by Maisey Yates
It had never simply been desire. It had never simply been anger. It was love. It was love then, it was love now.
She loved him. The thought sent a crack of lightning through her, threatened to split her in two with the pleasure that was building deep inside her. It created a tidal wave of emotion. Completion, satisfaction, despair. She’d never wanted to love him. She had always known that he could never love her back.
No one did. Why would he? Why should Apollo love her for who she was when her own father couldn’t do that? When her own mother couldn’t seem to manage it? Why should this man ever love her?
And only then could she acknowledge the fact that she had never hated him. Not really. She had loved him.
From the time she was a girl she had loved Apollo Savas. And when he had betrayed her family it had twisted into something new. Because she couldn’t understand how the man she cared for so much could do that to her family. When she had thrown herself at him in the hotel room it had been the last gasp of that love, desperate to be heard, desperate to be expressed. And when she had said she hated him it was only because hate was the other side of that coin. So close to love. So perilously close, she understood now. Because it was love twisted, turned into something ugly.
She realized then, as Apollo looked down at her with his dark eyes glittering, that he had loved her father. That he had loved her family, and that was why it had been twisted into this. That was why, in the beginning, he had gone so far to seek his revenge. To use her. To harm her.
Because of how love could get twisted up.
He gripped her hips hard, taking control of their movements, thrusting up inside her, chasing his release. And she was grateful, because she had gone weak. She could no longer take control of this, no longer claim control over this interaction. No, she was now at the mercy of it. At the mercy of him, at her desire for him.
He slid his hand around to cup her bottom, gripping her tightly, his fingertips brushing up against where they joined. That added bit of contact was enough to send her over the edge. Her mind went blank for one glorious moment, pleasure stealing over her, rocking her like a crack of thunder.
And when it was over, when it all settled, when she was still straddling him, their eyes on only each other, pleasure coursing through her like an endless wave, there was only one bright, brilliant thought in her mind.
She loved Apollo Savas. She always had, she had a suspicion she always would. And she knew, with just as much certainty, that he would never love her in return.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ELLE HAD BEEN quiet ever since they had woken up that morning. Or, more specifically, ever since he had given her a bath. He could feel her slipping out of his grasp. Even as they had reached the peak together, he had felt her pull away, and he didn’t know what to do about that. He didn’t even know what he thought about it. If it mattered. Except that for Elle, he had a feeling emotion mattered. That it was key.
He could take or leave it. He wanted nothing more than a connection based on honesty, on a contract. It was why he wanted marriage. He wanted to have a guarantee.
He didn’t trust emotions. Not in the least. Not when his mother had led such a tangled existence based on the men who had professed to love her. Not when the man who had behaved most like a father to him had revealed himself to be the worst sort of liar. How could he even fathom putting stock in emotion under those conditions?
But Elle was most certainly a more emotional creature. If only he could figure out how to read her. If only he could figure out how to connect with her. He had tried talking, he had tried kindness. And then, she had initiated sex. Neither was the magic key. He wasn’t sure there was a damn magic key. He found that disconcerting.
He walked around the expensive penthouse, learning the layout of his new home. Regardless of what he had said to her earlier about how much time he would spend with her and the child, he was anticipating trying to accomplish most of his work in the States, from now on. His own father had abandoned him through suicide. His stepfather had proven to be an imposter. He would not have his child living life with that sort of cloud over them. Money only solved certain things. He knew that for a fact. Coming out of poverty and into financial gain had shown him that there were still things that money couldn’t buy.
If only Elle’s undying affection was one of the things money could buy. It would make things much simpler. Instead, he was left trying to untie one of the great mysteries of the modern age, or any age. Feminine emotion.
As he was brooding on this, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He picked up quickly without bothering to look and see who it was. “Savas.”
“What the hell are you doing with my daughter?”
It was the voice of his least favorite devil on the end of the line. “That depends on what you’ve heard.”
“I have seen the headline in this morning’s society pages. You proposed to her last night at a restaurant. By all accounts she refused you and stormed out.”
“Then I fail to see why you’re calling me. Obviously Elle is up to the challenge of handling herself.”
“I am calling because I feel that I have the right to know exactly what led you to a place where you thought proposing to my daughter might end in a yes. Do not tell me you set yourself up for public humiliation on purpose, Apollo. I would not believe it.”
“It’s almost as though you know me,” he said, his tone easy. “I had thought she might say yes.”
“After all I have done for you—”
“Yes, after causing the suicide of my father, after blackmailing my mother into a relationship, how dare I not be more grateful?”
“I hardly orchestrated your father’s death, Apollo, as you are well aware. Your father made his own choices. I was certainly ruthless in my desire to push him out of the company, but what happened after that was his choice, not mine.”
“In my mind, you pulled the trigger. There is nothing on earth that will convince me otherwise.”
“And so you’re using Elle to get revenge?”
It was on the tip of his tongue to tell him that’s exactly what he was doing. To let the older man know that Apollo had corrupted his only daughter. That he had gotten her with child. That he now held all the power. It all belonged to him. But then, she walked into the room, wearing soft, baggy pants, and a loose-fitting top. Looking soft and vulnerable, not the least bit hard and glamorous. And he realized that he could not say those things. He could not use her that way. She had asked him to see her as a woman, and he did. He had been the one to suggest they put it all behind them, to start new. And so, he would choose to do so. Now, he would choose to do it for her. For them.
“Whether you believe it or not, my association with your daughter has nothing to do with you.”
Elle’s head snapped in his direction, her eyes rounded.
“I don’t believe it,” David said.
“That is inconsequential. It is the truth. I intend to win her over, one way or another. I will obtain her hand in marriage.”
“Why is it so important to you?”
“Because I want her.”
“And you love her?”
The question hit its mark like an arrow striking a target. Nearly made him fall to his knees. He thought about love, what it meant to him. Certainly, his mother loved him, in her way. She was a fragile woman, not unsurprising considering all she had been through. And at times he wondered if she simply had no choice but to detach in order to protect herself from further pain. After the loss of her husband, after being blackmailed into marrying a man she had not chosen.
His father, his biological father, had been so consumed with the acquisition of material things, with his status, that he had preferred death over staying and protecting his wife and child. In that sense, Apollo could not deny David’s words. Suicide had been his
father’s choice. And not anyone else’s. Though he knew that there were many complicated factors that played into that. Depression, mental torments that he could not possibly understand.
It did not stop him from retaining a boy’s perspective on it in many ways. He felt abandoned. He felt angry. Whether or not his father deserved more sympathy than that was irrelevant. Apollo could only feel what he felt.
And then there was David St. James. He had truly taken him in. Truly accepted him as part of the family.
He had been a father to him. More of a father than his own had ever been. He had raised him, taught him the value of hard work, paid for his education, taught him to take nothing for granted. Though he was a hard man, though he was distant at times, he was a solid, steady figure in Apollo’s life. The man he had sought to pattern himself after. Discovering the depths he had sunk to in order to obtain Apollo’s mother—as though she were an item to be acquired and not a human being, as though Apollo himself and his father were incidentals—that had shown him just how deep a lie could run.
The fact that his feelings for the older man had not been eradicated overnight—if ever—showed him just what a fickle and dishonest emotion love could be.
Worse still, all of that, every bit of it, was proof that his love twisted things. Changed them in permanent and ugly ways. He was like a lit match brought up against the edge of something fragile. Making the edges curl and darken, altered beyond recognition.
He couldn’t do that to her. He wouldn’t.
“No,” he said. “No, I don’t.”
“Then you don’t deserve her.”
And with that, the line went dead. Those words echoed in his head as he turned to look at Elle, who was regarding him with a confused expression. “My father?”
“Yes. He is unamused with me.”
“Did he see it in the paper? Was it in the paper?”
“Yes,” he said. “Apparently your rejection of me has made headlines.”
“Well, I would apologize but it really is your own doing.”
“This is true.”
“What did he ask you?”
“He asked if you were my revenge,” Apollo said. “I told him you’re not.”
“Yes, I gathered as much. But what was the last question he asked you?”
His stomach tightened, dropped low in his midsection. “He asked me if I loved you.”
She closed her eyes, her face going pale. “You said no.”
* * *
Elle felt as though the ground was dropping out from beneath her feet. She had been shocked, thrilled, when Apollo had not taken the chance to eviscerate her father. When he had not used her as a weapon. Had not trotted out the baby, their affair, in a crass and unnecessary way. That when he had been asked directly if he was using her, he had said no. Even if it was a lie, even in part, he had stopped using her then. He had honored her request.
But then he had been asked if he loved her. And his answer had been no.
She realized then that it was nonnegotiable for her. She needed love. She needed for him to love her. There was nothing more important. Nothing at all.
She had dressed it up in all kinds of fancy descriptions. Had tried to convince herself that all she needed was respect. That they needed to find common ground. That she simply needed someone to want her as she was, and not as a weapon in some kind of scheme. But after their encounter in the bath, after that pleasure radiated through her, after she had felt the intensity of her own feelings for him, she knew that that wasn’t the case. She needed more. She needed everything. And anything else would be doing herself a terrible disservice.
She wanted more for herself. More than simply heading up a company because she wanted to prove to her father that she could. More than marriage to a man for his convenience. In truth, as much as she wanted to give her child a home with both parents she knew that if they were living together under sufferance, if she made him miserable because he eventually bored of her, and he made her miserable because her love went unreturned, their child would know. He or she would sense the unhappiness, and for them to even suspect that their presence was the cause of that kind of relationship was something she could not place upon her child.
“I can’t marry you,” she said.
“What are you talking about? You showed me this morning just how irresistible you find me.”
“That’s sex, Apollo. We have had that through everything. When I was terrible to you, you still wanted me. When you took over my business, betrayed our family, I still wanted you. Even while I was thinking about stabbing you through the chest with a pen, I wanted you. But that isn’t enough for marriage. And right now? It isn’t enough for me. I realized something this morning.”
“That you are a contrary little thing who makes absolutely no sense?”
“That I love you. I love you with everything I have. It has always been that way. But I cannot, and will not, continue to accept this strange, leftover existence that I have cobbled together with the discarded pieces of yours and my father’s manipulative plans. I’m the CEO at Matte because he wanted to play me against you, not because he thought I was suited to the position. I’m pregnant with your baby because you wanted to hurt him, and while I appreciate the fact that you didn’t rub it in his face just now...that’s our foundation. It’s what we are.”
“No,” he said, his voice rough. “That is not our foundation. There was no calculation when I took you up against the wall in my hotel room, no ulterior motive when I had you in the elevator.”
“How can I believe that?”
“Because it is the truth. I decided after I had you the second time that I would use what was between us to get revenge. Only because I was desperate to find some justification for what you did to me. For wanting to indulge in this thing between us.”
“And why’d you come back?”
“Because I wasn’t finished with you!”
“But that’s the thing,” she said. “I am not a thing that you can pick up and put down at your convenience. Not a weapon that you can use at your discretion. I am a human being. I have feelings. I love you and I deserve to be loved in return.” She shook her head. “If you cannot give me that then I will have to go out and find someone who can.”
All of the anger drained from his face, his expression turning to stone. “You are correct. If that is what you want, then that is what you must find.”
Her chest felt hollowed out, her heart thundering hard in the empty space. “That’s it?”
“We are at an impasse, Elle. I cannot love, and you require it. I do not wish to hold you prisoner. I see no satisfaction in making you miserable. There was a time when I might have, but things have changed.”
“Maybe that means you have feelings for me?”
“No,” he said, his tone hard, definitive. “I cannot.”
She felt like she’d been stabbed clean through, like she would bleed out on the floor, her pain, her love, everything for him to see. She wouldn’t be able to hide anymore, as she had done for so many years.
She waited for something to come, for a cutting remark to rescue her, but it wasn’t there. There was nothing to hide behind. Nothing but pain and love in equal measure.
And she wanted him to see it. Wanted him to know. She was done hiding. She’d done enough damage pushing him away so that she wouldn’t be hurt.
She had hidden everything for years. Her pain, her desire, her love. And she was done. Pride be damned, she wouldn’t hide herself anymore.
“Why?” she asked. “Why are you doing this? There is nothing stopping us, nothing stopping this except you, and I can’t understand why.”
“Everything I love turns to dust, Elle. I would not have you so diminished.”
“I’ve been diminished already!” she shouted. “All of my lif
e. To keep the peace, to try and do what my father wanted, to try and avoid...well, exactly this, with you.” She swallowed hard, shaking, all of her repressed emotion, decades of it, pouring out now. “I’m done with that. I’m making demands now.”
He stared at her for a moment, his dark eyes hollow. “I can’t meet them.”
“You won’t.”
“It amounts to the same thing.”
And then he turned away from her, and walked out of the penthouse, closing the door softly behind him. She had a feeling that he would not be back.
She didn’t want half a life, half a love. She didn’t want a future with a man who wouldn’t give her what she’d just realized she so desperately wanted.
So, she let him go. And she did her very best not to cry.
* * *
Elle approached her father’s office with great trepidation. She was going to let him know that she was officially resigning from Matte. She was also going to tell him about the baby, and the fact that she would not be marrying Apollo. She took a deep breath, trying to ease the knot in her chest. Then, she raised her hand and knocked on the door.
“Come in.”
She turned the knob and opened the door, stepping inside quickly. “Hello, Father,” she said.
“Elle,” he said, gesturing at the chair across from his desk, as though she were a business appointment he was keeping. “Have a seat.”
She did. “I imagine you’re wondering why I wanted to speak with you.”
“Not particularly. I assume it has something to do with Apollo.”
“Well,” she said, “you aren’t wrong.”
“Have you decided to marry him?”
“On the contrary, I have decided that I cannot continue my association with him.”
