at home here.’
‘What is it?’
‘The reason I spent an hour searching for you. Your wedding present from me.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FREYA FOLLOWED BENJAMIN into the chateau and up the stairs, apprehension colliding with the ache in her heart at all he had confided in her and which she needed to sit down and think about properly to digest.
She had never thought her heart would ache for him but it did. Badly.
How could Javier treat his oldest friend in that way? And she didn’t doubt a word of it. What he and Luis had done was so much worse than merely ripping him off of a fortune. It was a betrayal of biblical proportions.
She shivered to think that was the behaviour of the man she had intended to marry.
When they reached the second floor, Benjamin stopped outside a door that was, she judged, positioned above his own quarters. This was a floor of the chateau she had made a cursory search of on her first day when seeking a dance space and quickly forgotten about. All the rooms up there were laid in thick carpet that would act like a grip on her pointe shoes.
His eyes were on her. ‘Open it.’
‘It’s not a cell, is it?’ she asked with a nervous laugh.
He shook his head. ‘For once trust me and open the door.’
She stifled the instinctive retort of trust having to be earned.
Benjamin had opened himself up to her. Only a small part, she knew, but it was enough for her to see him with eyes not quite so prejudiced.
He’d made an effort to build a bridge between them and for that she would, this once, place her trust in him and do as he asked.
Holding her breath, Freya opened the door a crack and peered through. The smell of fresh paint hit her immediately.
Then she blinked, certain she was seeing things. But no, she wasn’t seeing things. This was a dance studio.
She pushed the door fully open and stared in stunned, disbelieving awe at what had been revealed before her.
Billionaire's Bride for Revenge (Billionaire?s Bride for Revenge) Page 11
