by Stacia Kane
For a second she just sat there, totally confused. Why would he be so angry just because Carter was telling her something about demon tradition or culture or whatever? Lots of people grew up with cultural traditions; the whole “sons” thing was a bit sexist but wasn’t such a big deal, really. Demons were pretty paternalistic—not to mention sexist, judgmental, egotistical, superficial, and a whole host of other social evils—so how this was—
Then it hit her, with the force of a semi slamming into her head-on. He was vulnerable because she was human. He was vulnerable because he didn’t have sons to take over once he was gone, to strengthen his position. She remembered he’d mentioned it to her, all those months ago: “Half the Meegra was ready to overthrow Temp and put me in his place anyway—he never had any sons to take over.”
He was vulnerable because they couldn’t have children together. She was human. He wasn’t. It was physically impossible for them to—unless she did the ritual. The one he’d tried to talk her into just the night before, without ever once mentioning how important it might be for their future. Not his, not hers, theirs. The future that apparently didn’t matter to him anywhere near as much as it mattered to her.
All of this went through her mind in just a few seconds, a series of feelings like the images she got when reading people rather than coherent thoughts. Greyson must have seen them in her eyes or on her face; his went blank, the careful mask he presented to hide his emotions.
“Fuck.” The word was so quiet she wasn’t sure she’d actually heard it; for a dizzy moment she wondered if she’d somehow at this late date developed the ability to communicate telepathically.
Greyson closed the door very slowly behind him and stood perfectly still with his head bowed for a long moment. “Tera, Carter, Malleus, would you mind leaving us please? I think Megan would like to talk to me alone.”
Chapter 18
She sat on the couch, unable to move. Unable even to look at the others as they retrieved Nick from the bedroom and left; she felt their eyes on her but refused to give them hers back. They’d all known this too, hadn’t they? This was why Tera didn’t seem to think she had any kind of future with Greyson, why Nick had interrupted Malleus and Malleus had interrupted Carter. They’d all known it, and they’d all kept it hidden from her. While she’d swanned along, tra-la-la, thinking—fuck. Just, fuck.
Ice cubes clinked into glasses, then cracked when liquor hit them. She didn’t particularly want to be grateful to him for a damn thing at that moment but she certainly hoped he was pouring for both of them.
He was. She grabbed the glass he set in front of her as if it was a jug of water in the middle of a desert and knocked it back, not stopping until the ice hit her nose. Good but not good enough. She held the glass up and listened to him refill it.
“So,” she said, picking up the refill. It was harder than she’d thought not to look at him. Part of her insisted she was wrong, that she was reading things into this, imagining a situation that didn’t actually exist. Any second now he was going to ask her what was wrong, kiss her head or pull her into his arms on the couch . . . it wouldn’t be the first time he’d sent others out of the room so he could be alone with her.
But not this time. She knew it, and every stupid hope, every silly fantasy she had, faded with each passing second.
And the bastard wasn’t even going to speak first. He was going to let her do it, he was going to take that tactical advantage from her. Jesus, was everything a fucking game to him? Had he ever even cared about her at all?
Those questions choked her, fought to jump out of her throat and fling themselves at him in suicidal leaps. She refused to let them. Instead she said, “So who are you marrying, then?”
“Jesus, Meg. You don’t pull any fucking punches, do you.”
“Me? Me? I’m not the one who’s been lying all this time, I’m not the one who’s been planning behind your back and leading you on—”
“Not—damn it, do you think this is what I want?” The frustration and pain in his voice sounded genuine enough, but she couldn’t trust that, and she couldn’t look at him.
“Why wouldn’t you? You’d—oh, right. Of course. I’m supposed to be your mistress, right? Or do I not even get to do that?”
Long pause. She stole a glance at him, quickly so he wouldn’t see her looking. At least that’s what she tried to do. Her head didn’t seem to be in her control. None of her body did; she had to squeeze her glass hard as she lifted it to her lips, because she couldn’t seem to feel the cold against her fingers.
Finally he spoke. “When was I supposed to tell you? Right at the beginning, when neither of us had any idea where this was going? You’d just been attacked and betrayed by demons. You’d just found yourself attached to them. Would that have been a good time to inform you that if you wanted to marry me one day, you’d need to become a demon? Assuming I did end up in a position where it became necessary?”
“You had plenty of other chances,” she snapped. Arguing with a demon was bad; arguing with a lawyer was bad. Arguing with a demon lawyer was infuriating.
“Oh, sure I did. I could have mentioned it right away, when Roc told you about the ritual and you insisted you didn’t want to do it. Or any other time since, when you insisted you didn’t want to do it. What the fuck was I supposed to do?”
“You should have told me. You should have let me know this was—”
“Meg, darling, last night you refused to do the ritual even to save your own life. Was I really supposed to assume being with me was more important than that?”
Shit. He had her there. Mostly. “Don’t you think I was entitled to all the facts? Don’t you think I had a right to know all the reasons to do it, all the implications?”
He took a step toward her, then stopped when she glared at him. His face was pale, a little drawn; he looked extremely tired. She fought her instinct to get up and put her arms around him, cursed the fact that even in the middle of this conversation, that was her instinct. That no matter how hurt and angry she was—and both boiled in her stomach like a bowl of acid full of nails—she still loved him.
He leaned back against the wall. One hand clutched a glass full almost to the rim with straight scotch; while she watched he drank half of it off. “What if I had?”
“What?”
“What if I had told you?” His tone echoed oddly in her ears. Either she was on her way to drunk—she realized her second drink was almost gone—or he was simply speaking very quietly, in a subdued way she’d never heard. “What if I’d picked a moment—I don’t know, three months ago or six months ago, or when the subject first came up—and we’d discussed it? What would you have done?”
“I don’t know. That’s not the point, the point is—”
“No, that is the point. That is exactly the point. When was I supposed to put that kind of pressure on you? On us? Would you have appreciated that? Some guy you’ve been seeing for a couple of months suddenly telling you about the ways you have to change your life if you want things to go farther? What if you’d decided it was too much for you to deal with and you’d left? Or what if you had done it?”
Her mouth went dry, as if she’d been drinking cotton balls instead of gin. “So you don’t even want me to do it, that’s what you’re saying.” She stood up. “You—fuck you, Greyson. I’m out of—”
“Sit down.”
“Don’t tell me—”
“Sit down.” Pause. “Please.”
It wasn’t the most gracious request she’d ever heard, but he generally didn’t say please unless it was something important. Something he really wanted—no, she was not going to start thinking about that.
She sat down, though. “What.”
“What if you had done it, just for me,” he said, as if the interruption hadn’t taken place at all. “What if I’d somehow found just the right moment to bring it up—not too early, not too late—and you’d been understanding of why I hadn’t mentioned it before, of cour
se, since as time went on it became more and more glaringly obvious that I was leaving it too late. What if all that had gone perfectly, and you’d done it, and you regretted it? And blamed me? Would you like to spend the rest of your life resenting me because of everything you gave up for me?”
“That’s not fair,” she replied, but she couldn’t put a lot of strength behind it. He did have a point there. It didn’t make hers any less valid, but he did have a point. “You didn’t give me a chance to make a decision.”
“Life isn’t fair, darling. That may be banal, but it is unfortunately true. I didn’t think it was very fair of me to ask you to give up everything, not when neither of us knew where we’d end up and you didn’t seem particularly interested in finding out. And then I didn’t think it was fair of me to ask you to give up everything when you were so adamant about not wanting to. And let’s be clear on this, since we’re laying our cards on the table, so to speak. When I say give up everything, I mean everything. You wouldn’t be able to keep doing your job, not the way you do now. Certainly the radio show would have to go. It makes you too vulnerable. And yes, there would have to be children as soon as possible. You’ve never even really mentioned wanting them.”
Of course she wanted them. But when was she supposed to bring that up? How far into a relationship did one start talking about having children and not be seen as some grasping, desperate female with an iron biological clock attached to her ankle? Especially when she knew they couldn’t have them naturally. Just as there were—well. She guessed she understood what he was saying, after all.
But the rest of it . . . Yes, she loved him. She wanted to be with him. Wanted to marry him. None of that was a surprise. But her work? Her radio show?
“What do you mean, I wouldn’t be able to work? Too vulnerable how?”
“Oh, come on, Meg. It can’t have escaped your notice that someone is trying to kill you.”
“But that’s not—”
“No, we don’t know who it is or why. It may be you, it may be me. And in the years to come it probably will be me. You’re not stupid. You know not all of my business is legal and that it sometimes involves disagreements that can’t be settled with a friendly meeting. Sometimes problems have to be eliminated. Sometimes warnings have to be given. To have you out there, working a job that requires you to be alone with strangers, one that puts you in the public eye? Bad enough you do it now. If we’re married? Impossible.”
Her glass was empty, and she didn’t feel as if she’d managed to swallow a drop of it. “Why do I have to give up my job? Why can’t you give up yours?”
“What?”
“No, really. Why can’t you give up your job if it’s so dangerous? Why do I have to be the one who loses everything? I mean, if we’re really talking about this here, and not just as some kind of abstract concept. Why do I have to stop working, stop being human, stop being anything at all, and you give up nothing? Hell, Greyson, you don’t even have to quit dating, apparently, you could just get yourself a series of girlfriends on the side and—”
“Jesus, is that what you think? Do you really trust me that little?”
“It’s not a matter of not trusting you. I don’t even know what you want! You haven’t even said, this whole time, what you want. You’ve never said how you feel about me, where you want this to go. How am I supposed to even consider all of this when I don’t even know how you feel, you won’t even tell me?”
“What? You don’t know how I—for fuck’s sake, what do you think we’ve been doing for the last year? Do you even know me at all? Do you think I’ve just been playing with you this whole time? Do you have any idea how vulnerable being with you makes me, how dangerous it is for me—”
“Oh, sorry, I don’t mean to inconvenience you.”
“God damn it, that’s not what I mean and you fucking know it. Or shit, maybe you don’t. I thought you did. I thought we didn’t need some fucking words—which you’ve never said either, may I remind you—to know where we stood.” He shrugged and stared at his empty glass as though he’d never seen anything like it before. “I thought we meant more to each other than that, frankly.”
Shit. He had to go and say that, didn’t he? This time she couldn’t stop the tears; they rolled down her cheeks, almost faster than she could wipe them away. They were talking about marriage and children, they were saying all the things she’d hoped they’d say someday, had assumed they would say—he was right. She had known where she stood. She had thought the words weren’t important.
But this didn’t feel the way she’d thought it would. Didn’t feel like a beginning. It felt like the end.
Because it was. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t give up her humanity, her job, and her radio show to become a sequestered housewife. There was nothing in the world wrong with being a stay-at-home mother or stay-at-home wife; she’d always assumed that she’d give up work for a few years if—when—she had a baby, that she’d arrange her schedule to be home after school once her child reached that age. It was one of the benefits of doing her kind of work.
But she’d never planned to give up her career entirely, for good. Not for five years but forever. And she’d always assumed—damn it, she’d always assumed it because it was the way it was supposed to be—that it would be a decision she made, one they made together. Not an edict. Not a condition. But a choice.
“If you really loved me,” she managed finally, “you’d want to be with me anyway. You’d figure something else out. But the way you want it, I give up everything, and you get everything. You won’t give up your life, I have to give up mine. You won’t give up your work, I have to give up mine.”
“Be reasonable, Meg.” The pleading look on his face would have broken her heart if it hadn’t already been shattered. “I make seventy or eighty times what you make. You wouldn’t have to work. You could spend your days doing anything you wanted—”
“But what I want to do is work!” Fuck. For someone who was supposed to be good at resolving conflicts, she was not doing a great job. But then it was always so much harder when it wasn’t simply advice given to others; the path wasn’t so clear when you were walking on it yourself. “I worked hard to get where I am, Greyson, it’s important to me.”
“And my work is important to me. And far more lucrative.”
“I didn’t get a PhD so I could become your fucking concubine.”
He winced. “It wouldn’t be—forget it. You’ve obviously made up your mind. I’m a scumbag who wants to use you and lock you in a basement.”
“That’s what it feels like.” The words came out hoarse, forced through her aching throat. “Greyson, can’t you see, making me give up my job and everything—I don’t think I can do it.”
He poured himself another drink, glanced back at her glass. She nodded, and he took it and filled it. For a moment the only sound in the room was him draining his glass and filling it again.
“There is another option,” he said. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but there is, if it’s what you want. You—”
“If you suggest I be your girlfriend on the side, I will slap you.”
“What the hell do you want, then, Meg? You don’t want to marry me because of everything you’ll have to give up. You don’t want me to marry somebody else because—I don’t know why. Do—”
“You don’t know why? You can’t even imagine why I might not want to be your other woman?”
“I told you yesterday, it’s not like that. An arranged marriage is only—”
“An arranged—oh.” The penny dropped then; she couldn’t figure out how or why it took so long, but it did. “Win’s daughter, right? Leora. That’s why she’s here, isn’t it?”
He sighed. “Yes. Yes, Win wants me to marry her.”
“And what did you tell him?”
She waited for his answer, waited through one of the longest and loudest conversational pauses she’d ever experienced in her life. She’d started to wonder again if this
was simply a terrible nightmare, and he wasn’t speaking because she was about to wake up, when he said, “I told him I’d think about it.”
“You told him you’d—you’re thinking about it? You’re fucking thinking about it?”
“I was trying to put him off until I had a chance to talk to you, to really explain. I wanted you to go to Florence with me, remember, I thought we could—”
“No. I can’t fucking believe you would do that to me. Now Win thinks you’re considering making me your mistress? Who else knows that? Did you even think how that makes me look?”
“Did you even think how it makes me look, to have you refusing to do the ritual for me?”
“You never asked me to do it for you!”
“Fine.” In a flash he was across the room, hauling her to her feet by the shoulders and looming over her, his dark eyes flaring red, his body throwing off heat like a furnace. “I’m asking you now, Meg. Will you do it for me? Do the ritual and be with me. Give up your job and be with me. Marry me, damn it.”
His lips cut off any answer she could have made.
Chapter 19
Harder, and harder still. It wasn’t just a kiss, it was a demand; it was him taking charge of her, taking control. And in the blink of an eye she was controlled, helpless in his arms, her own twining around his neck, tasting salt from her tears as their lips devoured each other’s and the flaring bright energy in her, his energy pouring into her, threatened to send her over the edge before anything even happened.
His lips left hers to travel down her throat, kissing, biting. His fingers squeezed her ribs almost hard enough to hurt. “Please, bryaela. Please.”
She wanted to say yes. Would have wanted to say yes even if his hand hadn’t slid up under her shirt and found her breast, even if his mouth hadn’t found her earlobe and was sucking on it the way he knew she loved.
But she couldn’t. She couldn’t because he’d lied to her; no matter what his reasons or how sensible they were, he’d kept something that important from her. She couldn’t because asking her to give up her job and her show would have been different if he hadn’t presented it as a requirement.
