Claiming My Bride of Convenience

Embarrassment scorched through me, making my heart beat even harder. Was he laughing at me and the way I was wiggling my way across the bed to him, so blatantly and humiliatingly obvious in my intentions?

He muttered again, in Greek, and it took me a moment to make out the words.

‘Ochi...ochi...parakalo...’

No...no...please.

What on earth...? I stilled, straining to hear the words muttered under his breath, sounding like broken pleas.

‘Ochi...’ And then, agonised, the words were ripped from him, ‘Mi...mi!’

Don’t...don’t!

‘Matteo...’

Whatever was going on in his mind it was clearly terrible, and I couldn’t help but try to comfort him. The desire that had been rushing through me had been replaced by an even deeper concern.

Tentatively I laid one hand on his shoulder, felt his skin hot and silky beneath my touch. ‘Matteo, wake up. You’re dreaming. It’s just a dream.’

His body jerked under my hand and still he muttered.

‘Matteo.’

I tried to give his shoulder a little shake, even though it felt like moving granite. Then his eyes opened, their silver depths blazing into mine, branding me. I stilled, trapped by his hard, metallic gaze, and then in one fast, fluid motion he rolled on top of me, pinning me beneath him—a movement not of desire, but defence.

I pressed my hands against his shoulders, afraid of what he might do in his sleep-addled state. ‘Matteo... Matteo...it’s me. Daisy.’

I knew he wasn’t really awake. His gaze was piercing and yet unfocused, his body trapping mine, hard and hot.

‘Matteo! You were dreaming!’

Shocked, I saw the silvery tracks of tears glistening on his cheeks. It was so unexpected I couldn’t make sense of it at first. Matteo...crying?

I gentled my voice. ‘Matteo, it was a nightmare. Just a nightmare. It’s all right now, I promise.’

For a long moment he stared down at me, his body poised over mine, and then abruptly, muttering a curse, he rolled off me. My breath came out in a shuddering gasp, the intensity of the moment making my limbs feel weak, my heart stutter in my chest.

I scooted into a sitting position. Matteo was sitting on the edge of the bed, his tautly muscled back to me, and the tension in the room was thick enough to taste.

‘Matteo,’ I said quietly, trying to keep both my voice and body from shaking, ‘what happened? What were you dreaming about?’

‘I wasn’t dreaming.’ His voice came out terse, almost angry, in an instant rejection of the obvious.

I was half tempted to drop it, since he sounded so fierce, but I knew I couldn’t. ‘You were asleep. You were muttering something...’

‘No, I wasn’t.’ Again, utter refusal of the obvious.

Once more he’d drawn that invisible iron mantle around him like a cloak and there was no getting past it. He rose swiftly and stalked to the bathroom, closing the door behind him with a loud click.

I sat there baffled, uncertain, a little bit afraid and a lot curious. Whatever he said now, he had been dreaming, and it had not been a good dream. Yet he seemed like the last man on earth who would succumb to the terror of a nightmare.

My husband, I realised, had hidden depths. As blank a slate as he wanted to appear, as much as he pulled that wretched mantle around him, he wasn’t unknowable. He had memories and dreams, even hopes and fears, just like anyone else. He just didn’t want me to know about them.

A short while ago that would have quelled my hopes for our supposedly real marriage quite significantly, but now, for some contrary reason, it buoyed them higher. Glimpsing that moment of unintended vulnerability had cracked open Matteo’s heart...as well as my own.

Matteo had secrets...and perhaps if I got to know them I would be able to understand this complex, contrary man I had married. Perhaps I would learn to love him and he would learn to let me.

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