“Break her in. She’s a virgin. You’ll like her.”
“Oh,” Leah breathed, the one syllable filled with pain. For him. For Celia.
“She was just a girl. Sixteen like me, I found out later.”
“How did you find out?”
“Because the minute I sobered up enough to do anything but lie on the bed and cry with her over what was happening in me, about what I’d nearly done, about what my father did, we ran. I took her back home. She wasn’t a prostitute. She wasn’t there because she wanted to be, or even there to get drugs. She’d been kidnapped. I couldn’t go to the police. Because I knew well that many of them were on my father’s payroll. How else does a man with such a transparent operation last so long? And for that betrayal...for that betrayal he would have killed me. He very possibly would have tracked down Celia’s family and had her killed, too.”
“Ajax that’s...terrible. You had no help...no way to get out.”
“She wouldn’t have needed help if not for my father. If not for me.”
“And you saved her.”
“Do not turn me into the hero of this twisted story. There was nothing heroic about what I did. It was the absolute least that a human should do for another human. I will never...I will never be that man again. That man who felt like everything was for him. That man who threw off all control, who threw away everything good in him in pursuit of pleasure.”
“Pleasure you didn’t take.”
“Stop trying to spin it so I come out looking good,” he said. “A murderer might stop his knife just before it hits his victim. He might stop. But he is still, in his heart, a murderer.”
“And you think you would hurt me if I pushed you too far?”
He took a deep breath, and looked at her, his black eyes blank, bottomless. “That’s the thing. I have no idea what I would do. I have kept myself, so much of myself, chained for so long. All I know is that the beast is hungry. I don’t know what it wants. And I damn sure will not find out at your expense.”
“And this is why you were never with a woman?”
“Sex, in my mind, has a place. It is not the halls of a mansion where everyone can see. It’s not with a frightened girl kidnapped from her home. Sex like that? It has a victim, Leah. I thought in marriage that dynamic would be erased.” His skin turned ashen, his expression like stone. “I haven’t made a victim of you, have I?”
She tilted her chin, trying to look confident, trying not to look as if she was breaking inside. Breaking for him. For all he’d been through. For how he saw himself. Ajax believed he had a beast in him. More than that, Leah thought he probably believed he was the beast.
“Ajax, I asked you to sleep with me. I told you I wanted sex. You have never done anything I haven’t wanted you to. You tie my hands because I let you. I only submit because I want to. I’m strong enough to handle you.”
“But I fear I’m strong enough to break you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Ajax...the man you are today, the man you are now...could you possibly be that man without that moment with Celia?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Without that moment of clarity, that moment where you first saw who you were, would you have ever changed?”
“I don’t... Leah, I can’t...”
“What is your father doing now?”
“He’s in jail,” Ajax said. “Because I used my connections to find a way to put him in there. I hope he’s dead, Leah. I pray it’s so.”
“You put him behind bars?”
“Yes.”
“And the women?”
“As far as I know, with access to all of his computers, they rescued a record number of people.”
“Because of you. Because that’s who you are.”
“No. I’m not.”
“Do you have to punish yourself?”
“I’m not punishing myself. I’m keeping those around me safe. Except you.” He met her eyes, a knot forming in his chest. “I fear I’m not keeping you safe.”
“Trust that I’m strong enough to keep myself safe. And to know what I want.”
“And what do you want?”
“Dolmades. Take me someplace Greek.”
* * *
Ajax’s heart was about to wear a hole through his chest. He was still high on adrenaline after his confession to Leah. Dinner hadn’t done anything to take the edge off. He wondered if he even deserved to have the edge taken off.