Her fingers curled around his suit jacket, her hold on him tight. He continued. “Just that bit of humanity was a lot of effort to achieve and beyond that...I try to keep my needs, my desires, under control so that I at least don’t hurt anyone. I can’t be everything a husband should be, but I won’t be cruel. I won’t ever hurt you or force you, or do anything that you don’t want me to.”
Leah’s heart thundered, her hands shaking. She was holding on to Ajax as tightly as she could to keep from crumpling to the floor.
He was telling her about himself. Everything he believed about himself. And he was, in the same breath, promising never to hurt her. And his words were destroying every wall she’d built between them.
Didn’t he know? Didn’t he have any idea that marriage to a man who kept half of his heart, half of who he was, prisoner deep down inside himself would be able to do nothing but hurt her? Even if the hurt only came from watching him. Day after day, struggling with what he considered to be an inner demon, when it was simply Ajax. He fought against himself, waged a war on appetites most people embraced. The appetites most people found made life worth living.
Didn’t he know that it would kill her to watch it?
She looked at him, at the horrible blankness in his eyes, and she pictured his fire, his life, pushed down deep in his body, crying our for release. For freedom.
She had spent her life idolizing Ajax Kouros. A man who she thought had it all. A man she thought to be perfect. But she hadn’t known Ajax. Hadn’t known the struggles he’d faced, where he’d come from, or why he was headed toward his final destination with such singular purpose.
She hadn’t known how hard his fight was. Hadn’t known that every day cost him more energy just to keep himself in line than most people would ever have to expend.
She had loved an illusion. And now before her was the man. Or part of him anyway. She wanted the rest. She wanted all of him. She wanted to know him. To know the things about him even he didn’t know, the things he wouldn’t acknowledge.
And she realized something suddenly. That she was selling them both short. Yes, she’d purposed not to protect herself quite so much. To view him with realism. To accept he couldn’t love her. That he couldn’t love.
And in turn, she wouldn’t love him. She wouldn’t be vulnerable to him. She wouldn’t give what she couldn’t get.
She was taking half willingly. Pushing him for nothing, because if she pushed him for emotion, for love, she would have to acknowledge that she wanted it. That she wanted more than sex and companionship.
She would expose herself to the kind of pain the media had never come close to doling out.
She had just thought of him as a man denying himself, but was she any better? She was protecting herself. Protecting herself by denying a piece of her that was bound up, gasping for breath.
The part of herself who believed she deserved to try for it all, pain be damned. Who believed her happiness was worth risking her heart. Who believed Ajax’s happiness was worth risking her heart.
“So...” She swallowed. “What you’re saying is, if you could go back to the moment you proposed, knowing what you know now...you would ask me instead?”
He nodded slowly, still swaying, almost in time with the music. “Yes.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “I...I’m not sure I would say yes.”
His brows locked together. “Why?”
It was time to let her guard down. Really. It was time to have expectations. To believe she could make him change. To believe she wasn’t the Backup Bride.
“You give this big talk about knowing me, Ajax, but I don’t feel like I know you. I can’t even explore your body when we’re in bed together. Which means...you don’t really know me, either. You have me on a leash. Following your rules so you can hang on to that control you love so much.”
“I don’t mean to leash you, Leah. It’s myself that I—”
“That might be what you mean to be doing, but the fact is, when you impose rules like that, stop me from doing what I want, from showing you what I want, you’re only making me the person you expect me to be, the person you think you need me to be. Rather than the person I am. No wonder it’s been so good for you. But you could have what you have with me with any other woman. Any obedient woman, that is.”
He spun her out from his body, then pulled her back in, dipping his face close to hers.
“Not bad,” she said.
“Thank you, I learn fast.”