“You do not understand,” he began.
“And who, may I ask, finds it so impossible to overlook your origins?” she asked, cutting him off. “People like my brother? Pampered and spoiled, handed vast fortunes made by others? Why should you care what they think?”
He stared at her then, his gaze hotter and more flinty than she had ever seen it. There was no hint of gold there, only dark like the night. Possessive. Implacable. A deep fire that she knew, low in her bones, was for her alone.
“You cannot take it back,” he told her, his voice flat. If she did not know him better, she might have thought him unemotional. “If you marry me, Tristanne, that is the end of it.”
“As usual,” she said, slipping her arm through his and tilting her head back to look at him, so strong and grim against the bright light all around them, flooding into the cabin, “you have it all wrong. This is only the beginning.”
And then, finally, she leaned over and pressed her mouth to his.
He knew the moment she woke.
He turned away from the full moon that shone above the dark sea, and watched as the light skimmed into the room and illuminated her. His wife.
He had married her in a private ceremony in the very spot he had abandoned her before; the symmetry healing, somehow. And now she was his, forever.
Nikos could not seem to get his head around the concept.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice a mere thread of sound. He moved across the moonlit room to the bed, and lowered himself down to sit beside her. He wanted to take her into his arms again, to lose himself in her body as he had done so many times before—as he had done this very night—but there were too many questions swirling around them and he could not ignore them any longer.
Though part of him wanted to ignore them forever.
“I do not understand,” he said quietly.
Next to him, she sat up, pulling the coverlet with her to drape it around her naked shoulders. Her hair tumbled wild and free around her, emphasizing the delicate arch of her collarbone, the creamy softness of her skin. She was exquisite. And she was his. She had chosen him, after everything.
“What is there to understand?” she asked, that warm humor lacing her tone, making him nearly forget himself. “It is the middle of the night. Surely understanding can wait until dawn.”
“Why would you do this?” he asked, the question ripped from him as if by unseen hands. He did not want to know the answer. Yet he had to know. “After all that I did to you? Why would you not run as fast and as far as you could?”
Her eyes seemed to melt in the darkness, and she reached over to run her fingers along his shoulder, then down to his bicep before dropping her hand back to the bed.
“You already know why.”
“Love,” he said, harshly. Almost angrily. “Is that what you mean? Love does not exist, Tristanne. It is a lie people tell themselves. A way to hide, to make excuses.”
“Here, now, it is real,” she said softly, leaning toward him to press her lips against his shoulder. “It is not conditional. You have nothing to prove. It is a fact.”
He felt disarmed by that. His heart beat too fast. He felt drunk when he knew he had not touched any spirits in hours. He could not bring himself to look at her, to see whatever lurked in her expression then. Or, perhaps, he was afraid to let her see what was in his own.
“Tomorrow we will leave for our honeymoon,” he said instead, his voice too loud in the dark. “The Maldives. Fiji. Whatever you prefer.”
“We are already on an island, Nikos,” she said in a dry voice, the one that made his heart feel lighter in his chest. “Must we travel great distances to find ourselves on a different one?”
“It is what people do. Or so I am informed.”
“Must we worry about what people do?” she asked. “Or shall we worry instead about what we will do?”
He shook his head, unable to answer. Responding to an urge he could not make any sense of, yet could not deny, he slid from the bed and found himself on his knees before her. He ran his palms along her warm thighs, and then gazed up at her. She was heat, warmth. She had melted away all of his defenses.
“I love you,” she said. Her tough chin tilted into the air, daring him to argue with her. Daring him not to love her, just as she had dared him not to leave her. She was the bravest woman he had ever known.
“I do not know what love is,” he said, the words coming to him as if in a new language. He picked through them carefully. “No one has ever loved me, I do not think. All those who should have—whose obligation it might have been—abandoned me. Hated me.”