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“If you would prefer that this marriage remain in name only, I’m happy to oblige,” Balthazar said with a certain dark inevitability. “I will find other means to meet my needs.”
“An open marriage,” Kendra said, nodding as if she discussed such things all the time. As if she didn’t feel that strange hollow space yawn open inside of her. “I’m told many people in our tax bracket rely on these arrangements.”
“We will not have an open marriage,” Balthazar told her. It was a stern rebuke. “I do not share what is mine.”
Her heart actuallyhurt,there beneath her too-tight ribs. But she made herself smile as if this was nothing more than idle talk over cocktails. “But you assume I do?”
“I told you that you have a choice. I do not recall telling you that you would enjoy the choice.” He shrugged in that way of his, so supremely arrogant it should have left marks. “Either way, it is what it is.”
Kendra opened her mouth to say something flippant, but something stopped her. Her breath caught in her throat, and she realized in the next second it was because he was holding himself so carefully. All of that leashed power, yes, but a certain glitter in those dark eyes made her wonder...
Something seemed to swell in her then. A kind of optimism, maybe. That same foolish hope.
If what you want is connection, intimacy, a voice in her said with a kind of calm practicality she associated with the great-aunt she’d hardly known, but who she felt she’d come to know over the months she’d spent living in that cottage,you can’tfightyour way there. You can’t demand vulnerability wearing battle armor and imagine it will come to you.
And it was suddenly as if Kendra could see her whole life spinning around in front of her. As if it was contained in some kind of snow globe she held in her hands, already shaken hard. She’d wanted her father’s attention. She’d wanted her brother’s companionship. She’d wanted her mother’s approval.
All of those were careful ways of saying she’d wanted their love.
That word with all its pain, its sharp edges and deep spikes.
She held her belly in her palms, and she looked at this man who had wrecked her in a thousand ways already. That night on the gazebo. That night in his office. That kiss right here in this villa the night before. All that plus sacred vows and the sea as witness, and Kendra couldn’t help thinking that, like it or not, she’d shown him more of herself than she had ever shown anyone else.
On the one hand, she thought maybe that was a sad thing, because she’d spent so long trying to shape herself according to other people’s molds. But on the other hand, there was something about Balthazar—something so overwhelming and intense that she felt she could show him anything at all. That there was nothing she could reveal or do that would ruin it. He wasn’t her father or brother, who would cut her off so easily if she didn’t perform as they wished.
Oh, he said he was.
But she was sitting across from him now in a wedding dress. She wore his rings on her finger. Best of all, she could see the expression on his face.
And somehow, some way, she was sure she knew better.
Kendra didn’t know much about sex. But she knew that this man had asked her to strip herself naked and she’d done it. She knew that this man had touched her and changed her forever. He’d moved inside her, and her life had no longer made any sense.
She’d changed it completely after that night, months before she would discover she was pregnant.
Maybe it was sex itself that was that powerful. But she didn’t think so. Kendra had expected sex to be fun and maybe a little silly, because that was the way people spoke of it. That was what the movies showed her, dressing it up with a suggestive soundtrack and lighting it all up so it looked like art.
When instead, it was a haunting thing. It came to her still, woke her in the night, and infused her dreams with a dark, erotic need.
Not for sex.
For him.
And if Balthazar could have that kind of power, that meant she could, too.
She smiled, letting it widen as his eyes narrowed. That felt like a power all its own.
“I can’t possibly make this choice with so little information,” she told him. She waved a hand at him. Regally. “I will require an audition, of course. Isn’t that how these things go?”
And then she nearly had to bite her tongue off to keep herself from laughing at the thunderstruck look of sheer, masculine astonishment on his arrogant face.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t be coy, Balthazar.” She let out a laugh, then. She couldn’t help it. “It’s so unbecoming in a brand-new husband.”
He bared his teeth at her. “I’m not following you.”
“You are. You’re just pretending not to.” Kendra inclined her head at him. “Strip, please.”
