CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER TEN

I N THE BACK of the luxury car with cream leather and silver accents, they sat side by side. And together, they watched out of black windows as the car travelled through Japan’s city of twinkling lights and soaring skyscrapers, until it swept through softly lit sleeping streets.

Dante swept his gaze over the profile of her. The way her fringe covered her forehead, the flick of her golden lashes, the slope of her elegant nose and the pink pout of her mouth.

Her eyes were latched on to the floating scenery, but he watched her. Watched the blue depth of her gaze that said so much, too much, when her mouth spoke words. Told him things he hadn’t asked to hear and asked questions that compelled him to answer, leading to more questions.

Dante pressed his lips into a thin line and locked his jaw. He did not want to speak. He did not want to hear. He wanted to be still. Alone .

While Dante had travelled the world alone, he’d never taken her with him. He’d lived his life, and she’d lived hers. An arrangement that had suited them both.

Until it didn’t.

Until he’d travelled across half the globe to return to their house to find her in the bed they shared, only to find that she wasn’t there.

But she was here now.

The warm beige coat with a flicked-up collar hiding the bruises his mouth had created on her throat. Marking her.

He wanted to see it. His brand on her flesh.

He swallowed, drew his gaze down the loose white shirt, the thighs of her jean-clad legs, and down to the flesh-coloured heels on her feet.

His lust was hot and constant. It remained even when he didn’t summon it. Even when he tried to bury it.

Throughout their marriage, he’d given her everything he’d thought she’d wanted. Exclusivity to him and his world. His billions to do with as she pleased. His body. But never his thoughts. Never his... trauma.

And he hadn’t wanted access to hers either.

He’d never wanted her explanations of why she spent so much time in the garden. Why she was happy for their marriage to be governed by a contract.

But now he knew, and he could not unknow these stories she’d told him of her need to find a place of security and safety. To retreat from the world outside.

She’d called him her garden, and his instincts had told him to slam down his defences and guard against her confession. But he was her garden, wasn’t he? Not in a romanticised way. But he was her security. He was her safety. In his arms, she was safe.

And understanding why she needed that from him, needed it from their marriage, weighed heavily on him. It was precious the trust she had placed in him. Fragile. To tell him this when she didn’t remember the last few years of her life, didn’t remember him.

He didn’t know how to hold space for such a delicate thing. How not to drop it. How not to break it, to break her. He did not want to break her.

The car halted beneath a blinking street light.

Dante scanned the street and realised they had arrived. It was an ordinary-looking place. With ordinary people walking past it towards their destination. Others stood still, talking under artificial light, and laughing. Some in groups. Some in pairs. Some holding hands.

Soft warmth infiltrated his fingers. He turned to look at the source and saw Emma’s hand covering his own lying on the seat between them.

And he saw the gold ring he’d given her. That marked her as his for the world to see. At least until one of them decided they no longer wanted to be married.

He didn’t like that thought, he realised. It made his nostrils flare with disgust.

He liked his ring on her finger. He liked that she was his. That she belonged to him. Because she did. And he liked that she was here. With him. Wearing her ring in this place he’d never shared with anyone else. It felt warm to have her with him. It felt...

Right .

No, that couldn’t be it, could it?

‘Are we getting out?’ Her voice slid into his ear.

He was not so naive. He was still obsessed with her. His crush. His wife.

More obsessed than he’d ever had been, because now he wanted the thoughts in her head. Wanted her to ask questions, wanted to answer them. Despite the rules. The playbook.

Maybe they could write their own playbook. Get to know one another outside of the sex. Not love, never love. But introduce emotions.

Because her desire for stability, normality, did things to him, didn’t it? Those were things he didn’t know how to define or if he liked them. It was different. She was different. And she made him feel... different.

Was she right?

Had he married her for the normality it offered, a normal he’d never truly known? Stability, sameness, one woman in his bed, in a house they shared—was that why he’d missed her? Been so displaced without her? Was this pain inside him more than a sexual ache? More than a need to possess her physically? But to...

What?

He was not normal. He wasn’t raised to be normal. He could never be those things for her. And she deserved them, didn’t she? This normal life she craved. A man she came home to, who was her constant. He wasn’t that man.

Then why are you still here?

‘Dante?’ His eyes met her questioning ones.

‘Yes, we’re getting out,’ he said, and removed his hand from beneath hers as he stepped out of the car, resisting the urge to recapture it and hold it tight.

He didn’t know why he was holding his breath. Why he waited with his lungs burning for her to follow him. But he did. He waited on the pavement of this ordinary street for her to join him.

‘In there,’ he said, and nodded towards the two black double doors to her right.

She looked at the doors. No sign to indicate what lay on the other side. To indicate if she was allowed inside. But she moved towards them and pushed one open without hesitation.

Perhaps the threat had never been outside the doors of their Mayfair house . Perhaps he was the threat. She had trusted him to keep her safe and he’d hurt her, hadn’t he? By not considering what it meant to Emma when he left her behind.

Door ajar, one pointed heel inside the door, she waited for him. ‘Are you coming?’

His body answered for him. A tightening in his solar plexus. Because still it lived inside him. The overwhelming need to be close to her, to be near her, to keep her close to him.

He could adapt, he knew. He could change the rules. He could show her that he hadn’t listened to her stories with complete emotional detachment. But did he want to? That was the question.

Dante followed her into a place that he had thought to be his alone. A place he didn’t think she belonged. He’d brought her halfway around the world to be here with him. And he could have taken her anywhere. He’d planned to seduce her with adventure and newness.

He could have taken her into Shinjuku City, dazzled her with the noise, the bustle, the lights, the smells unique to the little alley that was so big in atmosphere and its exotic food offerings, it rivalled London’s Soho.

But he’d chosen to bring her here, to a place he didn’t share with anyone. Not with clients. Not with anyone. It was his. It was not a garden. It was not a romantic place of pink petals and green grass. It was a building made of brick without windows and closed doors with locks that bolted shut behind him.

Tonight, he wasn’t taking her to bed. He was taking somewhere where it would only be them.

Dante followed Emma inside.

The jolt of metal reverberated in the silence.

‘You’ve locked the doors?’

‘No one will enter now,’ he answered. ‘Only a select few know of its existence. But...’

‘But?’

‘Now, if they try to enter, they will know it’s occupied.’

A long tunnel stretched out before her. Red fluorescent lights flickered above. Shadows blinked into focus in pink hues. She moved forward. Reached out and touched the wall. Let her fingers travel through the winding foliage climbing upwards. But climbing to where?

‘What is this place?’ she said, and she felt the tightness, the anticipation threading through her limbs.

‘You’ll see,’ he said, his voice low and deep, echoing in the dark silence.

Heat rushed against her nape. He was so close, two feet behind her, maybe a little more, and yet he was so far away.

It was an imaginary whisper of his breath on her skin. But she felt it. The closeness of him. The heat driving her forward. The presence behind her pushing her to an unknown end.

‘I’ll see?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This is a place I come to when I want to be alone.’

‘But you aren’t alone.’

‘I know.’

Her heart faltered. Her pulse beat without a steady throb, only an echo of it.

‘And do you bring others here when you want to be alone?’ she asked, her chest tightening. Painfully.

‘Never.’

‘Never?’

‘Only now,’ he said. ‘Only you .’

Blood rushed through her veins. Her heart hammered at the confirmation that she was the only one to come here with him.

It meant something, didn’t it? Even though she had no idea where he’d brought her or where he was taking her. Or what she’d find when she came to the end.

‘What do you do when you come here?’

‘Eat.’

Still, his voice carried. A physical torture that did not touch her skin. But it pierced into flesh. Drove inside her.

‘But there aren’t any restaurants here,’ she said over her shoulder, walking forward.

‘There are several hundred,’ he corrected. ‘Jidō-hanbaiki.’

‘Is that a restaurant? Where? I can’t see it,’ she said, turning her gaze to the long walls at her sides. ‘There are no people. No chefs. No waiters. There are only—’

She paused.

There was a door.

And he closed in on her now. Stood behind her. Inches away instead of feet.

‘Go inside,’ he urged.

She raised her hand to the silver looped handle. Touched it. But she didn’t pull, didn’t push.

She lingered in this dark place where it was only the two of them standing still in the darkness. Together.

He moved. Closer. Still not touching her. But the distance between them, instead of centimetres, became millimetres and she couldn’t breathe for the need to turn and press herself into him. Into his chest. Into the breadth and bulk of him, and—

He shifted. Turned the distance, the space between them, into nothing, and touched her.

His fingertips feathered her cheek, pushed the hair behind her ear, and he leaned in farther, until his breath was real, hot beneath her earlobe.

‘Don’t you want to go inside?’

‘What’s in there?’ she breathed.

‘It will be only us.’ His chest rose, and hers rose with it.

She pushed at the handle, and the door opened.

Warm yellow light infiltrated the darkness. She stepped forward and instantly regretted it as she moved away from the heat of him.

She longed to turn around. Return to him, to his arms. To surrender to this burn in her gut. To the flame growing brighter inside her. Fiercer by the second.

She stepped onto an over-polished white-and-black-speckled marble floor.

The quaintness of the homely potted plants, standing tall in every corner, the mismatched chairs, and well-worn tables, the pictures hung on the walls of smiling faces eating, a different delicacy in each photograph, the white bowls stacked high on a dark breakfast bar, consumed her.

She couldn’t help it. She stepped farther into the room.

‘You come here?’ she asked. ‘When you want to be alone?’

‘Yes,’ he confirmed, and she felt him enter the space with her. Fill the room with his presence.

She looked at the various coloured and sized rectangular machines standing in front of each wall but the photo wall.

Eyes wide, she turned to him. ‘Vending machines?’

‘Jidō-hanbaiki.’ He nodded. ‘ Jihanki for short.’

‘Why here?’

‘Why not here?’ He hooked a brow. ‘They are a cultural phenomenon here,’ he explained. ‘Vending machines can be found...everywhere. But inside these walls, you can be anywhere in the world with a press of a button. Anything you long to taste, to drink. From the most decadent ingredients to the most mundane. They are here. In this room.’

‘But if you want something, you can have it in any room you like,’ she said. ‘Anywhere in the world you like.’

She ran her fingers through her hair, looked at him and then at the machines. So many of them. Several hundred choices of what to eat, what part of the world she wanted to taste, and yet she would be in one room. In one place.

‘I thought you might enjoy this.’

‘But why this room?’ Her brow furrowed. ‘Why this—’ her eyes wandered, roamed the normality of it ‘—this place?’

‘It is something different,’ he said, and came to her. Lifted his hand, his fingers, and coiled a loose lock of hair around his finger. ‘It is my garden.’

She frowned. ‘Your garden?’

He swallowed thickly, and she watched the drag of his Adam’s apple with bated breath.

‘First, we will eat. Then I will tell you a story about a boy who found a place. A room. A garden. ’ The pressure on her scalp increased as his fingers tugged, not intentionally, not to hurt. But she felt the tension in his fingers. In his body. ‘And I will explain why I have brought you here with me—why it had to be here .’ He released the lock of hair. But her scalp still tingled. Her skin.

He turned his back on her. And breathlessly, she watched him.

Dante moved to the breakfast bar. The bowls clinked as he removed two from the stack. Removed cutlery from the stainless-steel containers holding them.

He moved again. One step after another, and he placed the bowls on the table. Set the cutlery aside each bowl and moved to a machine. Lifted his hand and pressed a button.

The machine whirled.

Emma didn’t speak. Didn’t move. She pretended to be invisible. A fly on the wall in a moment of Dante’s life, his world, a place he had found where he could be alone. Wanted to be alone. And yet he’d invited her inside. It felt precious to be here. She felt precious. Wanted .

The aroma of ginger filled the air as the machine delivered a cup. He repeated the procedure until Dante retrieved two cups. He moved back to the bowls he’d prepared and poured the liquid inside each bowl.

‘Chicken and ginger soup,’ he said. He exhaled heavily. Pulled out the ordinary wooden chair, with a high back and no arms.

‘Sit down, Emma.’ She did, and he took his seat in front of her. Their eyes met. ‘Eat.’

Together they picked up their spoons, dipped them into the soup and in sync, brought them to their lips.

It was a togetherness she’d never experienced, but her mother had craved it. Simple meals enjoyed by two. In companionable silence. In mutual understanding—the world outside could wait. Because the world outside was cold. Lonely.

The silence ricocheted in her ears. The comfortableness of it. The warmth. The realisation formed as clear as the broth before her. She could be anywhere in the world, anywhere she desired with a press of a button. And yet, she desired only to be with him. In this place. Safe in his company. Safe in their marriage. Safe with him.

Dante placed his spoon down on the worn table. ‘My father employed an army to raise me. A high turnover of staff to feed me from the moment I was pulled from my mother’s womb,’ he told her. And she felt the pull of emotion in his words. The way he had to drag them from deep inside him. And she understood how hard that was. Understood because she had felt that way on the terrace of their hotel, when she had told him her story. Her story that she’d told no one else. But him. And so she didn’t speak. She opened her ears and listened to his story.

‘Nannies. Teachers. Staff ,’ he continued, his voice dark and heavy And it pushed itself through her consciousness. ‘They were always around. Always talking. Always... there .’ His face twisted into something ugly. ‘And yet they were also not really there. At least not for me. They did not care for the boy in their charge, or for the teenager, the young man I became. Over the years, one face blended into several others. A name didn’t matter because they all answered to one man. They answered to my father. To the rules he had set out for how to raise me.

‘Whether I was in Italy, Switzerland or Nepal, they followed. Whether it was in a country estate in England, a castle in Sicily, a penthouse suite in Japan... I was surrounded by people. I was never alone. Never away from the noise—’

‘So, you found your own garden?’

‘I found a place,’ he corrected. ‘A room where I could choose to be. Not a place where my father ordered other people to take me. It was a different place in each city, each town. Whether it was a cafe in the village. A bookstore in a cobbled street. A room on a street no map knew. I entered it because I chose to be there. I paid them to close the door behind me. I—’

‘You sneaked out in the dead of night to escape.’

Her heart pounded. They were the same. Him and her. And for him to confess that was big, she knew. They’d both been abandoned, in one form or another. Left to fend for themselves. But they had found each other. Created something...something that was theirs. Normal. Unique.

‘You escaped,’ she said and exhaled unsteadily, ‘being alone in a house full of people who didn’t care while your father conquered the world. Just for a while. Just for a time, you forgot the hardness. The loneliness. You created a world where all was quiet. Where all was still. A safe place where you wanted to be. You ruled over it, not your father, and you dictated who could enter. Who—’

‘And I chose you,’ he said. ‘We chose this marriage. Because we wanted the same things. Want the same things. No borrowed beds. No temporary places to find respite. We share a house where we understand—’

‘Each other?’ she asked.

‘I know you, and you know me,’ he said and never had anyone known her.

He was on her side, wasn’t he? They wanted the same things. Needed them. A safe place they could share together where love had no home, but she did. She had a home.

She wanted this. This marriage. She wanted to stay. Stay where she had someone. Had him on her side.

‘I brought you here to show you, prove to you that I didn’t need our marriage to be a safe haven, that I had places I could come for that. But I have realised that although our marriage has never required it, although we have never wanted it before, we can be each other’s safe place.

‘It was safer before to leave the noise and other people outside. Because if I let them inside, if I learned their faces, learned their names, then they could leave. And them leaving would be too much. It was safer to not get attached. To keep them at arm’s length. I kept you at arm’s length,’ he admitted.

‘You kept me at arm’s length?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, and I was wrong.’

‘Wrong?’

‘To shut you out,’ he confessed. ‘We are the same. Our needs are the same. We are no risk to each other. I can be your garden, Emma.’

He scowled. A thousand emotions flashed on his tightly drawn features. And she couldn’t read a single one.

‘I am your garden,’ he corrected, ‘and you are mine. Our marriage is the safe place. Our marriage is a safeguard against all we do not want. Love. Emotional attachment. We are each other’s safe place, Emma.’

‘A safe place?’ She looked at him. His dark hair was neatly combed over to the side; soft and billowy from being newly washed, it teased at his ears. Dark stubble covered his cheeks, his sharply angled jaw. Leading her eyes down his throat to his shoulders, broad and sheathed by a suit jacket that sat on him like a second skin, over the fitted black T-shirt revealing the tautness of his bronze chest.

‘Yes,’ he said.

She lifted her gaze back to his.

She’d found what she thought she’d never wanted.

Safety with a man.

With him.

The organ inside her chest fluttered as wildly as a million bees buzzing towards home. Towards their queen. And it didn’t matter to them. To the bees, where home was, because home was their queen.

Home was right in front of her, wasn’t it?

He was her garden. He was her safe place. He was giving her everything she’d always wanted. And things she’d never considered as a way to get them. A relationship. Marriage.

But he was showing her he could provide for her needs. From her simplest need to her most extravagant. The whole world surrounded them. He was offering her the world. He was offering his world. A safe place. Where she would be warm. Cared for. Protected. Wanted. But not loved. Because neither of them wanted that.

‘And maybe this is the reason you left. I kept you on the outside. But I know your face. I know your name. You can come inside, Emma. You can stay. Because in here, and in our house, in our bed, I will give you what you need. Security. A safe place from the hardness. I wanted you to know, for you to understand, when I take you to bed, when I possess your body, I can give you what it is you need. To know that I can provide it by giving you everything you don’t have.’

Suddenly, Emma was slammed with the last five years of her life.

Her spoon clanked into the empty bowl.

Emma remembered everything. The breakdown of her marriage. Her reasons for staying. Her reasons for leaving.

She knew why she’d left. She remembered.

She stood. The chair screeched backwards. She’d left, abandoned their marriage, the contract they’d agreed to, because she had started to get emotionally invested in their marriage. She had wanted more than either of them had agreed to give one another. She had wanted this man she’d sworn never to need. Never to—

‘What is it?’ Dark and intense, his eyes probed hers. ‘What’s wrong?’

Emma closed her eyes. She needed a minute, a moment, to collect herself. Because she was hurting.

Her chest, her heart, ached.

She heard the slide of his chair. His footfall coming towards her. Firm fingers claimed her chin. She opened her eyes. Met his. Dark and probing.

‘What is it?’ he demanded roughly.

‘I don’t feel well.’ Her core trembled in deep, rhythmic spasms. ‘I’d like to go back to the hotel. I’d like to...’

She didn’t know.

She’d got emotionally attached.

She’d broken the rules.

But he didn’t know that.

To him, she’d just left. She’d abandoned him. Like his mother. His father. She’d left him alone, without a safe place, without explanation.

And still he’d come for her.

Still, he was here.

And he was wrong; she was a risk. It wasn’t safe for him in this place with her. She wanted all the things he’d locked outside. And she’d brought them inside with her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she breathed, because she was. Sorry for breaking the rules. Sorry for needing him. For wanting him in ways they’d never agreed to. Sorry for wanting what he didn’t want. Sorry for letting him lock the doors behind her, for letting him learn her name, her face, when she was the danger. She was everything he didn’t want. And he’d let her in. He’d—

Dante released her chin. ‘You are exhausted, Emma.’ He shook his head. ‘I should have let you sleep.’

He picked her up and held her against him. And she let him carry her back the way they’d come. She closed her eyes. Pushed her face into the crook of his neck.

She wouldn’t let the tears fall.

She wouldn’t cry.

But she knew when they left this place, there was no going back now for either of them.