AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What he said...”
“It’s what people think,” Minerva said.
“It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks.”
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t. Not really. It matters what I think. And the problem is that I believed the same thing for far too long.”
He grabbed her arm and dragged her into a courtyard, away from the crowd. Away from prying eyes. And then he pinned her against the wall, his hand on her neck. “You incite me to madness,” he growled. “No one else ever has. What he said... There is no reason for it. And he is wrong.”
She touched his face. “But you didn’t choose to marry me.”
“Does that matter?”
“It always will to some people.”
He arched his hips forward, letting her feel the effect that she had on him. “Does this feel like a choice to you?”
“No,” she said. “I think even that you feel somewhat angrily.”
He released his hold on her. Because she wasn’t wrong. He hadn’t chosen to feel what he did for her. It rearranged things inside him, and he didn’t like it. He couldn’t find where he had put his resolve, his reserve. He couldn’t find himself at all. And he found it nearly unbearable. But it was no more unbearable than spending nights in separate rooms.
That he could truly no longer endure.
“We should leave,” Dante said.
“Don’t you have a business deal to make?”
“I will make it later. And I will make it without using you as a pawn. I will not subject you to more censure and speculation.”
“Dante...”
“Your father will understand. And if he doesn’t... Well. That’s hardly my problem.”
He had to get out of here. Before he did something they would both regret. Either to Chad or to her.
He felt... At the end of himself. And he didn’t know what Minerva had done to him to make him feel this way.
He had no way to correct course, because he couldn’t understand where the wrong turn had come. Heart pounding, he grabbed her hand and made his way toward the exit. He sent his driver a text, and the limo met them outside.
“Drive around the block until I tell you to stop,” Dante said.
When they tumbled into the back of the cab, he grabbed her, kissing her, hard and deep, pouring all of his anger, his frustration and confusion into the kiss.
He didn’t do fear.
He didn’t do confusion. He was above it. Beyond it. He had ascended in life, and he refused to be dragged back there. Certainly not at the delicate hands of Minerva.
He didn’t need anyone.
He didn’t need anything. He had learned long ago that he had to depend only on himself to survive. That he could not expect anything from anyone. Simply because he had received kindness from Robert King didn’t mean that he could come to expect it from anyone else.
He didn’t even take it for granted from Robert.
And then there was Minerva. For whom everything was so simple. Isabella had needed her, and so she had made herself available.
She claimed that she knew she didn’t want another man, ever, in spite of the fact that she had no other experience of sex, and couldn’t possibly understand what she might truly want in a few years.
No, for her everything was so straightforward. So simple.
