Page 10

CHAPTER 10

One angry early morning thought woke Maarja and brought her from a prone to sitting position. “You treacherous bastard!”

Beside her in the bed, Dante sat up. “What is it?” He spoke in a low voice, he held a pistol, and he held it pointed toward the door.

Where had he got the gun? Did he sleep with it?

She glared at him. “You keep massage oil in your shower!”

The pistol drooped in his grip. “Yeah?” As if he couldn’t not, he glanced at her boobs, and his gaze lingered.

Even more offended, she pulled the sheet up, tucked it under her armpits. “How many women are you screwing in there?”

His jaw dropped. He rumbled like a volcano getting ready to erupt. “That’s it? That’s why we’re awake at—” he checked the clock “—5:14 a.m.?” He slid the pistol into a pocket hidden in the headboard.

He’d climbed in bed with her while she slept. Fine. He wore a T-shirt and boxers. Fine. It was his bed, and a point might be made that she needed care. But this! Massage oil in the shower! “How many women…?”

His hand hovered over her bare shoulder. “You are the only woman I’ve made love to in my shower. Just you.”

How likely was that? “Pull the other one.”

“Look. I told you.” He flung himself back on the pillows. “It’s been two damned long difficult years of celibacy. I’ve been busy. Stuff has been happening. Business. Family. You can believe me or not. I’m a serial monogamist. Two years! I keep the massage oil in the shower to jack off. With the oil, it’s easier. Glad you wandered in there to discover the conditions of my pitiful love life.”

He was so indignant she had to give up her own indignation and grin. “I’ve heard if a man goes six months without, he’s a virgin again.”

“Who told you that?”

“My sisters and I were drinking with my mother—”

He rose from the bed, fetched one of his button-up shirts, held it so she could slip her arms in, helped her fasten it.

It was almost funny how careful he was not to touch her skin. It was not at all funny how much she wanted him to.

“Your mother?” he asked.

“My foster mother. Octavia. According to her own description, she’s quite a broad.”

“What do you say?”

“She is definitely quite a broad.” She relaxed back on her pillow. “A woman of strength and determination who’s not afraid of doing the right thing.”

“She taught you a lot about doing the right thing.”

“I’ve had many good examples in my life.” Pola, my birth mother. “Even some men.”

“Mr. Caruthers.”

She inclined her head.

“I’ve got a few morals, myself.” He sat up, rested his forearm on his crooked knee. “For instance, nothing could have convinced me to touch you if I’d known you were a virgin.”

Irritation began to scratch at her mind. “But it would have been okay if I hadn’t been?”

“Yes!”

“Because virgins are more valued?”

“Do you want the politically correct answer or the one that for me is the truth?”

Call her a pessimist, but this was not starting out well. “Give me the truth. I can take it.”

He looked into her face. “You know who I am.”

Slowly she sat up. He wasn’t asking whether she knew his name. He was asking if she knew who he was . “I do.” Should she panic?

“You know who my father was. You know who my family is. You know the war that lies in the long years of history between my family and yours.”

That settled any question that lingered in her mind. He knew she was the child who…escaped. He knew what they shared; in the same instant, in a forceful explosion, their lives had broken in half.

How long had he known? Had he recognized her yesterday? Or had Mrs. Arundel known and told him?

So many questions, all of them horrible and terrible, all of them leading to pain and death…for her. She met Dante’s gaze because she had seen her mother grovel, and what good had that done? If she had to die, she’d do it with her chin high. “I do know.”

“You remember the explosion. That’s clear.”

“I don’t remember my father at all, and I remember my mother only in flashes, but the explosion—yes, I remember that, all too often, in my nightmares.”

“Our two families have driven each other almost to extinction. Ruthless killings, biblical in scope. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

Bitterly she said, “And the whole world is blind and toothless.”

“According to my father—he told this to me many times—the only way this can end is with one family victorious.”

“The Arundels victorious.” It wasn’t a guess.

“Of course. That means that every person in your family is dead, slaughtered on the altar of a blood vendetta begun so long ago no one remembers the origins.”

He was wrong. She knew. “This is quite a roundabout way of explaining why you would have kept it in your pants if you’d known I was a virgin.”

He held up his hand, demanding her patience. “You have to know there’s another way to finish this vendetta.”

“I’m all for it, since from my point of view, I’m the one who’s likely to end up dead.”

He turned his head and looked at her, his eyes dark and inscrutable. “An unbreakable union between the two families.”

“A contract between us promising we won’t whack each other anymore? Like that’s going to—”

He smiled a smile that mocked her foolishness.

She caught on. Marriage. He was talking about marriage . That kind of union. She hung on the realization as if it were a noose around her neck. “No, no. Don’t be silly. That would be… medieval.”

“Medieval as in how long this vendetta has been going on? Medieval as the traditional medieval way to end a feud?”

He leaned in close, close enough to make her feel threatened, and she was pretty sure that was what he wanted.

He asked, “Why should I even care whether we have a peace? You’re the only remaining member of your family. If I kill you, the vendetta is over. The Arundels have won. That’s one issue settled.” He leaned back. “But I’m not my father. I’m not a vengeful bastard who justifies intercourse with the enemy before I snuff them out. Before I snuff you out. I actually have real human emotions, like compassion, which as far as I can tell, my father never did. No. I’ll end the feud without more violence, and the only bloodshed is your blood in my shower.”

Way to spell it out. He hadn’t learned the lessons his father taught. Maybe he’d escaped soon enough. Maybe he hadn’t in herited those character traits. Maybe his mother had instilled morals in him. Whatever it was, he wouldn’t kill her…but he would marry her.

Medieval? Yes! This guy was medieval all the way. Firmly she said, “I’m not deliberately flinging myself on pointed bamboo stakes to heal the breach.”

He lifted the covers and looked. “Did you hear that?” he said conversationally. “You’ve been compared to a pointed bamboo stake.”

Cute. He was talking to his cock. She was not amused. “I’m not going to…to produce a child so we can declare that a ridiculous hostility is all better now. My God, would you want to spend the rest of your life with me?” Before he could answer, she answered for him. “No, you would not! We barely know each other.”

“I know you deliberately faced the fire and explosion to save my mother.”

“I didn’t succeed!” Tears sprang to her eyes.

He took a breath, looked away, struggled with emotion she could comprehend only too well. “My mother died despite your efforts, not because of them.”

“Yay me for not being murderous.” She used the sheet to wipe her damp cheeks. “That doesn’t bring her back to life.”

“But a life may have already begun that will bring peace between the families—and you’re the one carrying it.”

“Unlikely.” She waved an airy hand.

Yet he was starting to get to her.

“To return to the question about your virginity—you’ll admit I had no reason to suspect you might be a virgin.”

“I cannot believe I’m the only woman who made it to twenty-seven without—” she waved a hand “—sex.”

“Nuns? Vestal virgins? Who? Who do you know—?”

“No one. All right? No one. I’m the only one.” She crossed her arms over her chest. She wished he’d stop harping on it. Her sisters knew. Octavia knew. Other than that, she kept it pretty quiet because the one time she’d told a friend, the reaction had been incredulous. And loud. In a public place, and was one of the most humiliating moments of her life. She’d only been twenty-three, then. She could only imagine what it would be like now. She brightened. “On the other hand…it’s now a moot point.”

“And we’re right back to medieval times.”

“No blood on the sheets,” she said in a deliberately over-cheerful tone. “No proof for the skeptics!”

“No skeptic would dare disparage my word.”

No. She supposed not. She pulled the sheets up to her chin. Not when he wore the cold expression that clearly said he wouldn’t hesitate to kill.

“Based on what you said, I believed that at eleven you had been—”

“Hurt. I was bruised and intimidated and fingered. I was mocked for my helplessness. That incident put the fear of men in me, the trauma lingered, and I never met anyone who I cared to put to the test.” Until you. The unspoken words lingered in the air.

Some emotion brushed him, gratification, maybe, or confidence, or conceit. Of course, he pushed that aside and went right back to his line of reasoning. “Add in what your foster mother said, that after six months a man is a virgin again—”

“She was joking!”

“—we have a double-ancient-enemy-virgin-banging-without-protection. Which to me sounds like something out of a prophecy. Death or life, Maarja. That’s what this has come down to.”

“Superstition! This is not fate, it’s nothing but superstition!” He opened his mouth again and she charged on. “Okay. Okay.” She held up her hands in a stop gesture. Would he just stop ? “Even if the gods are laughing, I do have one other suggestion, a possibility you haven’t mentioned. Considered.”

“Yes?”

“I’m a fine art mover. You’re some kind of billionaire invested in…some vague thing that isn’t illegal.”

“And isn’t immoral.”

She hesitated. That sounded less like We could do this thing to stop the nonsense and more like I’m trying to impress you with how appropriate I am as a husband . She didn’t know if that was better, or more alarming, and in the middle of this conversation, she didn’t have time to decide. “I’m glad to hear that.” Neutral enough. “We could just leave each other alone. Never see each other, pretend we don’t know each other, go our separate ways…”

“We could. Unless there’s—”

“A child. Yes, yes, I know. But if that’s not happening—” really, it was really unlikely, really “—and we’ll know soon enough, why should we give in to superstition? Why would we ever see each other again?”

“Because for the last two years, someone has been trying to kill my mother.”