A Baby to Bind His Bride

by Caitlin Crews

  She’d had a fairy-tale wedding with a man who’d scoffed at all her silly dreams and crushed them while he did. She’d lived through widowhood, pretending to mourn a man she’d hardly known and a love that had never existed, except possibly in her head. She’d hunted down a stranger who hadn’t known her when he’d seen her, and she’d won back the husband she barely knew with a kiss. And her virginity. Then she’d spent seven short weeks pretending to be a devoted wife and business partner while sleeping by herself in a lonely guest room.

  But she had never done this.

  Susannah had never been his wife in act and deed as well as word. And she decided that she was tired of punishing herself. She was tired of hiding. Most of all, she was tired of fighting wars she wasn’t sure she even wanted to win.

  If he could do exactly as he pleased, kidnap her and confine her on this island simply to make a point, there was no reason she couldn’t do what she liked, as well.

  And it was time to stop pretending that she didn’t like him, because she did. He was a flame and she was a desperate sort of moth, but there was no need to batter herself to pieces when she could choose instead to simply land. And burn as she wished.

  “Eventually will be a long time coming,” she told him softly. She moved closer to him then, tangling her legs with his. “If at all.”

  He let out a laugh that was more warning than anything else.

  “I’ll have you eating out of my hand sooner than you can possibly imagine,” he promised her, perhaps a little roughly. “It’s inevitable, little one. You might as well fold now.”

  “You can’t have me,” she told him then, her voice as simple as it was stark. A part of the shadows, somehow. “That’s how this works, don’t you understand? When you keep something against its will, you can hold on to it, but it’s never yours.”

  Then she leaned in close, because it was what she wanted. Because she could do as she liked, surely, since he always did. Because she was much too fascinated with him and her heart went silly whenever he was near, and she’d resolved to embrace that.

  To burn of her own volition on that lethal flame of his, again and again, until he tired of her and this game and all the rest of it. The way she knew he would.

  She got even closer, pressing herself against him in the dark, and sealed her doom the only way she knew.

  With a kiss.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “I TRUST YOUR cage grows more comfortable by the day,” Leonidas said, his voice hardly more than a growl, shoving his mobile into his pocket as he strode out to the pool in the atrium. “You almost look as if you’re enjoying it.”

  Susannah looked up from where she sat in the bright sunlight, wrapped up against the cool breeze in an oversize sort of shawl that looked as if it could double as a duvet, thrown over the flowing, casual dress she wore. Her blond hair was twisted back into the makeshift chignon she preferred, looking messy and yet somehow as impossibly chic as she always did, as if it was effortless.

  He thought he couldn’t want her more. Every day he thought this. Every night, he was sure.

  And then she did something unforgivable, like sit out in the sun on a cold winter’s day to read a book with her sunglasses on and her bare feet exposed. What defense was he expected to have against such a thing?

  “Comfortable or not, a cage remains a cage,” she replied, almost merrily. The same way she always did. As if it was all a joke when he knew very well it was not.

  None of this was any kind of laughing matter at all.

  The anger that had beat at him all through that last call he’d hated making didn’t disappear, but the sight of his wife somehow...altered it. She reminded him that no matter who had acted against him or why, she had stepped in and saved him.

  He reminded himself that she was what mattered to him. Susannah and the child she carried. This, right here, was all that mattered.

  And someday he would find a way to bring back that dancing sort of light he’d glimpsed in her only briefly, now and then. Usually while they were naked. He would make her happy, damn it. Leonidas was always successful at what he did. He would succeed here, too.

  Susannah wanted to keep a part of herself separate, and he couldn’t abide that—but he could wait. He told himself that he could wait her out, wear her down...and no matter that he was finding that harder and harder to tolerate.

  Everything had changed.

  She’d kissed him that night and altered the world again, and for the most part, he liked it.

  He liked an end to the charade of separate beds. She stopped the pointless theater of marching off to the guest suite every night and took her place in his rooms instead. She stopped giving him her icy silent treatment and simmering anger at every turn.

  And she gave herself to him with a sweet fire and wild greediness that might have humbled him, had he let it.

  “I am your husband and you are my wife,” he had said that first night, after he’d reduced her to a boneless heap. He’d carried her into his expansive bathroom to set her in the oversize tub set in an arched window to look out over the quietly seething Ionian Sea. “And I have no intention of being the sort of husband who creeps down the cold hallway when he wishes the company of his wife. I do not believe in twin beds. I don’t believe in anything that gets in the way of you and me, not even a damned nightgown.” He’d watched her as she’d settled in the steaming water. “I trust we are finally in accord on this.”

  “I don’t think you know what you believe about marriage,” Susannah had retorted, though she’d been sleepy and satiated and had watched him as if she might like to take another bite out of him. He’d climbed into the tub with her, then had shifted to pull her against him, her back to his chest. “Since you’ve only been married to one person in your lifetime and I remember more about those years than you do.”

  “I intend for both of us to remember this part of our marriage,” he’d murmured into her ear, raking his teeth over the tender lobe to make her shudder. “Vividly.”

  And there had been no arguing after that. He didn’t bother with that anymore. He picked her up when things got a bit fractious, then expressed his feelings about whatever minor disagreement it might have been all over her delectable body. He showed her exactly how little space he wanted between them. Over and over again.

  She had spent seven weeks filling in the gaps in his memory. Now, having met her parents, he took it upon himself to fill in any gaps she might have had in her own life thanks to the things they’d obviously not given her. Such as nurturing of any kind. He tended to her headaches. He made sure she ate. He took care of her.

  He’d never taken care of anyone in his life, not directly, but he took care of Susannah.

  And he taught her that she’d been very silly indeed to imagine that one stolen afternoon in a faraway compound meant that she had the slightest idea what sex was. Because there were so very many ways to tear each other apart.

  And Leonidas happened to know every last one of them.

  She learned how to take him in her mouth and how to make him groan. She learned how to crawl on top of him where he sat, and settle herself astride him, so she could take control and rock them both into bliss.

  Sometimes when they were lying an exhausted heap, barely able to breathe, he would slide one of his hands over her belly and hold it there. And allow himself to imagine things he’d never imagined he’d want. Much less this badly.

  “You haven’t had one of your headaches in some time,” he said today, coming over to stand at the foot of the lounger where she sat. She set her book aside and peered up at him. Then she swept her sunglasses back and anchored them on the top of her head, narrowing her eyes at him in a way he couldn’t say he liked.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Leonidas didn’t want to answer that. Or acknowl
edge that she could see into him like that.

  “Perhaps the worst of them is over,” he said instead.

  Susannah stood, pulling her shawl around her and tilting her head slightly to one side as she regarded him.

  “You’re not all right,” she said softly. “Are you?”

  “What can that possibly matter to you?” It was ripped from him. Too raw. Too revealing. And yet he couldn’t seem to stop. “As you keep telling me—as you go to great lengths to make sure I never forget—I can never have you. What does it matter whether I am all right, whatever the hell that means, or not?”

  Susannah didn’t flare back at him. She didn’t do anything at all for a moment but stand there and study him, and only when he thought he might come out of his skin did she move. Even then, it was only a small thing. She reached over and put her hand to his jaw, then held it there.

  Small. Meaningless, he wanted to say.

  But it felt like the world.

  “You have this, Leonidas,” she said quietly. “And maybe this is enough.”

  It shouldn’t have felt like a storm. It shouldn’t have rocked him the way it did, deep and wild, razing what had been there and leaving nothing he recognized in its wake.

  But he would think about that later. He would piece himself back together later.

  He would try to rebuild all the things she’d broken then.

  If he could.

  Here, now, he took what she was offering.

  “It’s my mother,” he said gruffly, and tried to hold on to his anger. Because he was very much afraid that what was beneath it was the pointless hurt and grief of the child in him who still, all these years and bitter lessons later, wanted Apollonia to be his mother. Just once. “She’s the one who had the plane tampered with. She’s responsible for the crash.”

  Susannah’s brow creased, but she didn’t say anything. She only waited, dropping her hand to her side to hold her shawl to her and keeping her gaze trained to his. And somehow that made it easier for him to keep speaking.

  “I never stopped investigating the plane crash. Your investigators led you to me, but I wanted more. Because, of course, if someone tried to assassinate me once it stood to reason that they would do it again.”

  “What’s frustrating is that there are so many possibilities,” she murmured. “And so many lead in circles.”

  And Leonidas felt his lips thin. “Indeed. And it warms the heart, I must tell you, to realize the extent to which I am hated by my own blood.”

  Susannah’s gaze sharpened on his, and her blue eyes were serious. Intent.

  “They don’t hate you, Leonidas,” she said fiercely. “They don’t know you. They are tiny, grasping people who long for things to be handed to them, that’s all. They are victims forever in search of someone to blame. They look around a world in which they have everything and see nothing but their own misfortune.” She shook her head. “Being hated by these people says nothing about you, except perhaps you are a far better person than they could ever dream of being.”

  “Careful, little one,” he said roughly. “You begin to sound as if I might have you after all.”

  She looked away, and he felt that like a punch to the gut, even when she smiled. Was it his imagination or his guilt that made him think that soft curve of her mouth was bittersweet? And why should he feel that like it was the worst of the blows he’d taken today?

  “The truth is that your mother is the worst of them,” she said, and he didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to talk about his mother. He wanted to trace the curve of Susannah’s mouth until her smile felt real. He wanted to wash himself clean of all of this. His name, his blood. “I mean no disrespect.”

  Leonidas let out a short laugh with precious little humor in it.

  “I doubt you could disrespect my mother if you tried.” And the air was so clear here, bordering on cold but not quite getting there. The island was quiet. The riot was in him, he knew that. “And still, I didn’t think it could be her. Not her. I didn’t want it to be her.”

  Susannah whispered something that sounded like his name. Leonidas forged on.

  “My cousins made sense to me as suspects. All they do is congregate and plot. Why not the biggest plot of all?” He shook his head. “But not one of them would actually want the things they claim have been taken from them. They don’t want to be in charge. That’s responsibility, and they would hate it. They just want money. Money and stature and power. They want the appearance of power, but certainly not the work that goes with it. My mother, on the other hand...”

  Susannah’s eyes were wide. “Apollonia doesn’t like to work. She likes to talk about working and claim she’s exhausted from some other sort of work that can never be performed when anyone can see it...” He held her gaze until she trailed off and blew out a breath. “Are you certain?”

  “The investigators reached this conclusion some weeks ago,” he said bitterly. More bitterly than he should have, because what had he imagined? That a woman like his mother could change? She’d always been selfish. He’d always known that. The only surprise was how much. “But I refused to accept it.”

  “Do they have proof?”

  “They didn’t,” Leonidas said. His jaw clenched tight. “Now they do.”

  And for moment, they only stared at each other, out in the bright Greek sun, held tight in the grip of that horrible truth.

  Susannah didn’t apologize for his mother. She didn’t express her sorrow for what could not have been, in the end, that much of a surprise to her. Just as it hadn’t been for him. Loath as he was to admit that, even now.

  It wasn’t a surprise. But that didn’t make it hurt less.

  She didn’t apologize, but she didn’t look away, either. And he thought that this, right here, was why he was never going to get over this woman. This was how she’d wedged herself so deep inside him that he could no longer breathe without feeling her there, changing everything with reckless abandon whether he wanted it or not. Because she simply stood there with him. As if she was prepared to stand there all night, holding a vigil for the mother he’d never had.

  “And now I must face the fact that she is far worse that I could have imagined,” Leonidas said, forcing the words out because he was sure, somehow, that it would be better that way. He couldn’t have said why. “It is not bad enough that she has never displayed the faintest hint of maternal instinct. It doesn’t matter that when she could have protected me from my father’s rages, she only laughed and picked herself another lover. It all follows the same through line, really. There is not one single thing surprising about this news.” He shook his head slightly, almost as if he was dizzy, when he was not. Not quite. “And yet.”

  “And yet,” Susannah echoed. This time when she reached over, she placed her palm in that hollow between his pectoral muscles and held it there, pressure and the hint of warmth. That was all. And he felt it everywhere. “What will you do?”

  “What can I do?” He didn’t grimace. He felt as if he’d turned to stone, except it wasn’t the stone he knew from before. It was as if he’d lost the ability to harden himself, armor himself, the way he wanted. And he knew it was the fault of the woman who stood there, keeping her hand on him as if her palm was a talisman crafted especially for him. He knew it was her fault that he cared about anything. Because losing the things that had made him harder in that other way felt worth it, he realized, if this was what he gained.

  If Susannah was what he had, he couldn’t care too much about the things he’d lost.

  Something dawned in him then, deep and certain, that he didn’t want to know. And not only because he’d imagined himself incapable of such things. But because, as the phone call he just had had proved beyond a reasonable doubt, he didn’t know a single thing about love. He never had and he doubted he ever would.

 
; “I cannot haul her before any authority,” he pointed out, fighting to sound dispassionate. Analytical. “I don’t want that sort of attention on the plane crash, much less what happened afterward. Even if I wanted her brought to justice, it would be nothing but a fleeting pleasure. And on the other side of it, more instability for the company. More questions, more worries. Why permit her to cause any more problems than she already has?” He tried to hold his temper at bay. “She took four years of my life. Why should she get another moment?”

  Susannah’s eyes flashed. “I admire your practicality. But I want her to pay even if you don’t.”

  And he thought he would remember that forever. Her hand on his chest and her blue eyes on fire while she defended him. He’d never felt anything like the light that fell through him then. He’d never have believed it existed.

  “Making her pay is simple,” he said, his voice a little gruffer than he’d intended. “She only cares about one thing. Remove it and she’ll act as if she’d been sent to a Siberian work camp.” He shrugged. “I will simply cut her off. No money, no access. Nothing. She should be humbled within the week.”

  “Apollonia?” Susannah shook her head, and her gaze was hard. “I don’t believe she can be humbled.”

  Leonidas stepped away then, before he couldn’t. Before he took his wife into his arms and said the things he knew he couldn’t say. There was no place for that here. That wasn’t who he was, that certainly wasn’t what he did, and he couldn’t allow that kind of weakness. Not now, when all he had in this world was betrayal on one side and a captive spouse on the other.

  And a baby who would come into this world and know only a father who had imprisoned his mother on an island.

  He had never wanted to be his own father, a brute dressed in sleek clothes to hide himself in plain sight as he went on his many rampages. And yet it had never occurred to Leonidas that when all was said and done, he was more like his mother than he wanted to admit.