CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER NINE

I WOKE AS we touched down in Switzerland. I felt disoriented for a moment. And then the nausea reminded me. I was pregnant. And I had married Hades.

I had little time to marinate on that before the bedroom door opened. I had changed into a luxurious sweat suit I’d found hanging in the closet before going to sleep—I chose not to ponder whether it was for Jessica or for me.

“Are you well?” he asked.

“Not especially,” I said.

But it didn’t matter, because we were landing. I changed into a dress I found in the closet and soon we were transferred from the airplane to a helicopter. And I couldn’t help myself, I clung to his arm as the unwieldy vehicle took off in the wind.

He put his hand over mine, a gesture so comforting it made my eyes well up with tears, and it made me want to punch myself. Because I shouldn’t go getting emotional over him. Not when he didn’t actually care about me. Physical connection was something we had. But we’d never had anything more.

It took twenty minutes in the helicopter for us to arrive at the top of a snowy peak, surrounded by white-capped pine trees, and an awe-inspiring vista of the Alps. It was definitely a place to go to disappear.

We got out of the helicopter, and the chill from the wind shocked me. He shielded me with his body as we walked toward the house. He put his fingerprints up against a pad on the door, and it unlocked, allowing us entry.

The interior was stunning. All light pine and glass that looked out over the craggy Alps. We were cocooned in silence, wrapped in the blanket of all that snow.

For the first time in my life, I was alone with him and it wasn’t only for a matter of hours. For the first time, we weren’t a secret. The whole world knew about us.

But here it didn’t feel like the world existed.

Bizarrely, I found myself thankful he’d taken us here. Bizarre because I didn’t think I really owed him thanks for much of anything right now.

He pushed a button on the wall and the glass-encased fireplace roared to life. I could see through it, straight to the outside, where the flames danced on the snow. There was a time when I would have relished this. A chance to spend days exploring his body? A chance to try and exhaust some of the need that constantly burned between us?

But it was different now. This wasn’t temporary.

We were looking at something much more permanent.

I had never dreamed of forever with Hades. Though in some ways I’d dreaded it. The idea that I would never be able to want any other man. That I would end up alone because my body had found his, so my heart would never find anyone.

This was the inglorious inevitable.

Here we were, expecting a child. Married. And yet we were the same two people who met in secret rooms and communicated using only our bodies. We had no practice at this.

We were competitors. We had never shared our personal space.

Though, looking around this room, I could not say whether or not there was anything especially personal about it.

“How long have you had this house?”

“Five years or so,” he said, discarding his suit jacket, mesmerizing me as he undid the cuffs on his white shirt and began to roll the sleeves up over his forearms.

In the past, that would have been an invitation to only one thing. I could imagine what might have happened only a few months ago with ease. Everything about his body had always excited me.

I really did like his forearms.

I tried to focus on the information he had just given me, not the skin he had just revealed. He’d owned this house for five years, and there was nothing personal anywhere. No marker that it was anything different than one of the many hotel suites they had stayed in together.

“Dinner should be ready for us.”

“Is it dinnertime?”

It felt like morning to me. But I realized that I had been awake for twenty-four hours, changed time zones during that time, slept for about six hours, then changed time zones again.

Time, at this point, truly was relative.

“It is dinner hour, but you may call it whatever you wish.”

For a moment I thought it was significant we were sharing a meal. And then I realized we had done so many times. But we had never sat down to a table together. It had never been officially having dinner, going on a date or anything like that. We had eaten together in bed. Countless times.

In many ways, we shared a lot more intimacy than I had given us credit for.

He knew what my favorite thing to get from room service was.

He didn’t know what I would order at a restaurant, though.

And that highlighted just how turned inside out our intimacies were.

He walked ahead of me, and I followed, since I didn’t know where anything in the house was. He led me into the dining room, where there was a massive, long table with candles flickering in candelabras. Food was spread from one end to the other, as if he had been expecting a dinner party, and not just me.

“Not exactly a cheeseburger,” I said, looking at the potatoes, steak and glorious roasted vegetables, along with the basket of rolls and platter of cheese and meat set out on the table.

“If you would rather have a cheeseburger, then I can call the staff back.”

“This will do,” I said, doing my best to keep my tone dry.

I was learning about a third version of Hades, I realized.

Whatever this was. I didn’t think it was the real him. But then the real him wasn’t the man that I saw in different business meetings either. Not entirely.

The closest thing, I really did think, was the man who took me to bed, but even that man had secrets.

More than I had even begun to guess at.

“What is this exactly?”

“Dinner,” he said, his voice hard. He sat down at the head of the table, as if he expected me to take a seat at his right hand. To be spiteful, I sat at his left, with one chair space between us.

“I can see that it’s dinner,” I said. “But I’m not entirely certain what farce this is. We know each other far too well to engage in this kind of behavior. You can’t pretend to be civilized with me, Hades. I know who you are. I know what you like. You pretend. Every day you pretend. And when you first get the chance, you come to my room, to my bed, and you tie me to it. You’re not civilized. Any more than I am.”

“Do you want to live that way? Because I don’t. I lived with a father who didn’t bother to engage in civility in his daily life. Better, I think, to have an outlet for it in the bedroom, than to leave it all over the dining table, don’t you think?”

I could understand what he was saying. He was equating the passion between us to the abuse his father had meted out, and that wasn’t fair. What we did was intense, but it wasn’t abusive. We both wanted it. We both enjoyed it. No one was a victim of anything. He knew that, I knew he did. If he thought for even one second that what he did might cause me harm, he simply would never... He would never.

“Eat,” he said.

I would have loved to shout back at him that I wasn’t hungry. Sadly, I was. The nausea had begun to shift into peckishness, and I found that I really did want something to eat.

“You were going to marry Jessica Clare, and... Never sleep with her?”

“Of course I intended to sleep with her. I intended to sleep with her and produce children.”

“But you wouldn’t have slept with her until then.”

“I didn’t especially want her,” he said. “However, I am a goal-oriented man and, given a reason, I could have roused myself to do so.”

I looked down at my food, my lip curling. “I see.”

“Did you never have plans to marry?”

I frowned. “No. I did. At least, I hoped to someday. I hoped to find someone that was nothing like you. A man who would give me a gentle, easy life. Who would support my ambitions. Who would... Be nothing like either my mother or my father. Someone I can have a partnership with.”

His black eyes were fathomless. His lips flat. “How cozy.”

“Does it sound cozy?” I looked around the stark space. “If this is your version of cozy , Hades, we have a long way to go.”

“Sweet summer child. My version of cozy is the underworld. Or hadn’t you figured that out yet? This is me attempting to be human.” He smiled, but it wasn’t nice. “I had thought that you might like it better.”

I couldn’t tell if he was being dry, if he was exaggerating to prove a point, or if he was actually being sadly, extremely honest.

But that was the problem. I knew compartmentalized, masked versions of him.

And he knew the same of me.

“I’m still not sure what the performance is. We got married with an hour of planning. I found out I was pregnant... It hasn’t even been a day. I am exhausted. I can’t even begin to picture... To picture what the future looks like. A child, Hades. You and me.”

I didn’t think I imagined that his skin went slightly waxen then. “We will hire professionals,” he said. “People to care for the child who are experts in development, and in psychology.”

“You think that’s what the child needs?”

“I know what a child does not need. I know what my father did to me was...” He looked off into the distance. “He made me into an exceptional businessman. He made me into a weapon. I have one weakness. That has proven to be you. Over and over again. Oddly, it is the weakness I find more concerning than any of the emotionless strengths. Because at least when it comes to other areas of my life I can act dispassionately. With you it’s never dispassionate.”

I didn’t know whether to be flattered by that or not. And because this wasn’t a few stolen hours. Because this was our life. Our relationship. Our future. I decided to just go ahead and say it. “Is that a compliment? You keep talking about me like I’m a venereal disease that you can’t get rid of. There aren’t antibiotics strong enough to rid you of Florence Clare.”

“You speak of me as if I’m the same.”

I knew that was true. I wasn’t any more flattering to him than he was to me. I only knew how to talk about the thing between us in a way that could protect me.

If I spoke of it like it was a sickness, something that was being done to me, something that I didn’t want, then somehow I wasn’t at fault for it. And perhaps couldn’t be hurt by it. But when he had said that he was getting married, it had been proven to me that I could be quite hurt by it. I was far too vulnerable with him.

But if he was ever going to change...

No one had ever made him feel safe. No one had ever shown him what a family should look like. I wasn’t sure I had a lock on that, but maybe I could...show him.

“This is something I never wanted to do to you,” he said. “Do you want honesty? I am the son of a black hole. A man who absorbed and destroyed everything that came into his sphere. I never wanted to put you in a position where my hand would be in your business, but here we are. It is how we must go. I never wanted to put you in a position where your life would be directly connected with mine.”

“You should have thought of that before you took my virginity, Hades. Because our lives have been bound together ever since, and you know that.”

“Sex, Florence. And for a while that’s what it was. And it was fine. We took risks. That day, a risk that... Had its reward, I suppose. Now we must figure out what to do with it. But you act as if you want something else from me than this.” He swept his hand along the distance of the table. “From a nice dinner, from a warm dwelling. How? And why? Because this is not temporary. Nor is it a few stolen hours. We must think about what we can maintain. What can be sustained.”

Was he worried? About us drowning in desire for each other now that we had an endless amount of time?

I looked at him, and I honestly couldn’t say.

He was a man who made little sense to me.

My feelings for him made little sense to me.

He was like a puzzle that I could never quite put together. I had been a foolish girl but I was eighteen. I had looked at him and seen myself. The child of a powerful man, who didn’t have his mother around. Who had been dragged to all of these events. Who wanted to do well. Who had a sense of exceptionalism. I had looked at him and I thought I had found the other side to myself.

Or maybe it was something I had convinced myself of so that I could justify wanting to sleep with him.

But we weren’t the same. I had been telling myself we were all this time. But while this experience was showing me where I was vulnerable, where I was soft, he was doubling down on artifice.

And wanting me to thank him for it.

I wondered then how we would handle it if what had happened was a one-night stand. If we didn’t actually assume that we knew each other. If it wasn’t the product of ten years’ worth of risky behavior that had finally caught us out.

But if we had been true strangers, rather than this...strange thing that we were. Strangers who had watched each other brush their teeth.

Strangers who knew each other’s room service order by heart.

Something had to give.

He couldn’t.

Maybe it would have to be me.

“When I was little,” I said, “I thought my mother was the most beautiful woman in the world. I used to love to watch her get ready to go out. Once, I told my father that. He laughed at me. He asked me if I had ever read a newspaper. He asked why I didn’t know that when my mother went out it was to humiliate him. He said that she was a whore, and that everything beautiful she put on her face and everything lovely she wrapped her body in were lures to catch men like they were unsuspecting large-mouthed bass.” I flinched inside, even thinking of it. It had been such an unnecessary thing to say to a child. I had loved both my father and mother so much. I loved my father all the way up to the end, even knowing that he was flawed. Even knowing that in that moment his hurt had allowed him to be so unkind.

I swallowed hard. “All I knew then was that I could never be like my mother. Not really. I had wanted to be. What little girl wouldn’t? She is quite simply one of the most stunning women in the world. And maybe now she has changed. Some of it was too much plastic surgery, but isn’t that the mark of pain for a woman who has spent her life being defined by a certain sort of beauty? All I know is in that moment I was taught to fear beauty. I was taught there was something cynical, dangerous, beneath that sort of femininity.”

I leaned back in my chair. “Then I looked up the articles on my mother. Like he suggested. I was eight, maybe. Reading about how my mother was suspected of having multiple affairs. Do you know, until that moment I hadn’t realized that the older boys who came around sometimes were my half brothers? You probably know Javier and Rocco better than I do. My father actually wasn’t cruel. Not habitually. He made mistakes. He certainly said the wrong things out of anger. Even without the intent of being cruel, he took my view of the world and twisted it. He made me afraid of being a woman. Because when I saw the things that they wrote about her, I knew I never wanted that to be me. It will be now, don’t you think?”

I shook my head and laughed. “Here I am, her daughter. Felled by the absolutely wrong man. By my inability to resist desire. Temptation. Caught in a snare of my own beauty.”

He stared at me, his eyes blank. “And why are you telling me this?”

“Because you don’t know it. Because for all these years, for all of this... History between us. We don’t know each other. We can’t sit down and strategize what kind of marriage we are going to have like we are having a business meeting. We have to actually make allowances for the people that we are. Maybe we even need to get to know each other.”

“Do you even know yourself, Florence?”

The words were like a slap, directly across my face.

“Excuse me?”

“You strike me as one of the most disingenuous people on the planet. You wear a mask all the time. The only place that I have ever found you to be remotely authentic is when you’re naked. On your knees. Tied to a bed. Then I see glimpses of who you might be. You go into business meetings like you are dressed for war.”

I flinched, because it was nothing less than the truth. Except... I did know myself. I did. I understood why I turned away from the things that I wanted. Why I forced myself to be a specific kind of strong, because I had decided that being soft was too weak.

I understood that I had decided to pattern my life more after my father because...

Because I would be more successful. Because I didn’t want to be an object of ridicule. Yes, my mother had monetary success. She was famous. But not for the things that I wanted to be famous for.

So the only other way that I could even begin to think to find success wasn’t behaving like my father. I knew that I did that.

And when I went home, I... Worked more. I went out for drinks with my friend, and I didn’t tell her that I had an obsession with my business rival, because...

Because the real things about myself embarrassed me.

Because the truth of me was something that not even I wanted to know.

And that he saw that, while he remained an enigma to me, made me so angry I wanted to pick up my plate and throw it in his face.

“What makes you so confident that I am myself with you?” I asked.

“Because you have no reason to perform. You never wanted anything from me but my body, and that means you are an exceptionally honest lover. You only take what you want. And nothing more. And everything you give is something that you want to give. It is not an insult.”

“No. Just the idea that I don’t know my own mind.”

“Am I wrong?” he asked.

“What about you? Who are you, really? You’re not any better than I am. You were looking to style a marriage to keep your business. You have no heart. No soul.”

“Ah, but the difference between you and I is I don’t believe that I do.”

“No, the difference between you and I is that I do. You will recall my reaction to your engagement.”

His face went blank. “Yes. I do recall that. If nothing else, Florence, I do enjoy your passion.”

Something about that sent me over the edge. An edge I couldn’t see the bottom of. I found myself standing up, moving over to where he sat at the head of the table. He turned toward me, looking up, his eyes glittering.

I was trying to find something new between us. But this was...familiar. This was us.

Our connection.

Maybe I could find something new in it.

I reached behind my back and unzipped my dress. Letting it fall to my waist, down to the floor.

I had succeeded in shocking him. I could see it on his face then.

He had not expected that.

I took off my bra, pushed my panties down and stepped out of my shoes.

Then I maneuvered myself so that I was straddling his lap, completely naked, while he sat there fully clothed.

I gripped his face in my hands, and I kissed him. Not the performance that we had engaged in at the church, for the paparazzi. But a kiss for him, a kiss for me. A kiss to prove to him that I was not cold-blooded. Not in any capacity.

“Why?” he asked, gripping hold of my hands, taking them captive.

“I don’t know how to talk to you,” I said, because that was honest. Because it revealed something, when normally I never would have. But this had to be us and new all at the same time. I would find a way. “But I have more than enough practice wanting you. Whether I’m angry with you, whether I think I hate you, or not. And I’m tired. I am so tired of living in all these moments that I don’t know how to handle. I want you. Because at least I understand that. I’ve had years to come to terms with it. There is no logic in it. There is nothing right about it. But it simply is. And I need something that makes sense.”

He growled, wrapped his arm around my waist and stood, moving his other hand to my thigh, bracing me as he carried me away from the dining table and down the vast hall toward the bedroom. The lights came on automatically as we entered the room, and he deposited me in the center of the bed.

I watched him hungrily as he began to undo the buttons on that white shirt.

As he began to expose his gorgeous chest, a feast for my eyes that I would never tire of.

He moved his hand to his belt, undoing it with one hand, then he untucked the shirt and shrugged it from his shoulders, depositing it on the floor. He slid his belt from the loops, but did not bind me with it this time. Instead, it went down with the shirt, followed by everything else. Until his gloriously familiar body was pressed against mine. Naked and perfect and everything that I had ever desired.

He looked down into my eyes, and he kissed me. It was familiar, and yet...

It was our wedding night.

It was our wedding night.

I could not push that thought away once I had it.

This wasn’t the same. It wasn’t a few stolen moments in a hotel room. An hour between meetings.

This was our wedding night.

Hades was no longer my dirty secret. And I was no longer his.

He was my husband. I was his wife.

And it was like he could read those thoughts moving through my mind, because something changed. In the way he held me, in the way he kissed me. It was still desperate.

But there was... Something else in it that I couldn’t put a name to.

Like the tone of the desperation had changed. As if the melody of the song had shifted.

His tongue slid against mine, claiming me deep. And I clung to his shoulders, broad and magnificent. I moved my hands down his back, gloried in those familiar muscles.

This wasn’t the last time.

That thought stabbed me. Made tears prick my eyes.

It wasn’t the last time.

Every other time it had felt like it might be. Had felt like it had the potential to be.

In the time when we had conceived the baby...

I had been so sure that it was a goodbye I wasn’t ready to have.

I’d given one that had felt necessary. One that had felt like the right thing. Except it had torn me to pieces.

But this wasn’t the last time.

This was the first night of something else. Something different, if we could find a way to make it work.

Yes, I had done the familiar thing by kissing him. Perhaps taking him to bed had, in the moment, felt like the easy thing.

This wasn’t easy, though.

It never had been.

It had always been a fight for something. For something that didn’t have a name.

For a satisfaction that might never see its end.

Just like I had realized there was strength in softness as I made my way up to the head of the altar at the church, I realized there was more to this than I had ever let myself believe.

The sex was a conversation. In a way that I had not ever let myself understand.

His hands spoke volumes as they moved over my skin.

Whether it was rough or soft.

His mouth, commanding, soft, cruel, caring, could speak without words.

He kissed his way down my body, forced my legs apart and licked me directly at my center.

His tongue over my slick flesh was hot, perfect. And I arched my hips up against him, grabbed his head and held him there as he feasted on me like he would never get enough.

He wasn’t sorry that he had married me.

That was another strange and clarifying thought.

This was not a man who wanted another woman.

He would’ve slept with her. That wounded me.

But he... He hadn’t wanted her. It would never have been this.

Not ever.

Maybe he really didn’t have this with anyone else.

Because this was singular. This was him, and it was me. And maybe he had been right about that too.

That this was the most myself I ever was. In his arms. Because it was the only place I could actually be soft. The only place I wasn’t afraid of what I wanted. The only place I wasn’t scared of my own pleasure.

I had been wounded, thinking about how I was the one person he never had to worry would sell stories about him. But it occurred to me that I had often felt safest with him for that very reason.

He could not betray me without betraying himself.

And so we had real trust. Real safety between us and I had never truly appreciated why. Or how deep it ran.

He pushed two fingers inside of me and I reached my peak, crying out his name until he moved up my body and kissed me again, swallowing my pleasure whole.

Then he thrust inside of me in one, smooth movement. I lost my breath.

I held his face in my hands, and he pressed his forehead to mine as he began to move.

As he claimed me. Possessed me.

“Hades,” I whispered against his mouth.

He growled, his movements becoming a frenzy. I felt desire begin to build in me again, higher and higher, harder and faster.

We were a storm. Fire. Destruction. Everything bad that I had ever labeled us.

But we were something else too.

Even if I couldn’t find a name for it.

His pleasure unraveled him, as he shook and found his peak, gripping my hips as he poured himself into me. And I found my own oblivion, biting his neck to keep from saying his name again. Because I could only strip myself bare so many times.

Afterward, as the oblivion cleared, I realized that we had nowhere to run to.

Because he was my husband. I was his wife.

And I was in love with him.