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This was something else. This was holding her against him, as if in an embrace, and for all that it was formal and right there in full view of so many, that was what it felt like.
The kind of embrace Leonidas didn’t want to end. Ever.
And even as alarms went off inside him at that, at a notion so foreign to him, Leonidas couldn’t bring himself to pull away as he knew he should have. He didn’t do what he knew he should. The truth was, he feared he’d lost his sanity a long time ago and the only person who had tried to save him—from the compound, from himself, from that wall between him and his memories—was Susannah.
Then she’d surrendered herself to him, and he couldn’t seem to get past that.
She’d given him a gift and yet somehow he felt as if she owned him. Stranger still, he didn’t mind the feeling when he knew—he knew—everything in him ought to have rebelled at the very notion.
He couldn’t find the words to tell her that. He wasn’t certain he would have said anything even if he could. Instead, he danced.
They danced and they danced. Leonidas swept her from one side of the ballroom to the other, then back again. Whether he could remember how to dance or not was immaterial, because his body certainly knew what to do while he held her. And then did it well.
And all the while he held her in his arms and against his chest as if she was precious. As if she was everything.
As if she was his.
“Susannah…” he said, his voice low and urgent.
But there was something else in her gaze then. Something more than blue heat and longing. She swallowed, hard, and he watched as emotion moved over her face, then made her generous mouth tremble.
She looked miserable.
And Leonidas was such a bastard it only made him hold her tighter.
“You promised,” she whispered, and he shouldn’t have found a kind of solace in the catch in her voice. “You promised me that this was only temporary.”
“Susannah,” he said again, and there was an intensity to his own voice that he didn’t want to recognize. “You must know—”
“I need this to end,” she told him, cutting him off.
Her voice was like a blow, and he didn’t know how she could have spoken so softly when it felt as if she’d hauled off and struck him. Hard.
He told himself he was grateful.
The things he saw in her eyes were not for him. He was a Betancur. The worst of them, according to Susannah. The high king of the vipers, and nothing would ever change that. Not his so-called death and resurrection.
Not her.
“Of course,” he said stiffly, all cut glass and stone. “You need only ask.”
“Leonidas,” she whispered then, her blue eyes filling with a different emotion he didn’t want to see. He could feel it in the way her fingers dug into his shoulder and her hand clenched in his. “Leonidas, you have to understand—”
“I don’t,” he told her, and he willed himself to stone. To granite. To something impenetrable, even to a woman like this, who still smelled like innocence and still gazed at him like he might really be a god after all. “I don’t have to understand anything. We had a deal. Even the worst of the Betancurs can keep his word, Susannah, I assure you.”
She flinched at that. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I think we both know you did. Every word.” He stopped moving, holding her against his chest as if he was turning the dance into something else, right there beneath the riot of chandeliers where everyone could see them. Her green dress pooled around his legs, and he had the fleeting thought that he was the one drowning. Steel, he ordered himself. Stone. “I am everything you think I am and worse, little one. I will eat you alive and enjoy every bite. Running away from me and this cesspool I call my business and family is the best thing you could possibly do.”
“Leonidas, please.”
“You were my widow for four years,” he said with a quiet ferocity that left marks inside him with every word. “All I need is a few more hours. Can you do that?”
She looked helpless and he knew who he was then. Not that he’d been in any doubt. Because he liked it.
“Of course. And this doesn’t have to end tonight. It just has to end.”
Leonidas did nothing to contain himself then. The wildness in him. The darkness he feared might be lethal. The need and the hunger and all the things he wanted to do to her, all wrapped up in that howling thing that didn’t want to let her go. That wanted more.
That wanted.
He knew exactly what he wanted tonight.
“It will be tonight,” he growled at her, still holding her too close against him. “Or not at all. The choice is yours. But once you make it, Susannah, there’s no going back. I am not a forgiving man no matter what identity I wear. Do you understand me?”
