“Yes, you do.”
“So you think I don’t allow you to be who you are? Have I stopped you from saying...any and everything that comes to your mind? You, daily, take strips off me with your tongue, my dear, and I’ve hardly done anything about that, now, have I?”
Yes, she’d done that. Often. Self-protection. An attempt to push him away. To derail him. But she wasn’t doing that now.
She gritted her teeth and pulled her fingers from his, took her hand from his shoulders and cupped his face. He stopped moving, his expression confused. She found it endearing. That big strong Ajax Kouros was confused by little ol’ her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I do that because sometimes when you hurt my feelings it’s easier to yell at you than it is to show you that I’m hurt. And tonight, Ajax, just tonight, mind you—I can’t put a moratorium on the sarcasm forever—I’m going to stop. But I need something in return.”
“What?”
“I need you to play by my rules. Just for tonight.”
“After everything I told you about me?” he asked, his voice rough.
“If you lose control are you going to hurt me?”
He looked scared. Haunted. “I don’t know.”
“I do. You won’t. That isn’t what you are. Men who delight in hurting women...it’s not about desire. Or losing control because they’re around a woman they can’t resist. Those are lies. Those men want to hurt. They want to make themselves powerful. I have never seen those desires in you.”
“Leah...”
“My rules, okay, not yours. Tonight. Come on, you’re already dancing. It’s nothing but a little quickstep to hell after this. We might as well have some fun on the way.”
“What are your rules?” he asked. His face was like stone, immobile, unreadable.
She leaned in, her lips touching his ear. “I was thinking, my hands, untied. And I get to do whatever I want to you. And Ajax, my darling, I have about ten years’ worth of fantasies stored up for you.”
“Ten years?”
“All right, we’ll skip the early years. That was a lot of running through meadows and you braiding flowers in my hair. But things started getting good about the time I was sixteen.”
“Fantasies? About me?”
She smiled. “You didn’t think I left candy on your desk just to be nice, did you?”
“I did, yes. It meant a lot to me, as I said. Are you telling me you were baiting me?”
“A little candy trail that I hoped might lead you to my bed.”
“Subtle,” he said. “Too subtle.”
“I realize that now.”
He frowned. “Why me?”
“Because I thought you were perfect. And gorgeous. I was wrong.”
His frown deepened. “Were you?”
“Not about the gorgeous part, about the perfect part. I made you something in my head that I shouldn’t have. You aren’t perfect, Ajax. But the thing is, I’m not a girl anymore. And I don’t need you to be perfect.”
“What do you need?” he asked, an edge of desperation to his voice.
“I just need you. The man you are. The man you have become because of your mistakes. Because of your scars. Not the man you are with all those chains on, but the man you are.”
“You say that, Leah, but you don’t know.”
“You told me.”
“I told you who I saw myself becoming, and why, but I don’t even know what would happen now...I don’t even know if I could change the way I do things, the way I see things. And I doubt you would like me if I did.”
“Here’s the thing—I don’t know if I would, either. But you have to give me a chance to know you. Give yourself the chance to be you. And I’ll give you a chance to know me.”
He lifted his hand, cupped her cheek, then slid his fingers through her hair, letting the strands fall around her face. “But there is every chance that once you know me, you won’t like me.”
She took his hand and turned his palm toward her face, pressing a kiss to his skin. “Ajax, you danced for me. So that the press wouldn’t say horrible things about me. I like what I know of you. A lot.”
“Even knowing my past?”
“Your past breaks my heart. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be a child in a place like that. To have a father like that.”
“What if...what if you dig so deep, Leah, deep inside of me, and you find out the darkness just keeps going? That there’s no end to it. What if this is all I am?”