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“What if we didn’t have sex?” She threw that out there with remarkable calm, when inside, she shook. “For a week. Or even a day. Just to see what happens.”
He looked at her for a long moment. Too long. She saw a kind of knowledge in his green eyes that she didn’t want to admit was there. As if he knew exactly why she was asking this question. And more, what it would mean to her if he agreed.
“Why would we do that?” Joaquin asked with a soft menace she desperately wanted to mistake for something else. But couldn’t. “Sex is the only reason we are both here, Amalia. As well you know.”
There was a finality to that. A certainty that she’d missed before. Or maybe she just hadn’t been able to take it on board, too concerned with her own shortcomings. Too worried about whether or not he would ever forgive her.
He wouldn’t. Because he didn’t want to. And that was that.
At long last, Amalia let that settle in on her. She let it take root. And she had been through a whole gauntlet of discovery over the past few months. Mostly she’d discovered that she was nothing and nobody, despite having been raised to be a very specific somebody, fulfilling a very precise role.
This was different.
How could she willingly, knowingly subject herself to life without any hint of love when she was suddenly free to have any life she wanted? What was wrong with her that shewantedto stay here with a man who actively and only wanted, if not to hurt her, then to make certain she never, ever felt comfortable with him? A man who had made it clear in a thousand ways that because of what happened before, she could never deserve any better from him?
Why, after everything she’d gone through, was she signing up for this already long-lost battle?
I wanted you to know that I love you, too. And I missed you when you were gone, Catherine Clark had said in that voice mail.
Across space and time, she was loved. As she was not loved here. And maybe it was time Amalia went and looked for love where it was offered.
It sounded so simple. Maybe all these games of princesses and billionaires had confused the issue. It was time for cornfields, ruby slippers, and the one person on this earth who didn’t seem to have the slightest bit of trouble claiming she loved Amalia.
She didn’t know why she’d waited so long.
“You don’t have to do it, of course,” she said now. She met his gaze and held it. She did not whimper. Or cry. “But I’m tired of sex, Joaquin. I’m tired of physical releases and nothing else.”And you, she wanted to say, though she wasn’t that brave. Because it wasn’t precisely true. Like everything involving Joaquin, it was more complicated than that. “I’m going to Kansas.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
AMALIAWANTEDTOcry out something likeThere’s no place like home!as she made her way along the country road, then carefully turned into what she hoped was the correct drive that would lead to the Clark farm.
She was in Kansas. And she had lovedTheWizard of Oz. It would be lovely to think of herself as some kind of Dorothy, finally waking up to the place she truly belonged.
But it didn’t feel like home. It felt alien and strange here, flat and unwelcoming.
Then again, that might have been her emotional reaction to leaving Cap Morat and Joaquin once again.
He had not made it easy.
The first thing he’d done was laugh.
You’re tired of sex, are you?he’d asked her, still there at that table on the top of a cliff.Shall we test that theory?
And she would have liked to say that she had held steady. That she had stood firm in her resolve. That she had stalwartly refused to allow him to reduce her, once again, to nothing but that wildfire that forever burned between them. Nothing but lust and need, forever.
But she was not that strong.
She wanted him too much.
He had taken her there, right there on the table where she had barely tasted her food. But she tasted him. There was nothing better, nothing brighter. He’d swept what few dishes remained aside and made her scream out her need and her fury to the stars above.
Recklessly. Heedlessly.
He’d made her do it again and again.
I told you that you can leave whenever you like and I meant it, he had said, his mouth against her neck.You are welcome to leave this island at first light, Amalia. I will call for a boat myself.
She had waited, still splayed out beneath him, because she somehow did not trust this...helpful attitude on Joaquin’s part.
