“To marry me,” she reiterated. “It’s complicated. But he said... He said I had to.”
“Why did he say that?” The fact that her father didn’t sound shocked concerned her more than just about anything else.
“He said he knows things about you. Things that could ruin you. He said... He said that he can destroy you. Your reputation. Your fortune. Everything. If it’s not true...”
“You must stay with him,” her father said. “You must give him what he asks for.”
Liliana felt like the world had dropped out from beneath her feet. “I... You can’t truly expect for me to marry my kidnapper?”
“One Navarro should be the same as the other. In any case, this one is much more dangerous.”
“He kidnapped me.”
“Has he harmed you?”
“I have been terrorized,” she said, ignoring the flare of amusement in Diego’s eyes when she said the word.
Honestly, she wanted to hit him.
“Has he put his hands on you in any way?” her father pressed.
“Other than when he carried me out of my bedroom window, no,” she admitted, reluctant to do so, because it was clear that somehow that seemed to absolve Diego from taking her against her will.
“I cannot tell you I have no reason for concern,” her father said. “I can only tell you that if you don’t wish to lose absolutely everything we have... You must marry him.”
“But I...”
“Your mother dearly loved our life together. She loved the company that she and I built together. To lose it would destroy her.”
But she’s dead. Liliana wanted to scream. She couldn’t. So she didn’t. Instead, she simply hung up the phone. With numb fingers, she handed it back to Diego.
“I assume he did not give you the answer that you required.”
“No.”
“I told you that you would not care for the answer.”
Her mind was spinning. “I don’t believe that you want a wife,” she said finally.
“Why exactly?”
“I don’t believe you want fidelity.”
“Well. I’ve never tried it for too terribly long. But I have managed it for a couple of years, at least.”
That admission surprised her. “Really?”
“It is not my past that is open for discussion. However, continue.”
“I’ll marry you,” she said. “I will marry you for exactly as long as we have to stay married. But then, I want money. To go and live my own life. I want to be free. Of you and of my father. Let his empire stand but help me be free of it. And once you don’t need me anymore...you can be free of me.”
She felt exhilarated. She had never conceived of doing anything quite so reckless. Of figuring out a way to tilt the scale so that she might benefit. Freedom. Not just from her father, but from a husband.
Finding out that her father could do such a thing to her. That he could manipulate her as he was doing now, so easily. Even as he was revealing himself to be a villain, bringing up her mother’s death. A death she had no control over. But one that she felt an immense amount of guilt over all the same. It was sobering. And immensely painful.
It made her reckless. It made her want something different. Made her want something more.
“I will not be satisfied with the marriage in name only,” he said, his obsidian eyes dark on hers.
She was afraid his gaze would burn right through her, and that his touch would reduce her to ash. What would it be like to be naked with someone? Naked with him.
It would be so overwhelming. So intimate. So impossibly close.
She’d spent her whole life feeling close to no one. The very idea made her tremble.
She shrank back. “You said you wouldn’t force yourself on me.”
“And I won’t. But I’m making it very clear, that while I may agree to a marriage with an end date, and while I have absolutely no issue providing you with a settlement, I do expect what I want. As I said, if I did not wish to marry you I would have simply kept you away from Matías. But I want you.” He moved closer to her, reminding her of a large, dangerous cat. “I have wanted you from the moment I first laid eyes on you. Wanted to spoil all that innocent beauty that you carry around with you so effortlessly.” He didn’t move nearer to her. Didn’t touch her. And yet she felt him. As if his words had reached inside of her. “Do you know what I mean by that?” he asked.
She was trembling. From the inside out. And frankly, she didn’t quite know what he meant by that. But she refused to look so foolish.
“I suppose you’re a man. And you can’t help yourself.”
“Oh, it goes so far beyond me being a man and you being a woman. If it was only that, I could satisfy it with anyone. But you... You, Liliana, have bewitched me from the moment I first laid eyes on you and I find that unacceptable. I do not want without having. It is not in my nature.”
What difference would it make? Really. She had been willing to sleep with Matías. But then, she had been planning on staying married to him, but truly, she had already been planning on being with a man she didn’t love. Why not this one?
And you want him.
She ignored that voice.
The fact of the matter was the idea of being with him didn’t... It didn’t disgust her. And she was...curious. It was funny how she felt profoundly uncurious when it came to Matías. But there was something about Diego. A spark that was between them... Or at least, it lived inside of her. And it fascinated her. It made her want to know more. More about sexual attraction. About the reasons why people lost their minds in the pursuit of physical satisfaction. She understood it on a cerebral level.
She had read a great many books that depicted the acts. The feelings of lust.
And when the writing was particularly evocative she could feel those things resonating inside of her. She could imagine what it would feel like to have them for another person.
But this was different. Reckless. When those feelings were contained to a fantasy there was a safety in them.
But she was here, alone with Diego. And there was nothing to stop him from grabbing hold of her and having his way with her now.
That was the real trouble.
All those bold proclamations he’d made... Ultimately, he was right.
She did want him.
At least, she thought she did.
There was a layer of safety, of gauze between the sexual words she had read, and the experience itself. At least, she assumed so. You could read about the flavor of a peach, and get a sense for it, but it didn’t truly capture the way it felt to bite into the fruit. The thickness of the skin, the texture of the pulp. The way the juice felt as it ran down your chin. You could read about all those things, and not really understand. Words didn’t leave you full—they didn’t change things inside of you in the same way.
She had a feeling that the physical act would be something else entirely.
But if this was the start of her independence, if this was the beginning of the life that she would create for herself, then perhaps it was exactly the right time, and Diego was exactly the right man to begin this sort of exploration with.
A man that she chose—ignoring the fact that he had kidnapped her and demanded that she sleep with him—because she wanted him, and not because her father had selected him as a worthy husband.
As justifications went, it might be a little bit thin, but she was willing to go with it. And anyway, her options were limited. That was the simple fact of the matter.
The deal that Diego was offering was infinitely better than the... Well, the other deal he was offering. Wherein her family was disgraced, they lost all of their money, and she found herself without shelter and her father’s home, and without the shelter of a husband. Because Matías would have no need to marry her if her father’s busines
s no longer mattered.
There was the matter of the inheritance, but he could find any number of women to help with that.
And Diego would simply kidnap a different one.
“You have a deal,” she said, tilting her chin upward. “But there is a condition. You’re not touching me until after our marriage vows are spoken.”
He laughed, a dark, dangerous sound that rolled over her like a tide. “Oh, that is not too difficult a thing, tesoro. We are to be married in the morning.”
She blinked. “How?”
“I told you. I have left nothing to chance. And really, it is morning now.”
“I don’t have a gown.”
“But you do. I’m very solicitous like that. I took the liberty of choosing exactly what I wished to see my bride in.”