by Maisey Yates
And that was when she realized that as much as he’d been demanding of her, as out of her element as she was, Ajax was no better off.
Ajax had neatly severed his past from the man he’d become. All of the years she’d known him, she’d never seen his darkness.
She’d seen drive. Intelligence. Hunger. She just hadn’t realized what had spurred the drive. That he’d been running, not just toward something, but from something.
From the darkness.
And she saw it now. Saw it in his eyes. And she was worried that he was getting too tired to keep running. She wanted to throw her armor onto him. To strip herself bare so she could protect him from it.
But she honestly had no idea how to hold the darkness at bay.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE HONEYMOON WENT by too quickly. She and Ajax were together every night. Every night, he bound her wrists, and every night he showed her a world of pleasure she hadn’t imagined possible.
But they weren’t closer during the day. Not any closer at all. In fact, she felt more distant from him than she ever had before.
During the day.
She closed her eyes as the plane touched down on the tarmac in New York. And she saw flashes of their time together in St. Lucia.
Her hands bound to the bedpost, her back to him. Candles the only light in the room. He’d skimmed his hand over her back, gripped her hips before thrusting in deep. And his voice...so desperate, so rough, in her ear, telling her how good it felt, words in broken Greek, some of which she’d never heard before.
She opened her eyes and looked out the window. It was cold and gray out there. Gray runway, gray skyline, gray sky.
“Good to be back,” she said, waiting for the plane to stop before she stood up and stretched.
“You sound so enthused,” he said.
“I am.” She wasn’t.
This was weird. She felt like she was talking to a stranger. A cold, detached stranger, not the man she’d had hot, erotic sex with all night, every night, for the past week. He was her lover, her only lover. There was no mistaking him. There could have been no other man with her those nights. And yet...and yet the Ajax sitting in front of her, all cool and calm and...bored, wasn’t that man.
He wasn’t the man brought to the edge by her body. By their conversation.
She wanted to touch him. But she wasn’t allowed to.
Her fingers curled into fists at her side. It wasn’t so much his command that she was obeying, but her self-control she was testing.
She didn’t want to be enslaved to her need for him. She knew this wasn’t going to be a great love match. More and more, she questioned whether or not he could actually love.
Because she was seeing parts of him, glimpses into his soul, that frightened her now.
Always, Ajax had been a constant presence in her life. Serious, studious, kind. Now he was her husband, and as her husband he was distant, angry. As her lover he was dominant, generous, sexy. And as a man...she wondered if she knew who he was at all. If the person she’d always known was nothing more than an illusion, than a careful facade he’d put on as a scared, runaway boy from the kind of past she couldn’t have ever imagined.
As a girl, she hadn’t seen it. She’d been blinded by his physical beauty, by his careful kindness to her. As a teenager, it had been those small smiles. The accepting of her gifts, that had held her in thrall. He hadn’t said anything about his past, and she hadn’t asked. She’d filled in the blanks, seen what she’d wanted to see. Thought what she’d wanted to think about him.
But nowhere in there had she imagined he would look at her with flat, black eyes. So closed off. So emotionless.
Never had she imagined him binding her hands and having sex with her. It was really the best way to describe it. They didn’t make love. Ajax was demanding, and in terms of the physical, he gave her everything. But his eyes were hollow. He held himself back from her.
There was something about being tied up that she liked. His dominance was arousing, his skill was wonderful. And if it had been a game, nothing more than a power play between lovers, she wouldn’t have had a complaint.
But Ajax was using it for something else. Using it to keep control. To hold himself at a distance.
She wasn’t an equal in it. Wasn’t able to give back.
Like the conversations they’d had when she’d been a teenager. Only this was their bodies. He was doing all the talking, all the work. But her hands were tied. Literally.
He wasn’t letting her give. Wasn’t letting her add herself to the mix. It was all him. All what he wanted, even though what he seemed to want was to give her endless, blinding orgasms, which seemed sort of petty and stupid to have an issue with, but it was the principle.
She’d never been less sure of anything in her life. She was married to Ajax, only to discover she didn’t know him. To have the security of fantasy and her notion of love ripped away from her, when she was bound to him for life.
She really felt like she needed a drink.
Although, since she’d been having unprotected sex with Ajax for a week, maybe she shouldn’t. Oh, jeez, that had to stop. Yes, she wanted children and she knew he did, too, but honestly, she was so messed up at the moment it just wasn’t a very good idea.
Her phone pinged, and she looked down at the new message that was displayed on the screen. “Oh, Ajax, I have to stop by the store. Do you mind?”
He lifted one shoulder. “If it’s an emergency, of course we should go.”
The little show of support made her feel not quite so alone. “It’s not really an emergency—my manager just wants me to check something out, but...I appreciate it.”
“Of course. I’m investing in this company, so I need to make sure everything is running well.”
Ouch. “Right. Of course.”
She might not love him, but he was her lover, and she wished they had a little something personal between them. She wasn’t just his lover, either, she was his wife. Lifelong family...acquaintance. Up until the past few weeks she would have called him a friend, but friends knew each other. They only knew each other in the biblical sense. And even then, that was only provided she followed his rules.
There had been a time in her life when she’d imagined that being with Ajax would solve all of her problems. Instead, he’d just introduced her to a whole new set of them she hadn’t even known existed.
* * *
Leah’s Lollies was a pop of color in the middle of the city. The floor was set up like a game board, brightly colored squares leading you down different paths. There was the road to the candy cane forest, which boasted huge candy canes spread around like trees, dusted in crystal. Every sort of mint was there. And then there was chocolate cove, with chocolate sculptures that were rotated out every season, and at least three hundred varieties of chocolate candy.
It was the lightest, frothiest excess Ajax had ever seen. And in some ways, he found it refreshing. He was all too familiar with the dark side of human appetites.
A little sugar seemed harmless in comparison.
As soon as they’d walked in, Leah had scurried to the back to speak to the manager, leaving Ajax standing in the middle of the fruit patch, where all the fruity treats lived. A girl, no older than sixteen, approached, wearing a white-and-red-striped uniform and an overdone smile.
“Welcome to Leah’s. Lolly?” She held up a small lollypop that matched her uniform.
“No.”
She looked a little bit crestfallen. But he wasn’t a candy person. Except when Leah had left him candy. He’d always eaten that because he hadn’t wanted to hurt her feelings.
Something he’d done constantly since their marriage, he was sure of that.
“Actually,” he said, “No lollypop, but...do you have a red har
d candy?”
“Tons. Cinnamon or fruity?”
“Fruity.”
“Over this way.”
Leah’s candy expert helped him pick a bag of small red, round candies. Cherry. They reminded him of her. Of her red lips. The color they’d been the first time he’d kissed her for a reason other than show. The first time he’d kissed them just because he wanted to.
And they reminded him of her bikini. The one she’d worn the first night they’d made love.
Leah appeared a few moments after he’d paid for the candy and stuck the bag in his jacket pocket.
“Did you get bored?” she asked.
“How could anyone get bored in here?”
“I feel the same way,” she said, a dreamy smile on her face. “I think my favorite store is the one in France, though. I’m test-driving a bakery. You should see all the macaroons set out every day. In every color you can possibly imagine. So far they’ve sold out by midday every day.”
Leah’s expression took on a dreamy quality, her enthusiasm obvious. Enviable.
He wondered what it must be like to love something so much. To have so much passion for your work, for anything in life.
He didn’t know. He would never know. The nature of things, of himself, required that he keep too much of himself chained. Passion was very much in chains.
Except when you’re with Leah. Then it’s her in chains.
Chains or a silk scarf. That was passion tugging at its leash, getting close, but not getting free. A dangerous, dangerous game, but one he couldn’t bring himself to give up. And not because of their agreement. Not because they both wanted children.
But because he craved the taste of her. The feel of her.
So deadly. So close to the edge. And yet, he couldn’t stop himself. He didn’t even want to. Leah had always had a way in. She had always mattered to him. And that foothold she’d made in his soul, early on, was now threatening to be the undoing of all of his efforts.
Was threatening to pull him back into darkness. A man who was a slave to his passions. A man who barely deserved life, much less the soft, sweet touch of Leah’s hands.
The man he feared most.
At least during the day he could put things back to normal. At least with her wrists bound he had some form of control. At least the safeguards were holding.
He thought about the bag of cherry candies in his pocket and wondered what he was thinking. Wondered why he’d bought them.
Then he pushed the thought to the side. He would worry about it later. Everything was fine. His barriers were firmly in place. It was the perfect arrangement, really. He had Leah, beautiful—how had he ever missed how beautiful?— exciting Leah, in his bed every night. He had a wife by his side, one who understood his devotion to his work and was just as devoted to her own. One who made it possible for him to acquire Holt. One to keep his competitor well and truly foiled. Yes, things were absolutely perfect.
“Ready to go?” he asked, already thinking of how he would tie her hands tonight. How he would bury his face between her thighs until he’d satisfied them both. He craved her, the taste of her on his tongue.
Oh, yes, he had plans tonight. Plans that were much more pleasurable than any he’d ever made before taking Leah as his wife.
“Uh, yeah, sure. If you don’t want anything.”
He lifted a shoulder, not sure why he didn’t want to tell her about the candy in his pocket. “No. I don’t need anything.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Not touching, they stepped out of the store and onto the sidewalk. And flashbulbs exploded in front of them. He was blinded by the harsh light, bright spots in the dark that marred his vision so it was all he saw everywhere he turned. He tried to look at Leah, to see her expression, but her face was obscured by spots dancing before his eyes.
“Where have you been for the past week?” One of the reporters shouted a question, and the others took it to mean it was a field day.
“Ajax! Ajax! How do you respond to allegations that your ex-fiancée left you for another man?”
“Ajax! Why the charade?”
“Leah! What’s it like to be the backup bride?”
Ajax gripped Leah’s arm and pulled her in tight to his body. “No questions,” he growled, dragging her toward the car.
He’d always commanded a fair bit of interest from the media, but nothing like this, not ever. It was Rachel, of course, his association with Holt and what had happened at the wedding. But mainly Rachel. She was the darling of the press. Of the society world in general.
And she had, no doubt, been indiscreet with her lover. And now suddenly, he and Leah were much more fascinating than they’d been when they’d simply made up the story about the amicable split of him and Rachel, and his discovery of feelings for Leah.
As he ushered Leah into the limo, he heard one last question rise up over the others. “How does it feel to have the swan get away while you get left with the ugly duckling?”
He slammed the door shut and shouted at his driver in Greek to drive. And then remembered his driver didn’t speak Greek. The man seemed to get the gist of it, though, even if he didn’t understand the exact words.
And in that spirit, Ajax let loose a string of profanity he doubted even Leah was familiar with.
His vision started to clear, slowly, and he could see Leah’s face, revealed by strips of light as the car passed buildings, still open, even though it was late. Each bar of light illuminated a glittering tear on her cheek. She didn’t make a sound, her face didn’t crumble, she sat, stoic, with moisture tracking down her face.
The car pulled up to his penthouse, and Leah was out before the vehicle had stopped all the way. Ajax followed.
“Leah,” he said.
“Don’t,” she said, walking on ahead of him, stopping when at the doors, waiting until he entered the building code, and then charging ahead of him again.
“What they said...”
“Was true. I am your backup, and we both know it. But it was my choice. I knew what I was getting into. But that doesn’t mean I have to like hearing crap like that shouted at me in public.”
“Damn right,” he growled, following her into a waiting elevator. “I won’t allow it to run, Leah. I won’t allow a headline like that to exist.”
“Control the press now, do you, darling?” she said, her tone brittle. “You’re more powerful than the president.”
“I have connections. And that,” he spat, “isn’t news. It’s the lowest form of entertainment, given to people who have nothing better to do than to sit and enjoy the misery of others. The modern-day Greek tragedy.”
“Yep. All the catharsis of Oedipus Rex without the incest,” she bit out. “I’m so thrilled to be a part of it.”
“I would have spared you from this.”
“It doesn’t matter, Ajax,” she said, wiping a tear from her cheek. “If they didn’t print it, it wouldn’t make it any less true. You wanted her...you got stuck with me.”
“I didn’t love her.”
“But you wanted her.”
He couldn’t imagine taking Rachel to his bed, not even in the vaguest fantasy. He couldn’t imagine having or wanting any woman other than Leah. He could picture her even now, her dark curls spread over his pillow, her arms raised above her head, pushing her breasts up. An offering. One he would always accept.
“I don’t want her now.” He didn’t think he ever had really.
“I... That’s good. But still... Backup Bride. Yay. That’s catchy. That’s going to stick.”
“I will...”
“You will what, Ajax? Go in and be all mean and scary and demand retractions? Why? What’s the point?”
He reached down and cupped her chin. “Because I will not have them hurt you lik
e this.”
“Why not? You hurt me all the time.”
He dropped his hand down to his side, a strange, cold feeling spreading from his chest down to his fingertips.
The elevator doors slid open, and she walked out into the hall, standing by the door, waiting for him to open it. She pushed past him and into the living room. “So, great, I’m going to bed. And I think I’m going to let you off the hook tonight.”
“Let me off the...?”
“Of our deal. Every night. My bed. I don’t want to do that tonight.”
“Why?” he asked, knowing it was a stupid question, and yet he had no idea how to fix the situation he found himself in. Leah had been different in the candy store. Softer for a moment. More like the Leah he’d always known.
But now her guard was up, walls strong and high around her. He couldn’t reach her. Didn’t know what to say or do.
“I have a headache,” she said. “Something to do with overexposure to flashbulbs. Good night.”
She stalked out of the room, and Ajax walked to the bar. He kept a bar in his house, and it was fully stocked. He told himself it was for guests, but deep down he knew. He knew he was waving a red flag in front of the beast, tempting him.
And tonight...tonight he nearly took the bait.
He gritted his teeth and turned away from it. He was in control. No one would take that from him, not even Leah.
CHAPTER TWELVE
LEAH WOKE UP feeling horrible, and her mood lasted the whole day. Last night’s encounter with the press had been the embodiment of her every past insecurity. Of her every current insecurity. So many people so certain she wasn’t good enough. So confident in saying it. In reminding her that her husband, the man she made love with every night, didn’t really want her.
She had ample time to get grouchier since Ajax spent the whole day at Holt and she spent the whole day replaying the press fiasco, and every lame encounter she and Ajax had had since their marriage, without the memory of recent good sex as a buffer.
She was digging through his freezer, looking for something for dinner, when he came back home.
