Alexander crossed his massive arms over his tuxedo clad chest and blinked at him. “You think too much of yourself. Why would I waste my time on a slave? Let alone one who reneged on her contract and disappeared without a trace.”
“You found me now,” I said defiantly as if that changed anything. “You’ve found me, and now what?”
He shrugged, such a casual gesture that it seemed wrong on his broad shoulders.
Alexander wasn’t a casual man, so the mannerism felt wrong.
Contrived.
Hope fluttered again in my chest.
“I could sue you for breach of contract?” he suggested coldly.
“Is that all you want to do?” I asked, eyeing him closely as I stood up and stalked closer to him.
I could see a muscle leap in his jaw, and it made me feel like a queen.
His breath froze in his throat for a brief second as I pressed my breasts to his chest, ran a hand up the silky lapel of his blazer, and then wrapped it around the side of his neck so I could feel his pulse against my palm.
When I looked up into his eyes, the remoteness was gone, replaced with a ferocity that made me hot with want and cold with terror.
“You married me, Xan,” I said, my words landing like soft blows. “You once told me that if you ever felt moved to marry, it would be because you wanted to give your future wife your protection and the promise of your undying love. You said you would always care about her, about me, no matter what happened.”
We were silent as my words glittered in the air around us, wrapping us in their magic, in their complete and utter beauty.
Alexander wasn’t a man of many things, but I knew he was a man of his word.
He couldn’t marry me just to cast me aside.
“I think you’re forgetting the part where you ran from me,” he said, his hand shooting up to catch me around the neck in a firm grip. “I think you are forgetting that you embarrassed me in front of Britain’s elite and made a fool of me when I put myself on the line with the Order of Dionysus to protect you.”
“I had my reasons,” I breathed tightly through the pressure around my throat. “Trust me, Xan, I didn’t want to leave you.”
“Even if you didn’t, I don’t care. You were amusing while it lasted, but you’ve been gone for months now, and I’ve found myself new amusements.” He watched the colour drain out of my face, his words affecting me more than his stranglehold ever could. “You mean nothing to me, Cosima Lombardi. You were a slave, a nothing I made into a momentary something, but your time is done. Stop obsessing over me, move the fuck on, and if I ever hear of you saying my name, ever see you step a single foot in England again, I promise you there will be consequences. None of which you will like as you have before.”
“Xan,” I tried again only to cry out as his other hand fisted at the back of my hair, and he started to drag me to the side of the roof.
I screamed as he thrust me over the balustrade so that I was dangling precariously over the piazza below me, bracketed by gargoyles jeering at me from either side of the spires.
My eyes were wide with shock as I stared up into Alexander’s emotionless expression. I was gripping his wrists where he held me instinctively.
In all our experiences together, he had never threatened me like this. To hurt me just for the sake of hurting me, to scare me enough to fear for my life.
I couldn’t fathom why he was doing it, not with my body flooded with adrenaline and my mind overrun with fear.
The only option that seemed available to me was simple.
He truly didn’t care.
His rejection burned in my heart, but I’d come too far to give up without a fight. I’d hurt him, I’d run from him, and that would have seemed like the ultimate betrayal and rejection. He needed to know I trusted him, that I hadn’t wanted to go.
With my eyes locked on his, silver and gold, I held my breath and slowly let go of my death grip on his wrists so that the only thing keeping me from tumbling back into space was his grasp on my neck and hair and my ankles hooked tight over the balustrade.
“I didn’t want to leave you, Xan,” I told him in a voice like a splitting thread as I bared my entire self to him. “I’ve never felt happier, more complete in my entire life as I did the moment we were declared man and wife. A year later and I still miss you so much it feels like a constant echo in my soul.”