‘I’m not playing, Eleanor. You’ve just scaled my grand hall naked. You were made for me.’ He thrusts the ring at me, walking forward on his knees. ‘Will you marry me?’
‘The ring,’ I say, moving away, scared of it, and not just because it’s flawlessly beautiful. It’s a whopper of an emerald, set in a thick band of precious metal.
‘What about it?’ Becker asks, looking down at it. ‘Don’t you like it?’
‘Is it real?’ I spit my words out quickly, my mind completely scrambled.
‘Really, princess?’ He looks insulted. I have no idea why when he’s hit me from every direction with revelation after revelation. I’m surprised I haven’t keeled over with shock after everything my poor mind has been subjected to since I met him. And now this?
‘Well, I don’t know.’ I say on a laugh, throwing my arms above my head. ‘You’re a master forger. You forge shit. Expensive shit. You pass worthless shit off as priceless shit.’
‘It’s real,’ he says tiredly. ‘So will you?’
‘Seriously?’ I blurt out, all laughter evaporating and my shock now being demonstrated as you would expect.
‘Am I speaking in a foreign language, princess? What don’t you understand?’
‘You,’ I cry, sticking myself to the table behind me. ‘You’ve barely figured out that you’re in love with me. Now you want to marry me?’
His bottom lip juts out on a sulk.
‘Pick up your lip,’ I snap, my hands finding my hair and delving into the strands. ‘I don’t understand. If you’re worried about me telling people about the sculpture, then you shouldn’t be.’
‘I’m not worried about that.’
‘Then why?’
‘Just . . .’ He growls and stomps on his knees towards me. ‘Just because.’
‘That’s not a good enough reason.’
‘How about because you amaze me?’ he retorts, short but soft. ‘How about because when I look at you, for the first time in my fucking life I can see beyond what’s obsessed me for too many years? How about because when you smile, I melt? Or when you laugh, my heart bucks? Or when we touch, I feel like I’m overheating? How about because I feel like you were made purely to be mine? Because you’re fearless. Bold. Full of spirit that I envy. Or because you love me more than I hoped anyone could? And you accept me. Everything about me. That you’re loyal. Brave. Fucking beautiful. How about because you challenge me and I fucking love that? Or because when I watched you sleeping in my bed last night, the thought of you not being there crushed me. Is that enough, because I could go on, princess?’
I gulp. They’re some damn good reasons.
‘But it’s too soon,’ I say, utterly bamboozled.
‘No, princess.’ He shakes his head slowly. ‘It’s way too fucking late, actually.’
I breathe in, my damn heart thumping. Look at him, there on his knees, his face so bloody hopeful. My saint. My sinner. The corrupt love of my life. Why am I questioning this?
What do I get in return?
You get every wicked, corrupt, vulnerable piece of me.
And isn’t that the biggest prize? I love every deceitful, shady part of him. It’s only slightly fucking with my head. For the most part, I’m plain relieved that I’m here, tangled in his web of secrets.
‘Begging isn’t beyond me, you know,’ he says, regaining some rigidity in his arms and extending the ring towards me.
‘Then beg.’ My order is automatic.
And so is his smile. He rests his delicious arse on his heels and relaxes his arms by his side, studying me. ‘I don’t need to beg,’ he says, never taking his eyes from mine. ‘My corrupt wicked little witch wants this as much as I do.’
I pout, and Becker raises his eyebrows. Then he looks down at the ring and something changes in his persona. Sadness fills the air, and it confuses me. ‘While you were out with Lucy last night,’ he says quietly. ‘I went to see Gramps in his suite.’ He looks up at me, and I see the tears at the backs of his eyes. I step back. ‘I told him how I felt about you. What you mean to me. How you make me feel.’ He holds up the ring. ‘I asked him for this. It was my grandmother’s. Gramps found this emerald on one of his expeditions and had it made into this beautiful piece. When my grandmother died, Gramps gave it to my dad. He gave it to my mother.’ His voice wobbles, and my lip does, too.