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“And I could have told you to leave, when I found out what had happened.” Each word snaps like the cracking of a branch. “I could have sent you back to your father. We’ve been over this, Bella, again and again. What happened is not your fault. I made a choice to protect you. And I’m going to keep protecting you?—”
“How?” I can feel a shivering fear starting to run through me, that old terror rising up to join the shock and guilt and all of the other emotions that I’m sure are coming hard on their heels. “He’s just going to keep chasing us, Gabriel. He’ll come here, and?—”
“He wants his fiancée.” Gabriel spits out the words, like they taste rotten on his tongue. “So I’m going to make sure that Igor can’t have you. I’m going to make sure you aren’t his fiancée any longer.”
I blink at him, not understanding. “I don’t know how?—”
“I’m going to marry you.”
There’s a ringing in my ears. For a second, I’m pretty sure that I’ve misheard him. That he can’t possibly have said what I think he did. “What?” I manage, and Gabriel’s jaw tightens. He steps closer to me, letting out a heavy exhale of breath.
“You won’t be Igor’s fiancée any longer. You’ll be my wife. Mine.”
The ragged way he says that last word, as if it means something more to him than just a means to keep me safe, makes my heart jolt in my chest in a way that’s entirely inappropriate to the situation. I should be terrified, fighting him, but my mind is racing instead, trying to make sense of what it would mean to be Gabriel’s wife.
His wife.
The first feeling I have is a good one. A feeling of sudden excitement, anticipation—the feeling that I’ve been handed everything I want in one surprising swoop. And then, a second later, reality comes crashing back in.
Gabriel is marrying me for my protection. Out of duty, responsibility, practicality—not because he loves me. He made it abundantly clear to me that love is something he doesn’t expect to ever be capable of again.
He’s been married before, to a woman he loved. A woman taken from him unexpectedly. The threat of Igor will only make him less likely to love me, not more. What he feels for me has always been only physical, but this?—
This will make me something so much worse. A wife he doesn’t really want, forever coming second to the one he did love.
I’ll be the woman who forced him to do something he said he’d never do again, because of the danger I dragged into his life. The danger that I put him and his family in. He’ll make vows to me that he doesn’t really mean in order to keep me safe. He’s going to make sacrifices that he doesn’t want to make, and all of that is because I didn’t just leave when I knew that all of my secrets were out, and that it could put him in danger.
I was selfish, and this is what it’s brought us to.
I shake my head, taking a step back. “No. I can’t.”
“Bella.” He lets out a sharp breath. “I know how you feel about an arranged marriage. I know that this isn’t what you want. I know how hard it is for you to agree to this, even with me—but it is me, Bella. You know me. I’ll never hurt you. It’s not the same as it would have been with anyone your father would have chosen for you?—”
I know that, I want to scream. I know, and that’s why I can’t. I can’t because it is different, because I do love him, and because marriage to him is everything that I wish I’d had from the very beginning. It’s everything I could have wanted—he is everything I could have wanted, and I can’t think of anything more painful, in this moment, than to be given that, and for it not to be real.
But I can’t say that. I can’t tell him any of it. Not only because I know it would only make everything worse, but because my throat is tight, so choked that I’m not sure any words would make it through. I draw in a shaky breath, taking another step back, and Gabriel follows me.
“I promised I’d protect you, Bella.” His jaw tightens. “I know you don’t believe me, that you don’t think I actually can, but I promised. And if he believes you belong to him, then I need to make sure that you can’t. That you belong to someone else.”
“To you.” My voice sounds hollow to my own ears—it doesn’t even entirely sound like mine. I want to keep backing away from him, but I don’t feel like I can move any longer. Shock and a different kind of pain—a feeling that if I do this, I’ll be losing something—has me rooted in place.
“He’ll just kill you,” I whisper. “If you marry me, you’ll just be in the way of him doing what he wants. So he’ll kill you and take me anyway. He already knows I’m not a virgin. It’s not like a wedding night will make any difference?—”
Even with all the fear and anger weighing down the conversation for us both, I can see the way Gabriel’s eyes darken at the mention of a wedding night. At the mention of my virginity, which belongs to him. He took it. He already made me his, in every way that could possibly matter. The possessive light in his eyes takes my breath away and makes my knees feel weak.
I would never have thought I’d feel anything but fear and derision at a look like that on a man’s face—but on Gabriel’s, it makes me feel something so much different. It makes me want him to take what he wants. It makes me want to give in to anything he asks.
My hands are trembling as I manage to take another step back. My calves bump into the edge of one of the chaises, and I stop, licking my lips nervously as I try to think of what else to say. What else might convince Gabriel that this isn’t the solution he thinks it is.
His gaze drops to my mouth, and it feels hard to think.
“There are rules in this world of ours, Bella,” Gabriel says roughly. “If you are my wife, it changes things. When Salvatore took Gia from Pyotr, they came to terms with him. They didn’t attack. A marriage in front of a priest, one done in a church and on paper, means something. It will change the rules of this conflict. You will be mine, in every way that matters to a man like him, and?—”
“It won’t matter,” I whisper. I know, down to my bones, that a vow in a church and a signature on paper won’t matter to a man like Igor, one who feels that so much that is his right has been stolen from him already. He’ll burn the church and rip the paper to shreds if that’s what it takes. But I can see in Gabriel’s face that he doesn’t believe that. He still thinks Igor will play by the rules. I laugh, a bitter sound that fills the air between us. “He won’t care if we’re married, in a church or otherwise. You’d have to get me pregnant, just to really make sure I’m entirely yours, and even then?—”
Before I can say another word, Gabriel has closed the space between us, and his mouth is on mine.
The kiss is hot, frantic, almost desperate. His mouth crushes mine, his teeth dragging over my lower lip, his hands dragging hungrily over my skin, under my t-shirt. “That’s what I’ll do if I have to,” he breathes against my mouth, and I can feel how hard he already is against me, like iron against my thigh. “I need you safe, Bella.”
