by Maisey Yates
Of course, he would not promise to be faithful to her.
She blinked, swallowing hard, continuing to examine the modern layout of the penthouse. “Which room will be mine?”
“Any one that you choose,” he said. “Though the master bedroom already has your things in it.”
“Not yours?”
He lifted his shoulder. “I have several other residences. I may not always be here as frequently as you are. My headquarters will remain in Greece. That means I will only spend a small amount of time here.”
The idea of him being with other women flooded her mind again. Of course. He wasn’t actually planning on living with her. Not really. Not all the time. He was taking possession of her, but he was holding her at arm’s length. It shouldn’t surprise her. But it did hurt.
And it did nothing to remove the traitorous beacon of hope that still burned down in the pit of her stomach. She should harbor no hope where he was concerned, and still that small part of her whispered: But he came back before he knew about the baby.
She wasn’t going to let him see her hope.
“That’s fine. It will be good for the child, I think, to have us in the same house sometimes. At least there is space. I think I might go lie down,” she said, heading toward the stairs that led to the upper level of the penthouse and the bedrooms.
“You’re welcome to. But we have a dinner reservation in four hours. I expect you to be ready by then.”
She gritted her teeth. “Is this going to be nothing more than a series of edicts?”
“You keep challenging them, I keep trying.”
“Well, thankfully a meal is not a marriage.”
She continued on up the stairs. Then she walked down the hall and pushed open the door to her new bedroom. In her new house. Suddenly, her knees felt like they were going to buckle. Everything was so overwhelming. The decisions she suddenly had to make. She moved quickly to the bed and threw herself down on the soft surface. And then she did the thing she allowed so very rarely. She buried her face in the pillow and wept.
* * *
Elle was always beautiful. That was part of the problem with her. No matter that she was forbidden, either because she was his stepsister or the daughter of his enemy, she was too beautiful. But tonight, in a short cream lace dress, her skin looking as waxen as a doll’s, her red hair falling softly around her shoulders, she was like a particularly terrified angel. Otherworldly. Ethereal.
And all he could think of was that he wanted to drag her into the pit with him. Make her fall, as he had done.
He had not lied when he had told her that all he had ever wanted was to bring her down to his level. To somehow make it acceptable for a man like him to touch a woman like her.
What does it matter what is acceptable?
He didn’t even know what was acceptable anymore. So the question, he supposed, was moot.
He had not told her what the aim of the dinner was. She would be angry at him, but he could not see her resisting once she saw the ring.
He had gone to a jewelry store today and chosen the ring for her himself. A large square-cut champagne diamond that seemed to capture her particular brand of unique elegance better than a standard sort of engagement ring.
He had also chosen one of the most up-and-coming restaurants in Manhattan to perform the deed. Because there was guaranteed to be paparazzi lurking, even if they were hiding in the hedgerows, so to speak. And, beyond that, there would be people there with cameras ready to take pictures and post what they had seen to the internet. Getting the word out had never been so easy, and since discretion was the furthest thing from his mind, it suited him.
He took her hand, running his thumb over the smooth, silken skin. Some unknown, possessive, caveman part of him relished what was about to happen. The fact that soon he would put his ring on her finger, and the world would know that she belonged to him. He gloried in that. The fact that there would be a sign of his ownership of her.
That made him think of the baby. Of the fact that she would soon grow round with it, yet more evidence of the fact that he had bound her to him, irrevocably, intensely.
He did not know who he was just now. But then, with Elle, he never did.
She looked down at his hand as though it was a potentially dangerous snake. “I don’t think you brought me here simply to treat me to a nice meal. Though, it was nice.”
“And we have not yet gotten to dessert.”
She drew her hand back slowly. “No, we haven’t. And you have been perfectly pleasant bordering on solicitous through the entire meal. And so, I need to know what’s happening.”
“I had planned to wait until you were finished with your cake, agape, but if you are feeling impatient then I am more than happy to reveal the reason why I have brought you out tonight.”
He reached into the interior pocket of his suit jacket and produced a small velvet box. Though he had not imagined it possible, more color drained from Elle’s face. “Is that...”
He shifted from his position in the chair, moving forward, dropping down to one knee in front of where Elle sat. This was yet another thing he had not imagined doing in all of his life. Lowering himself like this. Getting on his knees before a woman. But if the charade was going to work then he had to commit to it. There could be no doing this halfway.
“Elle St. James, I would be very honored if you would accept the offer to become my wife.”
He could feel the eyes of all the diners in the restaurant on them, could sense that everyone was watching. And then he heard the sound of shutters. And he knew that it was being documented, just as he had planned. Knew that it would be a headline in the business pages by tomorrow.
“I—I told you I couldn’t answer this now,” she said, her tone hushed.
If Elle hesitated, she would potentially cause trouble for him. Perhaps, in his arrogance, he had overplayed his hand.
“I wish for you to become my wife,” he said. “You are the only woman I have ever imagined spending my life with. Please, do me the honor of saying yes.”
It was the truth, even if it was a misleading truth. In all honesty, he had never imagined taking another woman as his wife. But then, he had not begun thinking about taking Elle for a wife until this morning. So, he supposed there was room for interpretation with those words. But they were not a lie.
Yet her expression remained set.
“Would you like to see the ring?” he asked. If he was not enough enticement then perhaps the jewelry would be.
He opened the lid on the jewelry box, revealing his carefully chosen selection.
She looked at it, her face frozen. Unreadable. She lifted her hand, as though she was going to reach out and touch it, before drawing her hand back quickly, as if the ring was a snake that might bite her.
“No,” she said.
“No?” he asked. He was on his knees, on the damn floor in the damn restaurant, and she had refused him.
He felt...at a loss, and that was completely foreign to him. And along with that hollow feeling came...pain. Deep. Stabbing.
She stood suddenly, stumbling around him. “I don’t think I want dessert,” she said, her voice strangled.
“Are you certain?”
“Yes. I told you I wasn’t sure what I wanted and you—” she looked around the room “—you did your best to make this public so that I couldn’t say no. You don’t get to behave this way, Apollo. I’m not your pawn. I’m not anyone’s pawn.”
“We will speak more in the car,” he said. “There is no point in discussing it here.”
“Of course not,” she said, “we would not wish for me to make a scene.”
He did not have to worry about the check, as the restaurant already had his details, so he took hold of Elle’s hand, and the two of them made their wa
y from the restaurant, still with the watchful eyes of the other patrons on them. A quick push of a button on his phone, and his car was brought around to the front. He opened the door for her, then slid inside, and the two of them remained silent until his driver pulled away from the curb. After issuing instructions to take them home he raised the partition between the front seat and the back, shrouding them in privacy.
“Is everything a game to you?” she asked, once they were alone, her expression fierce.
“It is not a game,” he said, his voice hard. “It is a strategy. I have spent the past several years planning my revenge against your family. I was finished with it. But now, here you are, and you are pregnant with my baby. I want what I want, Elle, and I intend on getting it.”
“So what? You thought you could shock me into saying yes?”
“I thought the ring might do it.” It had never occurred to him it might not. Had never truly occurred to him she might refuse.
“If I wanted a ring, I would buy my own. One that did not come with a husband attached.”
“Marriage makes sense,” he insisted.
“I don’t care about sense!” she shouted, her voice filling up the space in the car. “None of this, not ever, not from the first time we touched, was ever about sense.”
“Then why pretend it matters now? Why resist me when we both know you’re going to give in?”
“Because you would say things like that. Because you think me giving in to you is an inevitability. Because you do not listen, damn you!”
“You’re still behaving like you have a choice here,” he said, hardening his voice.
“I’m a fool. I keep expecting to discover you feel something for me. Anything.”
Her words were raw, honest, not the shotgun shells filled with anger her statements typically were. There was a vulnerability here. An honesty he had not anticipated. They scraped at him, tore strips from his hide.
“Of course I feel something for you,” he said. “I want you.” The words were much more raw, much more shattered than he wanted them to be. But he was rapidly losing control. Of this moment. Of himself.
It was always so with Elle. Always.
She shook her head. “That is not the same thing.”
“And yet, it is all I have.”
“Because you hate my family so much?”
“Touching you was a betrayal of my father. Of my mother. I had thought to take the thing between us and twist it into something I can use.”
“You’re that angry?”
“Everything that I built my life around was a lie,” he said, his words escaping with a force that shocked him. “I thought your father simply cared about me. Instead, it was all a part of his twisted obsession with my mother. He allowed me to care for him, acted as though he cared for me, while the whole time he knew...he knew he was the reason my father killed himself. So you tell me, Elle, in my position would you not also crave revenge?”
“It solves nothing,” she said. “You had your revenge in hand. You had it for four weeks, you thought it was finished. You had ousted me from my position as CEO. You were done with me. Done with my family, and yet still you were back at my door. So tell me, Apollo, what has revenge solved for you? What has it fixed? Your father is still gone. And you still want me. You are in fact begging me to be your wife. Where is your power in revenge?”
He could not deny it, though he wished to. Though he wished he could tell her that he had been using her all along. He had shown his hand when he had returned to her apartment. When he had asked for her to be his mistress.
And it was not only to her he had shown his hand, but to himself.
“I want you,” he said. “Quite apart from any plans for revenge.”
“You think that would make a marriage work?”
“It would work because we would make it work. We are attracted to each other, is that not enough?”
“I don’t know. I never gave serious thought to marriage. I don’t know what I want out of one.” She blinked. “Except I would like more than screaming at my husband. I would like more than wondering if he is away having an affair. I would like to be chosen. Just once. Not because of someone else. You know, I’m only the CEO of Matte because it was my father’s last attempt to keep hold of his empire. And you... What you really want is to make me your wife so you can lord it over my father.”
“I know you don’t put stock in my desire for you, because it isn’t emotional. I am not capable of the kind of emotion you are talking about. But I will tell you that had I been able to want any other woman, had I had dominion over my desire for you—I never would have given in.”
“I’m supposed to rejoice because you didn’t want to want me?”
“Yes,” he said, simply.
“You truly are arrogant. And you don’t understand women very well.”
He chuckled. “I understand parts of a woman.”
“I can’t deny that. But I can also tell you that it leaves you cold after, no matter how hot you burn in the moment.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ELLE FELT DEFLATED by the time they arrived back at the penthouse. She said nothing to him as they went inside, as she walked back to her bedroom and stripped off her jewelry. How had she ever thought she could handle this man? This man who was so twisted by his desire to injure her family that he was willing to consider anyone who stood in his way as collateral damage.
If he acted like a human man, with feelings and emotions and normal connections, then it would be a simple thing to make him understand. But he didn’t. She had no idea how to appeal to this enigma. This immovable rock who looked like a man but didn’t behave like one.
She remembered thinking only a few weeks ago that he was heartless. She hated that she was more and more convinced it was true.
She had known him for so many years, and yet didn’t know him at all. She knew his body. Knew what made him shake, knew just how to taste him, how to touch him. And she had heard that dark edge that crept into his voice when he spoke about his past, that hinted at the pain he had been through. At how he felt about it all. About what it had done to him. But she could not for the life of her imagine him as a husband. As a father. She knew fragments of him. The boy he had been, the man he was now. The ruthless and cruel businessman, and the solicitous lover. But those things did not mesh in her mind. She couldn’t marry the details together.
She sat in her room for a moment longer, not bothering to change out of her dress, checking her emails and wasting time on the internet until an hour had passed since they’d come home. Then she stood, crossing the room before she had time to fully process what she was doing. Making her way through the penthouse toward his bedroom. She paused at the door, placing her palm on her chest, feeling the raging of her heartbeat beneath her palm. Then she pushed the door open. He was in bed, naked, his blankets pushed down low on his hips, his arm flung up above his head. He was not asleep. He opened his eyes when she opened the door, arching one dark brow. “Yes?”
She crossed the room, climbing onto the bed, staying on top of the covers, lying down next to him.
He shifted, leaning over as though he was going to kiss her. She held up her hand. “No,” she said, “I want to talk.”
“Well, agape, I do not talk in bed.”
“You also don’t get women pregnant, and you don’t ask them to marry you. Given that I already had a couple of exceptions made for me, I would ask that you make one more.”
“As you wish,” he said, moving back into the position he’d been in when she had come in.
“I want to know you,” she said.
He paused. “There is little to know.”
“I only knew bits and pieces of your childhood. Whatever you told me. But I’m curious now about all of it. With what I know now, with what y
ou know now, I am curious about everything.”
Apollo sighed. “Okay. When I was born, I lived in a beautiful home. But that did not last. My father worked all the time, and I rarely saw him. Then when I was very young, he lost his position in the company he owned with your father. What was done to him was ruthless, as you know. From there, we lost our home. We lost everything. We lived in...modest housing, to put it mildly.”
She wanted to touch him. She had just decided touching was easier than talking, that kissing was easier than honesty. Their bodies were so much easier than anything else. But putting healthy distance between them, she didn’t interrupt.
“My father did not take our descent into poverty well. He dealt with his issues by taking drugs, by drinking. Eventually, what little money we had was swallowed up by his addictions. We ended up on the streets. Shortly after that, when he saw what had become of us, when he saw what had become of the family, he killed himself. I will never know why. If he felt ashamed, if he thought we would be better off without him somehow. If he simply didn’t want to try anymore. I can never know the answer. And in the end it doesn’t matter. The decision was made. The years passed. But one thing I do know is that he would want recompense for what happened to him. For what happened to us.”
“That he should have taken himself,” she said, the words coming slowly, but with conviction. “If he cared that much he would’ve stuck around to get revenge himself.”
“He couldn’t. For whatever reason,” he said. “Regardless, my mother and I found ourselves on the streets, then eventually in a horrible group home sort of place. That was when we were sent for. My mother gave very few details, but she said we were going to a new home. Starting over in America. There was a house. Small, I suppose, by some standards. But clean. We wanted for nothing. Suddenly my mother was able to be home with me, instead of desperately searching for work. I had a bed every night.”
