“I’m not sure you’re forgiven.”
My eyes opened wider. That wasn’t what I expected. I wasn’t certain what I expected; however, that wasn’t it. “Well, Mrs. Ramses, congratulations for surprising me at every turn.”
She looked to the side of the conservatory. “May we sit over there?”
I nodded as we both reached for our coffee and carried it to the table near the loveseat. When she sat, she was facing me. The way she searched me gave me an odd sensation. Maybe it was what she was saying about when I looked at her. My sensation wasn’t of being unclothed but unmasked. Most of my life had been spent building up to my coup, to my taking power. Once that power was in my grasp, there was a constant battle to hold it tight. The protection I enlisted wasn’t only my men who would risk their lives but included a shield surrounding me.
The shield was metaphoric but present and impenetrable nonetheless.
In Emma’s gaze, that defense eroded away, piece by piece and layer by layer. I’d tried to rebuild it earlier today and I supposed I’d succeeded, but I immediately realized the cost was more than I was willing to pay.
“I don’t know if you’re forgiven,” she said again. “I know I want to.”
“That’s a start.”
“But I realized something. After you left the third-floor suite, I had an epiphany.”
“Since you’re still here, I assume it was a good one?”
She grinned. “Was leaving the house an option I wasn’t aware I had?”
“No. I meant here as in having dinner with me.”
Pursing her lips, Emma looked down at her hands, twisting the diamond one way and the other before looking up. “I meant what I said about taking versus giving.”
She didn’t need to elaborate. The contraction in my chest meant I understood.
“I also recalled,” Emma went on, “the first night in the restaurant. That night you said what you expected if I were your wife. You didn’t sugarcoat it then, and I guess today was the manifestation of that.”
Exhaling, I leaned back against the soft cushions and stared up at the darkening sky through the glass ceiling. “This isn’t easy for me. I have what I have because I take what I want.”
I looked down as Emma reached for my hand.
It had been splayed on my thigh, but now she was holding it between hers. The difference in the size of hers and mine shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it did. In so many ways, she would appear inferior, smaller and weaker. And yet today she’d proven the opposite.
Emma Ramses didn’t crumple in the face of adversity. She didn’t run away or cry. No, this petite, intelligent, sensational sensual woman faced me with more vigor and spitfire than any man in New Orleans. She had a fire burning within her that beckoned such as a lighthouse on a rocky shore. I longed to get closer to the flame, not to extinguish it but to feed it and tend to it.
It was because of her fire that I craved her submission.
I turned her way. “I still want it, Emma.”
She nodded.
“Will you ever willingly offer it again?”
I said a prayer to my mother’s saints or Miss Guidry’s spirits that Emma wouldn’t ask me if I’d ever take it again as I had today because she wouldn’t like my honest response. While I didn’t plan it, I couldn’t promise that it wouldn’t happen.
Instead of asking or answering, Emma reached for the small purse she’d been carrying. “Miss Guidry reminded me that this is officially our honeymoon. And well, I have something for you.”
Our honeymoon.
Emma deserved a real honeymoon. And one day, I’d give that to her.
“Wait.” I reached into the pocket of my suit coat and pulled out a small box with a white ribbon. “I have something for you, too. We can call it a wedding gift.”
“Not an apology offering?”
“No, you know my thoughts on apologies, and that would mean I’m giving you this to make me feel better. I’m not.” I extended my hand with the box. “I’m offering it because you make me feel better.”