AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Enough, Clio! You’re reading this all wrong.”
Shaking her head, she ran a hand over her cheeks. “The sad part is you don’t even realize it. You’re giving me money because that way anything I offer you, you already have a reason for it. Because you don’t have to accept anything I give you.”
“No, bella.” His olive green gaze turned hard, untouched. “You told me you didn’t want anything from me. And I told you I don’t want anything from you.”
“All I wanted was one sentence that you wanted this to be real between us, that you wanted to at least try. That you want to see where we could go from here.”
“It is what I want, too.”
“With a caveat, yes. The awful thing is I’m so anxious in here—” she rubbed her chest, as if she could relieve the tightness there “—so tempted to just sign the damn papers, to accept the little crumbs you will throw me. So in...so in love with you that I’m prepared to just take whatever little you give me. How pathetic is that?”
Stepping back from her, he looked as though she had struck him again. As though he couldn’t bear to hear the weight of her confession.
As though he never wanted to set eyes on her.
As though she had stuck a knife in his back while smiling to his face.
And it was the haunted expression in his gaze, the horrified look that sealed her fate for Clio, that ripped her last thread of hope into pieces.
He would never accept her love. He would never give her his trust.
“You’re not in love with me. You’re deluding yourself like every other woman that has come into my bed before you. I warned you about that, bella.”
The nasty barb landed where he intended, lacerating her, carving a nice little slice in her breastbone.
That he would throw his own past in her face, that he would dirty him and her and what they shared, only showed how much her declaration rattled him, how deeply buried his heart was.
She wished she could be furious with him, she wished she could hate him for it.
But all she felt was a keening gnawing that ate through her gut.
“I didn’t think I would ever feel like this again, that I would ever want to place my happiness in another man’s hands. But it’s not my fault. Even with the block of ice you have for a heart, even with the poison you have held on to all these years, you’re kind and funny and you’re the most honorable man I’ve ever met.”
He recoiled as though she had struck him again. “That is proof enough that you’re still lost, Clio.” He sounded so far away.
“No. Finally I know myself, Stefan.”
“How can you forget the pain Jackson caused you? How do you even know what you...what you claim is real?”
“By putting a value on you and me, our happiness together, you have showed me how priceless I am, how all consuming and incredible my love for you is. And how little it will always mean to you, how we could do this—” she moved her hands between them “—for the next decade and you will still never give me what I want, what I deserve.
“You’re my knight, Bianco, once again saving me from my own desperation. You’re the best friend a girl could ask for, the best lover for a woman with tattered self-esteem. But to spend a lifetime with you...it will destroy me.”
His gaze darkened, inch by inch of his face hardening as if he was willingly shutting himself down.
“Don’t do this, Clio,” he said, grabbing her. His mouth branded her in a fiery kiss that almost broke her resolve. Her knees melted and she clung to him as he seduced her with tenderness and passion. “We can have a good life together.”
Clasping his cheeks, she pushed him back, stared at the storm gathering in his gaze. He wasn’t untouched by this. But it wasn’t enough. Nowhere near enough.
She was greedy, she wanted all of him.
“No.”
“Stay, bella.” Even now, he only commanded with that hard look in his eyes, even now, he held his heart locked away from her.
Even now, he scowled at her because she had dared to fall in love with him.
Smiling through the tears in her eyes, Clio shook her head. “I would have, a few hours ago. I would have danced with joy, thrown myself at you. But I can’t now. I don’t want your money, and I don’t want the little you offer of yourself. Have a nice life, Stefan. And thank you for teaching me my own worth.”
Without looking back, Clio stepped out of the tent and into the open grounds.
A thousand sounds and scents greeted her, but nothing could touch her past the audacious hope ringing through her that he would chase after her, that he would kiss her and hold her and tell her that everything would be fine. Tell her that he had made a colossal mistake and that he wanted her in his life.
