CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SIX

D ANTE ’ S PLAN HAD always been flawed. He could see that now.

He’d brought Emma to Japan to thrill her. But Emma had never cared to chase the thrill of worldly adventures. She’d wanted the extravagance of normal many took for granted. She longed for security in the safety of his arms. A passionate marriage in the confines of a contract. But a loveless marriage.

He’d dismissed key information that he already knew about her. He understood she longed for financial security and passion without emotional attachment.

Now he understood why ...

Emma didn’t want to explore the heat between them, because she didn’t trust it.

Didn’t trust him .

But tonight, he’d prove that she could.

For three days, he’d planned, and curated a campaign of seduction that had nothing to do with shared trauma. Nothing to do with emotions or feelings. Only what would excite and delight her senses.

Tonight, he’d delight her. Win her trust. And then they would get this marriage back on track.

His body tightened in anticipation. He’d blocked out the intensity of his longing, his conviction to allow Emma the space she demanded. Tonight she needed to see it.

He opened his eyes and scanned his scene of seduction.

Fires burned in small ceramic pots, positioned at every corner of the square, white-clothed table set for two. A black gold-embossed menu sat prepared to be opened by her fingers and devoured by her senses as she read beneath long-stemmed candles. The menu was curated to tantalise her taste buds, to show her the man who’d written it, knew her. Her likes— dislikes .

He’d cater to her every worldly desire, while she dined with him in this man-made cherry blossom grove, under a night’s sky.

Then he’d meet her every physical desire too.

The black double doors opened. The two doormen held them open with white-gloved hands and dipped heads.

And she stole the breath in his lungs.

She was a vision.

The dress was everything he knew it would be. Decadent. Made of silver sequins hand sewn into a delicate blood-red silk overlaid with purple-and-black lace. Her shoulders and back were bare. A tight bodice nipped in at the waist and flared out in a fishtail.

Dante watched her from the shadows. Watched the sway of her feminine curves as she walked the white stone path snaking beneath her feet.

Her eyes rose to the treetops, her heavy blond hair swishing between her shoulder blades, and he caught the glints of the sliver clasp containing her hair into a high ponytail. And his fingers itched to touch it. To release it. To watch her hair fall to her naked shoulders before he gripped it between his fingers.

But still, he didn’t move.

Still, he watched.

Her gaze moved along every tree, every overarching branch that created a shelter overhead. She scanned the petals. The most vivid pinks to the purest whites.

Her eyes dipped to the flowerbeds. To the wild flowers of pink and yellow. To the orange blooms with stained red tips.

And she was iridescent, glowing beneath the soft amber glow of the lanterns hanging from the intermittent branches of every tree.

She looked like she belonged here. Some mythical creature sent to command the trees. The flowers.

Dante flinched, an imperceptible jolt of his body beneath his suit as the memory assaulted him.

The memory of a basket overflowing with delicacies, overturned. Their clothes strewn on each step towards the bedroom.

Her surprise picnic forgotten.

He’d forgotten her love of gardens that night.

Forgotten the reason they’d chosen the house in Mayfair.

Dante remembered now.

He’d picked her up from work and driven them to the viewing. But instead of going inside, he’d taken her into the garden. The secret garden. And she’d lit up. Something inside her glowing at this secret world, living and alive, within the concrete jungle of London.

So he’d taken her to every house with a secret garden and he’d bought her the first one she adored.

He hadn’t been able to convince her to give up any of her three jobs initially after the move into the Mayfair house, after their engagement. None of them. Thankless jobs. A silver service waitress at night, a cafe catering assistant in the day and an agency cleaner on the side...

Somewhere inside her she’d been afraid, even then, that he wouldn’t take care of her, hadn’t she? That his promise of marriage was a lie until he slipped the ring on her finger and they both signed on the dotted line.

But he had taken care of her, met her needs.

Then why did she leave you?

Something heavy shifted inside him. He ignored it.

She was here now . That was what mattered, what he was focused on.

She had arrived at the table, stood next to it now, fingering the candlesticks, the crystal glasses, the silverware—

Dante moved towards her now, through the trees on silent feet.

He stepped into her space behind her, and it hit him in the solar plexus. The presence of her. Her scent.

She turned, eyes wide. ‘Dante!’ She placed a hand to his chest, to steady herself. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and her eyes glittered. ‘I adore this . Gardens...’ Her eyes moved from his to the trees—to the flowers. ‘Me and Mum moved around a lot, inner city estate to inner city estate. Flats to maisonettes to houses. But there was always a garden,’ she said.

He felt her heavy swallow.

‘Whether it was potted plants on a windowsill or a shared communal garden. I used to steal Mum’s library books and sneak out in the dead of night to read them beneath the lights I’d threaded between the trees. To escape for a while. Just for a time where I could forget the hardness. Mum’s tears... The garden was a safe place where all was quiet. All was still.’

His eyes travelled down over her plump parted lips. Down over her throat. Over the prominent arch of her collarbone. And he wanted to carry her back the way she’d come. Up to the suite. To bed. And lose himself in her. Silence her lips with his and end these stories of hers he didn’t want to hear. Didn’t need to hear.

But he didn’t. He remained still. Let the thud of his heart beat ferociously beneath her fingertips.

‘I figured it out.’

‘What?’

‘Our marriage,’ she replied. ‘It makes sense now.’

His frowned. ‘What does?’

‘Both our childhoods were... unstable . And we found stability in each other. A frantic all-consuming stability.’

He clenched his fists at his sides to stop him reaching for her. To stop him from spanning his palms around her waist to explore the dip before he came to the arch of her hips. To stop him from tugging her body into the groove of his to show her just how well their bodies fitted together. To prove to her she needed no more words. No more talk. Not whatever this was.

Only him.

‘ You are my garden,’ she concluded, and her words shredded his resolve to be slow. To ease her into the physicality of his desire. Of hers.

He was not her... garden .

He had to tell her everything. Everything. The contract. The rules...

He couldn’t allow her to speculate, to come up with her own truth.

He’d seduce with the truth she needed to hear. Why she trusted him. Why she’d married him.

He needed to end whatever fantasies she was creating about their commitment to one another.

‘Our marriage has nothing to do with...gardens, Emma, ’ he stated. ‘It has everything to do with how I make you feel. How you make me feel.’

Her eyes narrowed and moved over the hard jut of his jaw to the flickering pulse in his cheek. ‘How you make me feel?’

‘We have a contract.’

‘A contract?’

‘A purely-for-passion marriage for as long as we both see fit for it to continue. We agreed to one year originally. Planned for another three years if we were still content. Happy in the confines of our contract. And we were content,’ he assured her, because they had been. He was sure of that. Or at least he had been.

But she left. The contract has technically expired.

Semantics. There was no need to press on the separation between them. He’d tell her the facts. Facts as he knew them. And she needed to hear them; he had no other choice but to tell her. Because he could not allow her to turn them into something else. Something he didn’t want. Something that needed to be fed and watered and nourished emotionally.

He didn’t want it.

And neither did she.

‘There was no chance of you ever becoming your mother, Emma,’ he told her, because he knew this was the way now. The only way to re-establish what they were. What he wanted again. ‘Because we both wanted the same thing from our marriage. Each other. Without emotional attachments. Without love. We do not know how to love, Emma, because we understand it as the lie it is. But we trust each other. To stick to the terms in the contract,’ he said, her breaths coming in quick sharp rasps.

‘Terms?’

‘Yes, a simple contract, to take what we wanted from each other,’ he reiterated, ‘Until we were sated.’

He was not sated. And he didn’t believe she was either.

‘What happened when we were done?’ she asked. ‘When it was over between us?’

‘We’d divorce and you’d receive a settlement. You’d be financially secure for ever.’

‘And what did you get out of this arrangement?’

‘You.’ Her fingers clenched and clung to his shirt. ‘We can have that again, Emma,’ he said roughly, his voice hoarse. ‘We can—’

‘Have a physical relationship— a marriage ,’ she corrected, ‘without emotional attachment.’ He watched the blush bloom in her pale cheeks. The flair of her nostrils. The unsteady rise and fall of her chest. ‘Without lies or deception. No broken promises. Just... sex . Until I no longer want you.’

‘Or I no longer want you ,’ he added, because if he was to have Emma in his bed again, she needed to understand the rules they played by.

‘I—’

He shook his head. ‘Understand this before you say anything,’ he growled. ‘Whether you want to stay in this marriage or not, everything I’ve said still stands. If you choose to leave, you will be financially secure. But if—’

‘If I want you to take me to bed,’ she said, ‘it will be sex only?’ Her blue eyes were fixed on his, probing, searching.

‘Exactly,’ he agreed, and something inside him shifted. But it didn’t feel like triumph. It was not elation zipping through his veins. It was heavier. Darker .

‘No emotions involved, Emma. Only desire. Only want.’ He placed his hand on top of hers. Watched her mouth fall open as his fingers covered her.

‘I can fulfil your every physical desire,’ he promised, because he could.

He would .

For three days and three months, he’d waited. Thinking of this moment. Of his Emma coming back to him. How he’d take his power back by giving her the illusion of hers. But in this moment, he didn’t feel powerful.

He felt displaced.

Alone on the ledge.

Waiting.

For her.

It felt like whiplash.

Emma ached with everything she now knew about their marriage and everything she still didn’t. He’d given her what she’d asked for on the terrace.

A better understanding of him.

But she wasn’t satisfied.

He’d brought her to a forest of cherry blossoms, a garden with a variety of spring blooms. Some she knew and some she didn’t. Iris. Yellow petals with stained tips of red. Tulip Don Quichotte. Deep strains of purple and pink.

It was overwhelming he’d do this for her. A wife who was supposed to mean nothing to him. Not emotionally.

It was as if he knew her. Not only her body as per their contract. But the woman beneath all that.

He’d created a place for her in his mind.

A place filled with knowledge of her.

This wasn’t sexual.

It was intimate. It was holding her hand, when every instinct told her to withdraw from his touch. It was knowing her in ways that had nothing to do with her body.

He saw her. He made her feel safe. And wanted.

But none of it mattered, apparently.

It had never mattered between them.

She’d exposed herself, spoken freely about her past, taken some of her power back by exposing the truth. And for what? Their marriage had only ever been surface deep. It was a connection of bodies, not minds. Not hearts.

They had a contract. No emotional attachment, no love. Only them and a shared desire. A marriage strictly for passion with an inbuilt safety net and financial security guaranteed.

And... sex .

Lots of sex.

Questions, so many questions, caught in her throat.

Emma’s throat tightened.

But it was also beginning to make sense too. How they had found one another, why they both would have chosen to enter into a loveless marriage. They were the same, him and her. Their childhoods had both been unstable . And somehow, they’d found each other.

Each other’s constant in a world that had given them both nothing but inconsistency. That was why they’d governed their relationship with rules. Put precautions in place.

‘That’s how you did it, isn’t it?’

‘Did what?’

‘Convinced me to marry you.’

‘Yes.’

If he’d told her about the contract the night she’d fallen, would she have stayed?

No.

The woman she’d grown into was the one who had made this possible. A woman who would have been swayed by a secure future, who wanted to be reliant on nothing and no one. One who had seen what life had to offer and what it didn’t.

The younger Emma would never have risked that the intensity between them could have burned her alive. Wouldn’t have risked that she might not be able to walk away. Left it behind. Left him behind. Because that would surely have been the easier choice.

And there was nothing wrong with choosing easy. All her life it had been hard.

Until him.

Dante had made things easier for her.

Never had she been treated softly. Never had anyone shielded her from the harshness of life. Allowed her to more than survive the endless cycle of days.

He’d come for her when she needed it the most. Taken care of her when she’d abandoned him.

Why had he done that? Was it really just about sating their desire for one another? Or had things changed over the course of their year together? Had this marriage been everything Emma had hoped for? Had she been sated? Had she had her fill of his competent mouth? His lips? His body on hers? Inside her?

She thought of the intricate lace of her underwear hidden beneath her dress. A bra. Suspenders. Stockings.

Never to her knowledge had she worn anything like it before, but she had instinctually worn them tonight. And that made her feel brave. Sensual. In a way that Emma at only twenty-two would never have been.

Ever since Dante had come to her aid in the hospital, she had felt a void in her open up. Was this the way to satisfy that void? To indulge in the very desire that she had denied herself?

The need was so desperate she could taste it.

And why should she deny herself now? She had found the source of that hunger.

In this moment, why should she worry about why she had walked away from Dante, from their marriage? About why she had returned to Birmingham? About why she hadn’t demanded a divorce and cashed in on the settlement she had been promised?

Dante was right; for whatever reason she’d written that note, she hadn’t fully severed the bond between them.

And neither had he.

They’d both been waiting for each other to come back.

So tonight, she wanted to be brave.

She wanted to be sensual.

She wanted to be touched by him. She wanted to let herself be consumed by the frantic heat between them. She wanted to throw herself into the intensity of his dark brown eyes and drown in them.

She wanted to do what they had set out to do in the first place: stay until she’d had her fill, until she no longer wanted him. And then she’d walk away, without a backward glance. Whenever that might be.

Dante had promised her financial security regardless of what choice she made.

And she believed him.

It felt powerful to have this choice. To choose to please herself. And him.

Suddenly she felt nervous. Not wanting to bite at her lower lip and smudge the perfectly applied plum lipstick, Emma nipped at the inside of her cheek. The pain was a welcome distraction.

She knew the mechanics of sex. Understood her role in the bedroom. To be a vehicle for someone else’s pleasure and take what pleasure she could of her own.

But Dante was different. How he made her feel was different. She wanted to touch him in ways she’d never touched another. She wanted to be on her knees before him and bring him pleasure with her lips. Her tongue. Her mouth. She wanted him on his knees, wanted to place her calf over his shoulder and allow him to take what he wanted.

And it felt powerful to know it would be this way for them.

No one-sided pleasure, no race to the finish line and Whoops, sorry about that . No apologies at all.

With him, it would be mutual. A shared goal to please one another.

Dante’s eyes moved over every exposed area of her skin. And it heated her from the inside.

She recognised it. The wildfire that would ignite as soon as his lips touched hers.

An ache pulsed inside her.

This time, she’d let him catch fire.

Let it roar inside her.

Let it roar inside them both.

She’d made her choice.

Tonight, she’d be with Dante without emotion. He’d fulfil her every physical desire, and she’d embrace the franticness. The intensity.

What was the harm?

Emma pushed her hand into the hard muscle of his chest. Felt the ripple of the white dress shirt beneath her fingers. Let the heat of his hand on hers warm her. Heat her from her toes to her scalp.

‘Kiss me,’ she demanded, and it felt powerful to demand it. To want him without fear.

‘Emma,’ he warned darkly. And she felt the rumble of it in his chest, beneath her hand.

‘I need more than that. I need you to tell me exactly what you want, what you’re choosing.’

Emma needed to say it out loud as much as he needed to hear it. That she was willing to accept his terms, the terms they had put in place together for this marriage to work.

‘I choose our marriage. The contract. No emotion. Only desire. I choose...’

Slowly, she let her gaze move over his face. It was perfectly symmetrical. Black hair hung at his ears. High cheekbones sat above his powerful jaw and noble nose. And his eyes, a brown so dark, so deep, she could fall into them.

‘You...’ she breathed.

‘Emmy...’ Her name wasn’t a warning. It was a plea. She recognised it, because her body pleaded with her too. Begged her to give in to the heat between them.

To surrender. Emma rose on her tiptoes and began to close the distance between them. And with every millimetre she felt the anticipation climb inside her.

Until Dante finally caught her mouth with his.