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“I think that I should go with her,” Geraldine said, and was suddenly aware that the words she was choosing were like mines. And that the way his dark eyes gleamed meant she needed to watch her step. “I never meant to marry you, as you know. I only did because I thought you might be Jules’s father. But you’re not, so it seems to me we would be better off annulling the whole thing and going our separate ways.”
“But this is impossible,” he said softly, but it was the kind ofsoftthat made the back of her neck prickle. “Did I not make this clear? My grandmother is to be happy. Your mother does not need to stay here to achieve this. But I am afraid you do.”
“I think the fact that she wants us to take a honeymoon can work perfectly,” Geraldine argued. “You can simply tell her at the end of the month that it didn’t work out between us. That you thought it might, but were mistaken. These things happen all the time.”
He shook his head as if he was sad, but she could see his expression. She could tell that he was nothing of the kind.
“These things do not happen here, Geraldine. Asensios do not divorce.” He was closer then, and Geraldine felt the oddest sensation inside her. It was as if her heart was beating so hard that it might knock her back and then tip her over at any moment. “Certainly not as long as my grandmother is alive, at any rate.”
“You can’t possibly be suggesting that we carry on with this farce?” Geraldine was astonished. “For any number of years?”
“I’m not suggesting it.” Lionel’s voice was still soft, but the stone in it was unmistakable. “I’m insisting upon it.”
Geraldine glanced over at the baby, still gurgling happily to herself as she lay on the floor, kicking out her little legs. Then she looked back at Lionel.
“And if I refuse?”
And later, perhaps, she would think about how strange it was that she had never sounded quite so calm in the whole of her life.
But then, his eyes had never seemed so dark. Or soinsideher. “You can refuse all you like,mi querida esposa. It will change nothing.”
She was still so oddly calm. “It will make all of this unpleasant, I would think.”
“What if I have another idea?” he asked in that same soft, stone way.
Geraldine watched, feeling almost as if she was in some kind of dream, as he closed that last bit of distance between them. He reached out, running his hands down from her shoulders to grip her upper arms.
Then he pulled her closer to him, as if it was inevitable. As if they had always been destined to be right here, right now, her head tipped back to look up at him and his harshly beautiful face blocking out the sky she should have been able to see above him through the glass ceiling.
It was as if her whole life had been an arrow pointing here, to that place where her pulse beat wildly in her throat.
The place he already knew about, because Lionel leaned down and pressed his mouth directly upon it.
Then, both gently and not gently at all, he scraped his teeth along the surface of her skin.
Just a little.
Just enough.
Because everything she was seemed toimplode. To melt and then reform again into one great, long, luxuriant shiver. A shimmering sort of comet that shot straight through her from the point of impact, reaching deep between her legs, where it burst apart anew.
She felt him laugh, there against her own body. And it was a low, flammable, glorious thing, scorching her where she stood.
Geraldine had the presence of mind to push him back. And then, more critically, to step away herself. Then keep right on backing up until she could scoop Jules up once more.
“We will remain married no matter what you choose,” he told her quietly. And there was a promise there that she desperately wanted to call a threat.
And might have, if she hadn’t been chasing fire with more fire herself.
When she had the distinct impression that all of it was the same sort of need and hunger within.
Later that night, long after she put Jules to bed and told his grandmother’s staff that she would be doing so every night for as long as she stayed here, she found herself standing out on her own terrace as the night came in.
Missing her mother. Missing her cousin.
Missing the version of herself she’d been before she’d come here, so certain that everything was black-and-white and she could slay any dragon she encountered by force of will alone.
Missing the version of her that wouldn’t have understood what she felt right now, because she’d never felt anything like it and—if she’d stayed in Minneapolis—never would have. She had built a life that would never lead to this or anything like it.
