Page 21

I let go even though I don't want to. Because if I don't, I'll do something that gets me slapped, and I deserve a lot of things from this woman but I'd rather the slap came later, when I've earned it properly.

"I'm going to be touching you for a year." I don't step back. She's right there, furious and alive, closer to her than in seven years of watching from a distance. Still, it's not enough. Not even close. "My hand on your back at a hundred dinners. Your arm through mine down the aisle of a church after saying our vows. A packed church—half of those people will be there specifically to watch your every reaction. My aunt Rosaria has an eye like a customs dog. If you jump every time I come near you, she'll have it round three families before the soup."

"Then don't come near me."

"That's the one thing I can't do. It's the entire point of the exercise." I tilt my head. "So we practise. Out here, where nobody's watching or counting, and you can call me every name under the sun. Until you get it right."

"You're really unwell."

"Frequently described that way." A beat. I should leave it. I should absolutely leave it, but I'm not going to. "There's also the wedding night."

"There isn't."

"There is, and there's a bed, and a door, after people have been downstairs drinking champagne and eating delicacies and cake I've paid an obscene amount for. All of them will be thinking about precisely one thing because that's what a wedding is and leads to, Manon. It's a room full of people agreeing to think about the bride and groom having sex at the end of the party. Consummating the marriage. At least in our world it is."

"You're revolting."

"I'm Sicilian on my mother's side. It's a whole culture." I put my hands back in my pockets because if I don't, I might fucking grab her face and kiss her. "I want you. I'd rather say it out here than have you work it out at the altar. And I don't want it to be arranged, or endured. I want you to want it, which is far more inconvenient for me. You should take some comfort from that."

Inconvenient. That's what I'm calling it. Years of watching another man kiss her and buy her dinner, have his way with her then fall asleep next to her. Years of sitting in a car outside a restaurant while she laughed at something he said, and of knowing exactly which side of the bed she sleeps on while he's on the other side…

I'm calling all of this inconvenient.

She folds her arms and holds on to her elbows. I watch her fingers dig in and want to peel them off one by one, then replace them with mine.

"That will never happen."

"All right."

"I mean it. Never. Not on the wedding night, not in a year. You get the ring, the church, and my word. You do not get whatever you're talking about now."

"We'll see."

She frowns, and I can practically see the steam coming out of her ears. Such passion… "Don't say ‘we'll see’ to me like I'm a child."

"Then don't say never to me like you've met me before and have a clue." I'm grinning. I can't help it. I am standing in the cold with the hardest cock of my adult life and this woman is telling me she'll never sleep with me. Of course I don't believe her. Not because I'm arrogant—I mean, I am arrogant, that's well documented—but the truth is, her pulse just told me something her mouth didn't, and I believe the pulse.

"Here's what won't happen, so you can sleep tonight. I won't force you. Not once, not by degrees, not with a locked door. That's not me being noble. I just don't want it like that. I've had women who couldn't say no to me because of who I am and what I do, and it's boring, Manon. It's so fucking boring. There's no point to it."

"So what, then?"

"So when it happens—and it will happen—you'll come to me. And you'll say it out loud, in words. I can already imagine it. You're not going to simply give me a look across a dinner table or a teasing smile after you've had too much wine. Nope. There won't even be some bullshit atmosphere where we both pretend it was an accident. I won't have that." I fix her with a pointed look. "I want to hear you say it. Otherwise it doesn't count. I'd just go back to my room and have a very disappointing evening."

"And if I don't ever?"

"Then I'll have a very disappointing year on top of that." I shrug. "But you will."

She shakes her head. "I know I already said this but … you are unbelievably full of yourself."

"Yes. But I'm also right. Deep down you already know this, and that's what's really pissing you off right now."

"There's somebody else," she says.

Charles Bellamy. Six foot four, a hundred and ninety-five pounds, left wing, shoulder injury from 2021, contract through 2027, drives a black Range Rover. I know what cologne he wears. I am familiar with what he orders in restaurants. He proposed to her once already, in his head, on a dock at his mother's lake, and didn't go through with it because the light wasn't right or the sweater wasn't right or some other fucking thing wasn't right. I can't fucking understand what his deal is. Simp.

I have spent four years wanting nothing more than to kill that man yet never going through with it. That restraint is the single most expensive thing I've ever done, more than the house, the business, or every funeral I've ever paid for. Without a doubt, every day he wakes up is a day I've chosen not to end him, and I have done so because she loves him. If I take him from her she will never forgive me, and I need her to forgive me, eventually, for everything else I'm going to do.

"Charles Bellamy," I say, and watch her go rigid at the sound of it in my mouth. "Flew in at eleven-forty with a suitcase. Left your building at seven-ten still carrying it, shoulders down. So I'd say that went badly for him."