He looked away, his face shrouded in shadow. “I was rough with you. I hurt you.”
“Life has hurt me worse than you ever could. At least you made pleasure out of the pain. I did not know such a thing was possible. And there, I have learned a lesson.”
“Don’t,” he bit out. “Don’t excuse me.”
“Me, I am not forgiving,” she said. “If I wished to be angry at you I would be. But I wanted this. Choice is one of the most beautiful things in this world,” she said. “It is our own choices that spin together the being that we are, and I have had so many years of choice being taken from me. And the position I find myself in now, one where I must be a good Queen. One where I must protect myself... My enemies still take choices from me, Maximus. Back me into corners where only one option remains. To fight as I can. It is why I took you. It is why I agreed to this marriage. But this...this I chose. Do not take this from me too. I wanted to know. I... Sometimes I feel crushed beneath the weight of the things I don’t know, but at least I know this. At least I chose this.”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I was close to being out of control and...”
“And what?”
“I can’t afford to lose myself. There is a darkness in me that I keep on a leash.”
“And you only let it out to play when you take a job that allows it? When you decide that you are engaging in a quest for vengeance? Is that it?”
“You can’t possibly understand,” he said.
“Alors!”She made a face of mock horror. “Of course I cannot. I’m just a virgin. And you know so much more than me.”
“We must go back to the ball.”
He dressed her, the movements perfunctory, and she felt herself beginning to crack. But she would not allow him to see. “There are some things you are going to have to trust me about,” he said.
She stared at him, trying to figure this man out. What he wanted. Why he seemed so filled with regret. He was supposed to be a playboy who had sex as easily as most people breathed. And this was not easy.
She did not like it.
“Yes, I will allow for that when it comes to you teaching me how to look strong. But I will not allow for that when it comes to you teaching me what my body wants. When it comes to teaching me what my heart wants. If that was darkness, then I want more of it. For, me, I am a little bit dark myself.” She tried to smile.
He was dressing, and he didn’t look at her. So, her show of bravado didn’t seem to matter.
“I can’t love you,” he said.
She jerked back. “No one loves me,” she said. “Why should you matter?”
He looked like she’d struck him with her words. But they were a truth. Why should she know them and he be spared them?
“No one?” he asked.
“No. My family are dead. My people... They certainly don’t love me. Look at the great lengths I’m having to go to in order to be accepted. And then there is my staff. They have become friends of a sort. But it is not love. No one loves me. It is no matter to me if you are added to the great list of those on this earth who do not.”
“It’s not...”
“People love you, though, don’t they? Your sisters. Your mother and father. Your friend Dante. Yes, I have done research on all those in your life. He loves you too. He’s like a brother. Is he not?”
“Well, yes,” Maximus said. “Though him sleeping with my sister has complicated some things.”
“He married your sister.”
“Semantics.”
She tilted her head to the side. “You are an image maker—aren’t semantics your business?”
“To an extent,” he said.
She swallowed hard, a sense of unfairness building inside her she could not quite come to grips with. Of course she didn’t want him to be unloved. But he did not seem to know how to accept love, and she would very much like some love. “How very good it must be to be loved by so many. Do they know...do they know how dark you are inside?”
“No,” he said. “And I would do just about anything to keep the truth from them.”