Page 222

“Don’t treat me like I’m fragile.”

“I want to protect you. And it is difficult when I feel like the thing I need to protect you most from is myself.”

“It is stupid when you feel that way,” she said. “Sorry. But it is. It diminishes us both.”

“Nothing could ever diminish you,” he said, his voice rough.

“No. I don’t suppose it could. So maybe, you should get over yourself and stop being in your billionaire feelings all the time.”

He laughed against her shoulder. The moonlight was streaming in through the window, and being on the floor with him like this reminded her a bit of the past. Even if it was totally different now.

But they had done this before. Slept on the floor of a big building, ensconced in a room, them against the world.

Of course, they hadn’t just done that beforehand.

“Everything will be good,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “It will be.”

Chapter Twelve

His stomach was tense with guilt. He and Esme had been lying on the floor for half an hour, listening to each other breathe. He knew neither of them was asleep. He felt a strange desperation to hold on to her, and he couldn’t quite say what it was. He felt like she was slipping away at the same time.

A son. She couldn’t understand why that affected him like it did, and he didn’t want her to. She couldn’t understand it, and it was best that she didn’t. But it had brought him back to a very dark place, and the way that he had taken it out on her tonight…

She said she wanted him.

That she wanted all this.

But what if this was all he had in him? Bouts of darkness and rough sex, and eventually the orgasms wouldn’t be enough to balance out the fact that he didn’t have enough softness for her.

He was trying. He was trying.

Both of them had lives that were marred by the carelessness of those who were supposed to care for them.

It was a terrible thing. But his father had subjected him to horrendous abuse. From the time he was such a small boy and…

He was now having a child of his own. No, he would never hurt that child. Ever. But there was something about it that felt hollow and terrifying and he didn’t know how to explain it to her.

“Adonis,” she whispered. “We should get something to eat.”

She startled him, speaking like that. “We could,” he said.

He had been in a strange place. Half in the present, half in their childhood, where they wouldn’t have been able to simply have more food because they decided they wanted it. But they weren’t in that abandoned building. They were in their home. They were in their home.

He sat up, and so did she, bathed in moonlight. It was another one of those moments where he was both in the past and in the present. But there was no doubt that she was the woman he married. Naked and glorious with all that pale light streaming over her curves.

He wanted her.

He didn’t know why everything felt like torture.

He did, but there was nothing he could do about it. If there was an amount of money he could pay to have certain memories erased from his mind forever, he would pay it. He would gladly have nothing again, if it meant losing the memories as well.

But he had the memories. And he had all this money. And he had Esme.

Surely there was something to be done with all of that, shortly.

She took his hand and led him down to the kitchen, and she began humming while she took ingredients out of the cupboard.