One Night to Risk It All

“I don’t think of it that way.”

“No?”

“No.” She wobbled in the sand and he reached over and caught her arm, holding her steady. She froze for a moment, her eyes falling to his lips. She swallowed hard. “I don’t think of it...of him...that way. It’s not how it is.”

“Then how is it?”

“I don’t know. He’s a friend. And...maybe like a brother, almost, which I can see right at this moment is so ridiculous it’s... I don’t know why I thought I could marry him. I don’t know why at all. I thought caring could be enough. I thought it was enough.”

“Only because you’d never had passion.” He’d been the one to show that to her.

“Don’t be so smug—it’s nasty. Truly, I wouldn’t crow about it if I were you. Is there an easier conquest than a woman who’s still a virgin at my age? ‘Hard up’ doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

“That’s not what it was though. I myself was not particularly hard up, as you call it, and I still felt the electricity between us.”

She stopped short, arched one eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

“Yes,” he said. “Don’t deny that you felt it.”

“No, I mean, ‘oh, really, you weren’t hard up?’ What does that mean? When was the last time you were with someone else?”

“Jealousy, Rachel? I didn’t think you liked me.”

“I’m not jealous. I’m curious.”

“And if I tell you, you won’t be angry?”

“I’ve been angry at you for a solid month, Alexios. I’m not making you any guarantees on that score. You could breathe funny and make me angry at this point.”

“Don’t be dramatic. It had been a couple weeks by the time I met you.”

She sniffed loudly as she’d done at the airport, a sign of her pique, he was realizing. “It had been twenty-eight years when I met you, but whatever.”

“Are you saying I’m special, Rachel?”

“Heck. No. I am not saying that. I am not saying that even a little bit. I’m just saying—some of us don’t run around with our pants around our ankles all the time.”

“And you’re sure that Ajax was celibate the whole time you were together?”

“I...I just... I... Yes.”

“Probably you’re delusional,” he said. “As you were about marrying him in the first place.”

“Okay, Alex, answer this question. Has there been a woman since you were with me?”

“No.” She looked far too triumphant when he admitted that. This honesty thing where she was concerned really had to stop.

She seemed to bring it out in him. He’d held back next to nothing since he’d met her. He’d told her. About why he’d seduced her, about his mother, about why he hated Ajax.

Well, he’d told her most of it. There were things he couldn’t bring himself to speak out loud into an empty room. Much less share with with anyone else.