He raised a brow. “Thank you, that’s very flattering.”
I floundered, trying to walk back my reaction. “No, I just thought you were younger than that. I mean—you just look much younger so I thought you were like thirty. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude or anything.”
“Duran is thirty. My mother had trouble getting pregnant again so there’s a six year age gap between us,” he said.
“That’s a lot, I’m surprised you’re so close,” I said.
He stared out the window, floating in front of me with his lean hands on the edge of the pool. “It saved him from a lot of horror. He hated our father, but he didn’t have to live through the half of it. He never had to listen to our mother get abused, our father had gotten more discreet about the things he did by the time Duran came along.”
“You really hated him,” I said softly.
“He was an evil man.”
I put my hand on his chest, enjoying the sensation of warm skin and the tickle of hair against my palm. Lucien watched me for a long moment, not speaking. The sensual line of his mouth was soft, lips parted with a sliver of teeth visible. His dark lashes fell as my hand trailed across his chest, dragging through the water as I traced the lines of his abdomen.
“You and Duran really loved your mother,” I said quietly. “She must have been lovely.”
“She was,” he said, his face still emotionless. “But it’s selfish of me to talk about her when you never knew what it was like to have a mother like that.”
I dipped my head, a lump in my throat. “Is it bad that sometimes I wish she was dead? And my father too.”
“No,” he said. “What did you father do to you?”
I blinked hard and focused outside on the glittering snow, on the pines rustling in the icy wind. “He hit me a fair bit, but that wasn’t the worst. It was this one time…this one time where he just snapped and I thought he was going to kill me.”
Lucien’s eyes narrowed a minute amount. “What did he do?”
My shoulders gave an involuntary shiver and Lucien’s hand slid up my waist, warm and comforting. “I was fifteen and I had just come back from spending the day with my cousin. She’d put her wallet in my purse while we were shopping and accidentally left it in there. My mother would always make me empty my pockets and purse to make sure I wasn’t doing anything forbidden. Both my parents lived in fear I would have sex and you wouldn’t want to marry me anymore. I guess my father really needs the alliance and my mother wants the status of being related to your family.”
“The alliance is important,” he said. “But your parents took things too far. Then what happened?”
A sick feeling rose in my stomach and I swallowed it back down. “My mother found my cousin’s wallet and there was a condom in the side pocket. She freaked out, I mean, freaked out. She pushed me against the wall so I couldn’t move and she was slapping my face so hard I couldn’t breathe. Then she dragged me to my father’s study and he was even angrier than she was. He shoved my mother into the hall and locked the door.” I paused, my voice shaking.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes, I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize.”
“My father dragged me by the hair and hit my face…I don’t know, maybe a dozen times. My teeth hurt so badly. I remember trying to hold my tongue out of the way so I wouldn’t bite it off. Then…then he shoved me down on my side on the floor. He was yelling something about how I was a whore, how I would have to get checked. Then he started just…I don’t know…just kicking me in the ribs and hips. I don’t remember much, but eventually I threw up and fainted.”
Lucien’s eyes were fixed on me and for the first time, I saw something real in them. A glitter of lethal rage.
“Two weeks later, after my bruises healed a little, they took me to one of the outfit’s doctors,” I said. I could still almost smell the disinfectant from the doctor’s office. “He did a cervical exam on me. It was...humiliating.”
Lucien’s jaw worked, a flickering movement beneath his skin. “What Romano did to you...it was made worse because of all of this?”
“There’s just a lot of fear and bad memories that I associated with my virginity. It was such an important thing to everyone around me,” I said slowly. “I felt like I was carrying around this thing made of delicate glass, and if I broke it, my life was over. But when Romano touched me it felt like…more like he was fetishizing it.”
“He probably was,” Lucien said coldly.
I hesitated, looking up at his stoic expression. I still didn’t trust him fully, but he’d listened this far and he hadn’t reacted with anger toward me. In fact, quite the opposite.
“When you took my virginity on our wedding night,” I whispered, dropping my gaze. “It…it was such a relief. I’d been saved for you for so long and I just wanted it done.”
He ran a finger under my chin in a thoughtful gesture. “Your parents really fucked you up, Olivia.”
“Yes,” I agreed, sighing. “Didn't you feel anything like that on our wedding night? No relief?”