less himself.
As angry and confused as I was, I had never wanted him more.
“We are married,” I said, inwardly begging my jaw not to quiver.
Just tell him, an inner voice said.
Tell him what? I asked it right back. Tell him that at first I fought it, but after years, he wore me down to the point where it seemed easier to let him have his way than to risk cracking my ribs again? Tell him that since January, I hadn’t been able to numb my body that way anymore? That once again, I allowed my husband to hit me and shove me and kick me like I was no better than a stray dog because I would rather he did that than cross that final line with my body, which now, after Matthew’s touch, somehow felt sacred again?
I closed my eyes as memories came back unbidden.
A hand between my legs.
Hair torn from my scalp.
Body slammed into a mirror.
Do not fight me on this, princess.
You’ll lose, princess.
You frigid bitch.
When I opened them again, I was swimming in shame. Years ago, I had made myself a promise, and then broke it so many times. Turned myself into a ghost of a person until I was revived by the man in front of me.
How do you tell a man who brought you back from the dead that the price of your love was also your life? How do you face the possibility that he might hate you for it?
“Nina.” Matthew’s gaze felt like fire. “I said don’t hide from me.”
“Then stop looking at me like that,” I said. “Stop it.”
But he did not. That blackish-green gaze. That face like a pirate’s. That soul of an artist.
God, I loved him and hated him so, so much. For everything we were. For everything we couldn’t be.
“I could never stop looking at you,” he said. “Not in a hundred years. Not in a thousand.”
That was when I knew I believed everything Matthew had ever said.
And I knew he loved me.
Because I knew that if he ever discovered the true nature of this marriage, its mercurial faces behind closed doors, its real costs…he would crash through every barrier stopping him from protecting me. He’d throw away his job, his career, everything he had ever worked for if he thought he could save me from pain.
And it would ruin everything for him.
The only problem was…I loved him too.
Just as fiercely. Just as much.
So I did as I’d always done.
I told the truth I could. And kept the rest to myself.
“No,” I said quietly. “No, I do not…sleep…with my husband. Not—not since I met you.”
Matthew sucked in a tortured breath, almost like he was afraid that my response wasn’t actually real.
I stared at my hand, suddenly shaking.
“Nina,” he called quietly from the other side of the fire, which had died now into a soft orange glow.
“Yes?”
“Baby. Will you please just look at me?”
“I can’t,” I whispered.
“Why not?”
“Because,” I replied. “Every time I have to stop, it hurts that much more.”
Lord, even just to say it was a knife through my heart.
“Nina.”
His voice was a siren’s call, male or not.
“Nina, don’t hide from me,” he said again. Softer this time. A request, not a demand. “Please.”
The simple, kind, frank courtesy undid me completely. I looked up, and found that guileless love back on his face. And I knew I couldn’t fight this anymore.
Like a woman in a trance, I rose from my seat. Matthew’s gaze didn’t break as I walked around the fire toward him. I felt like a fish being reeled on an invisible line. Called by a song I couldn’t hear to push him back into his chair, carefully sitting astride him until my skirt was bunched around my hips. I placed my hands on his shoulders, so I could be closer, as close as I could get, to this man who owned my heart.
“So it’s like this, is it?” he asked quietly, almost sadly, as I settled in his lap. His warm hands slipped over my bare thighs as the skirt bunched up, the broad span of his palms fitting naturally atop my skin.
“Yes,” I said. “It is.”
It was truly as if we had no choice but to touch. Like magnets, we were drawn to each other no matter how much time apart, no matter what obstacles were in our way.
We’d be separated again. Tomorrow, probably. And every day after. But perhaps that only emphasized the need to take advantage of the rare moments like this.
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