“Then it seems we have an arsenal.”
When he only watched me in that same stirring and vaguely threatening way, I lifted my chin as if I was preparing myself for a fight. With him.
Even though I knew we were both aware I would never, ever win.
“And if I say all I want from you is decoration?” His voice was silk and menace. It wound around me like the ties he’d used to secure me to that bed of his, one memorable night. “Silence and submission and a pretty smile on your face? What then?”
“You bought me, Javier,” I reminded him, and it wasn’t until I heard the edge in my own voice that I understood there were all manner of weapons. And that I didn’t need his permission to wield them. “I can be whatever you want me to be. I thought that was the point.”
CHAPTER TEN
Javier
IF SHE MENTIONED the fact that I’d bought her one more time, it might send me over the edge—and I chose not to question why that was when it was true. I had. And would again. There was no reason at all to resent the way she threw it at me like some kind of challenge.
I didn’t like the fact that I was so close to the edge as it was, and we hadn’t even made it to the ball yet.
And it didn’t help that Imogen looked good enough to eat.
Her hair was more gold than red after our time on La Angelita, even tucked back into a complicated, curling mystery she’d secured to the back of her head with some or other gleaming thing my fingers itched to remove.
She looked like every dream I’d ever had about the wife I would one day win. Or, yes, buy. She was elegant, masked in a way that showed off the aristocratic bones of her face and draped in the finest black that clung to her generous figure in ways that made me ache. She looked gracious beyond measure and far, far out of the league of a drug dealer’s son who’d been raised in a gutter. She was as beautiful as she was unreachable, as befit a woman with blood so achingly blue.
Imogen was exactly the wife I wanted on my arm at this or any other society event. She would exude all that Fitzalan superiority without even trying and my dominance would continue unabated and unchallenged from all these men who fancied themselves better than the likes of me.
And she was standing here in front of me talking about what I’d paid for her, as if this union of ours was nothing but the oldest profession in action on a grand scale.
I told myself I was outraged at the insult. When wealthy men hired prostitutes, they were called escorts. And when they bought wives, it was not called a purchase, it was deemed a wise marriage. To think about my choices in any other way suggested I was still in the gutter, despite all my accomplishments.
I assured myself I was furious, but that hardly explained the heaviness in my sex.
The same heaviness that had become my obsession.
The very last thing I wanted to do was take her out of this hotel I’d emptied for my own privacy when it would have been far more entertaining to experiment with that privacy. I wanted to undress her, right here in the cavernous lobby. I wanted to worship every silken inch of her fine, soft body in the filthiest way imaginable. Starting with my mouth.
But there was work to be done. There was always work to be done. Charity balls were only merry social occasions when a man’s donations were relatively minor. For me, they were necessary appearances that had to look social and offhanded when they were anything but.
That beguiling, demanding need for her scraped at me with a raw force that was nothing short of alarming, because Imogen was the first woman I’d ever met that I couldn’t get enough of—but I ignored it. I had no choice but to ignore it tonight. I kept her arm linked in mine and I led her down to the boat that would take us to the ball, and if my jaw ached from clenching it, that was at least a different sort of ache from the one currently driving me mad.
“I knew it would be beautiful here,” she said softly, standing at the rail as the boat cut through the waves, though the night air was cool and whipped at her curls. “But I had no idea it would be this beautiful. I had no idea it was possible for anything to be this beautiful.”
I moved to stand next to her at the rail, my gaze on the water of the lagoon. And then the canals of Venice before us, inky and dark. Very nearly brooding, this time of year. “I keep forgetting how sheltered your life has been.”
“I have been nowhere,” she said simply, and I thought it was the lack of bitterness in those words that cut me the most. “I have seen nothing outside the walls of the convent or that dreary finishing school. Not in person, anyway. And it turns out that you can watch a thousand things on the internet, read as many books as you can get your hands on, and they still won’t prepare you for reality.”
That word bit at me. Reality. Because I knew that on some level, no matter her protestations, she had to be embarrassed that she’d been forced to lower herself to marry a man like me. Of course I knew it. It was one of the defining truths of my life, and it didn’t matter that she hadn’t said such a thing to me in so many words. I knew it all the same. And I had never felt inferior in her father’s house, but it was amazing how easily I slipped into that space when it was only Imogen. When she was the one who looked at me and made me feel that odd sensation I had never felt before—that slippery, uncomfortable notion that I would never get as far away from my wretched origins as I wanted.
It rose between us like a ghost.
And it was a feeling I should have been used to. I was. Still, when it came from Imogen, it made me ache in a new way. I couldn’t say I liked it.
Even so, I couldn’t keep myself from reaching over to one of the curls that had already escaped. I tucked it behind her ear with a gentleness I knew made me a stranger to myself.
“You mean Venice, of course,” I murmured, that stranger firmly in charge of me now. Was I...teasing her? Was I a man who...teased? I never had been before. “Or the legendary Mediterranean Sea, perhaps. Not the great many more prurient things a person could read about or watch online, if they wished.”
Her gaze met mine, filled with a laughter that I shouldn’t have liked so much. I couldn’t figure out why I cared so much about this woman who came apart in my hands so easily and yet imagined she could fashion herself into some kind of weapon, mine to command.
I didn’t want any part of that. The very notion made me have to fight to hold back a shudder.
I told myself it was rage.
Though I knew full well it was connected instead to a hollow place in me that recalled an eight-year-old boy who had understood he would never be as important to those who should have loved and protected him as that poison they took to deliver them into oblivion.
But I refused to think about my parents. Not here. Not now.
There was still so much of the innocent about Imogen as she gazed at me, despite all I had done to claim her for my own. “Of course I mean Venice. What else could I mean?”
“Tell me more about what, precisely, you watched from the confines of the convent. All to better aid your education.”
“Documentaries, mostly.” Imogen smiled. And it was worrying, I thought in some distant part of me, how much I liked to see her smile. As if I craved it. As if I was a man who had ever allowed myself to crave anything when I knew full well it was the kind of weakness people like my parents lived to exploit. “About Venice, naturally, in all its splendor. And the Mediterranean Sea, too, now that you mention it.”
“They will make a documentary about anything these days,” I murmured.
I traced the edge of her mask, the place where the gold and onyx met the soft skin of her cheek. I meant to say something. I was sure I had planned it, even.
But there was something about the water. The echoes and the ancient buildings around us and the particular, peculiar magic of this submerged city, and I couldn’t find the words. Or I could, but I didn’t want to say them.
I
didn’t want to name the things that moved in me when I looked at her. Every time I looked at her.
And then we were landing at the palazzo where the ball took place, all gleaming lights and noise spilling out into the winter night, and the moment was lost.
I told myself it wasn’t disappointment that crashed over me as I led Imogen toward the entrance of the charity ball and handed off our winter coats. It couldn’t be anything like disappointment as I waited for us to be announced, then drew her into the thick of the crowd, because that suggested a depth of emotion I didn’t feel.
Because I did not feel. I refused.
I had spent all these weeks on the island making certain of this. I had forced myself away from Imogen when I wanted to stay. I had remained in my office for hours though I was distracted and, worse, uninterested.
I kept pretending I could think about something other than getting back inside Imogen, and I kept proving myself wrong.
Tonight appeared to be no exception.
Once inside, I could see the business associates I had come here to meet. Masks did nothing to hide the power that certain men seemed to exude from their very pores no matter what they did to conceal their features. The ball was taking place on the ground-floor ballroom of the ancient palazzo, with mighty old pillars and chandeliers three flights up ablaze with light. There was an orchestra on a raised dais at one end, and enough gold everywhere to make the whole world gleam.
But I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t quite bring myself to let Imogen loose into this particular pack of wolves. And not because I feared them, but because I was the most fearsome wolf of all and I wasn’t nearly done with her. I wished that the weeks we’d spent on my island, happily isolated and removed from all this, had been twice as long.
That felt like another betrayal of the person I had always imagined myself to be, and I wasn’t sure I could speak. I was as close to terrified as I’d ever been at what might come out of my mouth if I tried.
Instead, I swept my lovely wife out onto the dance floor. I held her in my arms, gazed down at those perfect lips of hers that I could taste anytime I wished, and told myself my head swam because there were too many people here. It was hot. Noisy.
But she tipped back her head and smiled at me.
And I understood that it wasn’t simply that I didn’t recognize myself around this woman.
She had made me a liar. A liar with far too many feelings.
Worse, I did nothing with this realization but accept it. And dance.
“I never thought...” Imogen’s voice was breathy. Her eyes gleamed brighter than the blaze of lights all around us. “You are a marvelous dancer.”
“You sound slightly too surprised.”
“It’s only that I would never have dared imagine you dancing. You’re too...”
I felt my brow rise. “Beneath you?”
“Elemental, I was going to say.”
What was it about this woman? Why did she turn me into this...sniveling creature who advertised his own weaknesses at the slightest provocation?
“I taught myself,” I said. Stiffly, but I said it.
It had been part of those early years, when I’d decided to make a guttersnipe a gentleman. And there was a part of me that expected her to laugh at the notion of a monster practicing a waltz. I might have joined in. But she didn’t laugh.
“I took comportment and ballroom dancing lessons. First with the governesses at home, then in the convent. And it was not until I was in finishing school that Madame told us that proper dancing was merely another form of battle.”
I studied her face as it was tipped up to mine.
“Battle? I was unaware that finishing school was so...aggressive.”
“We find our weapons where we can, Javier.”
Her soft voice echoed in my ears long after the song ended, and I was forced to take a step back. To allow her to loop her arm through mine again. To do what I knew I must, rather than what I wanted.
And it occurred to me, with an unpleasant sort of jolt, that I couldn’t recall too many instances of doing what I wanted. Rather than what I must.
I had more money than I could ever spend. It would take commitment and effort to rid myself of my wealth. It would take years. Decades.
And yet I still behaved as if I was that kid in the sewers of Madrid. I still expected that at any moment, the authorities might step in and take it all away from me. Denounce me for my father’s sins and throw me back where I came from.
I knew better than anyone that we were all of us nothing but self-fulfilling prophecies. And still I allowed those same old obsessions to own me. To shape me. To determine my every move.
I felt far closer to uncertain than I was comfortable with as we drew close to a group containing a man I couldn’t help but recognize. He, too, was masked—but his mask was the sort that only drew attention to him, rather than making any attempt at concealing him from view.
“Hello, Father,” Imogen said from beside me.
I don’t know what I expected. I had seen and loathed those marks this man had left on my wife’s skin. I had watched what passed for Fitzalan father/daughter interactions before. Most notably at our wedding, when for all the paternal emotion on display Dermot could have been handing me a large block of granite.
That stoniness was in evidence again tonight.
“It is such a pity that you could not take a little more care with your appearance on a night like this,” the old man said, his voice bitter. Cruel. It took me a moment to realize he was speaking to Imogen. “It is your first introduction to society as part of a married couple. Surely you could have done something with your hair.”
Imogen only smiled. “I did do something with my hair.”
Fitzalan gazed at her with distaste. Then shifted his cold glare to me, as if he expected an apology. Certainly not as if he was giving me one. “I am afraid that no amount of correction has ever worked with this level of defiance. If I were you, I might consider a firmer hand.”
Beside me, I felt Imogen stiffen, even though her expression did not change at all. It put me in mind of the sort of weapons she had mentioned. But more than that, Fitzalan dared to speak to me of a firmer hand?
I wanted to rip Dermot Fitzalan asunder, here where all the circling wolves could watch. And tear into him themselves when I left him in pieces.
But that was not how men like this fought. Well did I know it. I made a mental note to hit Fitzalan back hard, where he lived.
In his wallet.
And in the meantime, I would force myself to stand here and speak to him as if he did not deserve a taste of his own medicine. My fingers itched to leave their own dark marks on his skin to see how he liked it.
Somehow, though Fitzalan did not deserve it, I kept the true monster in me at bay.
“You are not me,” I said coolly to this father who cared so little for his own daughter that he would send her to a marital bed with marks from his own hand. This pompous man who likely had done it on purpose, because it was the next best thing to actually branding Imogen as if she was truly property. “I believe this simple truth fills us both with gratitude, does it not?”
But I didn’t hear his response. Imogen excused herself with that same serene smile and her head held high. And instead of attending to the conversation with this man I had cultivated for a decade or more and now had every intention of ruining—instead of taking pleasure in deceiving him or decimating him in turn, one or the other, as long as I came out the winner—I watched her go.
I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I couldn’t seem to force myself to pay attention to Fitzalan or the men standing with him. I was aware they were talking around me—possibly at me—but I didn’t care the way I should have.
The way I always had in the past.
I watched Imogen instead. I watched the light reflect off
her glorious curls from those dizzying chandeliers. I watched the easy, unselfconscious way she navigated through the crowd, aware she had no sense of her own grace.
As if I wanted to chase after her like some kind of puppy. Like the kind of soft, malleable creature I had never been.
Like a man besotted, though I knew that was impossible.
And worse, as if what I felt when she walked away from me was grief.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Imogen
I LOCKED MYSELF in a bathroom stall in the elegant ladies’ powder room, perching there on top of the cold porcelain lid and making no attempt to use it.
And then stayed there, where no one could see me.
Or stare at me. Or talk about me where I could hear the unkind note in their voices, yet none of the words, as a group of society women I knew I ought to have recognized had done as I’d found my way here.
Or make disparaging remarks about my hair. My dress. Whatever it was they found lacking in me.
It isn’t that you’re lacking something, a voice inside of me whispered. It reminded me of the low, husky way Javier spoke to me in the middle of the night when we were wrapped tight around each other in bed, fitted together like puzzle pieces in a way I hadn’t been able to visualize before our wedding. And now craved the way I did everything else that involved touching him. It’s that you have the misfortune of being related to your sister while not actually being her.
That had the ring of an unpleasant truth. And part of me wanted to stay where I was for the rest of the night, the pride and ferocity of the Fitzalan women be damned, because I was tired of all the comparisons. Especially when I was always coming out on the wrong side of them.
I wanted to stay hidden here, but I knew I couldn’t. I had to gather myself together. I had to smile sweetly, serenely, while people compared me to my perfect sister. I had to pretend I was oblivious to the way people looked at me and the things they said to me or about me.
But I couldn’t seem to make myself move.
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