"And you want to be part of that structure."
"I want tobethat structure. I want to stand beside you, not behind you. I want to raise children who know that their place in the world is permanent, not borrowed. I want to never, ever feel like cargo again and I won’t ever allow my children to feel that way."
The silence that follows is thick and warm and charged. I've said too much. I can feel it, the rawness of what I've admitted, hanging in the air between us like smoke.
But then Rovin does something unexpected. He sets down his glass and turns his body toward me on the sofa, angling himself so that we are facing each other properly, knees almost touching, and the informality of the gesture is so unlike him that it catches me off guard.
"My father," he says quietly, "was a violent man. Not strategically violent. Not calculated. He was the kind of man who broke things because he could and called it discipline."
I hold perfectly still.
"My mother stayed because leaving was not possible. Not in our world. She stayed, and she endured, and when she died, I made a decision." His jaw tightens. "No one in my family would ever be powerless again. Not my brothers. Not my wife, when I eventually took one. No one."
"Rovin—"
He looks at me, and his eyes darkening.
"When you walked into that dinner and told me you were choosing me, you weren't just telling me what you wanted. You were showing me who you were. And what you are, Claudia, is the woman I didn't know I was building all of this for."
Rovin is looking at me with an expression I haven't seen before.
"You will never be powerless again," he says. "Not as long as you carry my name. Not as long as I am alive. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
"Yes."
"Say it back to me."
"I will never be powerless again."
"Because you are mine."
The words move through me like a current, electric and consuming. "Because I am yours."
He leans forward. His hand finds the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair, and he holds me there, so close I can feel the warmth of his breath against my mouth. His eyes are open and dark and absolutely certain.
"I'm going to kiss you now," he says, and it isn't a question but it isn't quite a command, it's something in between, a statement of inevitability.
His mouth finds mine.
The kiss is controlled, but not gentle. But even I can tell the control is a membrane stretched over violence. His lips are firm and warm and he kisses me like he's learning the shape of my mouth, the way I taste, the small sound I make when his tongue presses against my lower lip.
I open for him. I don't decide to; my body decides for me, and his tongue slides against mine, and his hand tightens in my hair, pulling my head back at an angle that gives him deeper access.
I grip the front of his shirt. The fabric is expensive and smooth under my fingers, and beneath it I can feel the heat of his body, the hard plane of his chest, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat.
He pulls back. Not far. Just enough to breathe. His forehead rests against mine, and his hand is still in my hair, and his breathing is not quite steady.
"Not tonight," he says.
"Why?"
"Because when I take you to my bed, it will be permanent. And I want you to understand what permanent means before that happens."
"I understand."
"You understand intellectually. I want you to understand with your body." He brushes his lips against my forehead. "Soon."
He releases me. Stands. Walks to his room without looking back.
