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“I will have to hold you in my arms.”
“That’s okay,” she said, the words hushed.
He went forward and took her in his arms, held her against his body as they began to move in time to the music. And it was the strangest thing, because he didn’t remember. As if he was in another place, another time. But not in that dark way he had gone to it yesterday. It was something different. And so was he.
As if the weight of the past wasn’t pressing down on him. As if perhaps he was different. And maybe she was too.
“Brianna Whitman,” he said. “Your father was a bad man. Was all of your childhood bad?”
She shook her head. “No. Because I didn’t know that we weren’t normal. I didn’t know... I didn’t realize my father wasn’t like other fathers. I thought that I was happy enough. I really did. I thought that perhaps... I thought that perhaps we were maybe only a little bit different to other families. We had a very big house. And it was behind a large gate. My father was rarely around. My mother... My mother left when I was about eleven. But I’ll never know if that’s actually what happened. Because that’s when it began to become clear to me that my father wasn’t a good man. My father in fact is a very bad man. I don’t know if he hurt my mother. I don’t know if she ran away and had to hide, couldn’t take us because of the danger that it would represent. And I may never know. Cairo has tried to locate her before, but he’s never been able to. Whatever happens, I’m not angry with her. I know that my father would never have shown her mercy. If she had taken us... He would’ve chased her down for the rest of her life. Because we were nothing but collateral for him. Property. My oldest sister, he married her off to his right-hand man. And that just left me. But it wasn’t marriage that he wanted for me. It was something else. To appease a rival. And that is when I really knew. That’s when I really knew he didn’t love me. He never had. It was broken, and it could never be anything else.”
“What did you do to find joy in those times? Because we all find joy. I grew up a spoiled prince. The heir to the throne. Very little was ever denied me. The one bit of freedom that I knew I would never have is the ability to choose my own bride. But... My behavior, my actions were never going to be hindered by that. I knew it. So they had chosen this pretty American girl for me, but if I did not wish to bed her every night for the rest of my life I didn’t have to. I could take mistresses. Other wives. It was not popular in modern society, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t.Nothingwas off-limits to me. At sixteen, the world stretched before me, mine entirely. One thing I could have never imagined was what it would be like to lose that. And yet I did. In a moment.” He released hold on her for a moment and snapped his finger. “In a moment, I lost it. Do you know what that’s like? That change. So abrupt. But I was not miserable for the entirety of those sixteen years. If I had been, I would have surely descended into madness. Part of what we do is find ways to survive. In ways to make that survival bearable. What did you do to make your survival bearable?”
He found that he wanted to know. Desperately. More than anything, in fact. She was the most fascinating creature he had ever seen. Ever known. And maybe the list of creatures he had seen and known was short, but it did not matter. It was still true.
“Like you, I enjoyed reading. I also loved movies. Movies about families. Who sat around the dinner table every night. And I loved sitcoms. Where there was always a lesson, and everyone was safe. At home every night, in a house with parents who loved them. I loved it, because it gave me hope that those things existed.”
“As you said, you want normal.”
“Yes. I want what I saw then. I want that thing I saw in all of those homes. I crave it. And I’ve never been able to have it. Maybe some of that’s my fault. My situation with Cairo is hardly normal. And that is of my own making.”
She looked down, and a lock of silky red hair fell into her face. He reached up and touched it, pushing it back off of her forehead. She looked up at him.
“Maybe the thing is you are not normal. And that is not a bad thing. I think that you are singular, Brianna. Why should you contort yourself to fit this ideal?”
She looked desolate. “I want to be happy. I really want to be happy.”
“Not in the way that we have made ourselves happy in the past.”
She shook her head. “No. Not in that way. Not in that way where we have to take just moments of joy and hope for the best. Hope that someday we get to feel it again.”
“What do you feel now?”
Her face went red. “Tell me. Because you do not have to pretend with me. I despise pretense, as you are now well aware. Tell me what you feel. You do not need to make stories for me.”
“You are very warm,” she said. “And a surprisingly good dancer.”
“It shocked me that I remembered. But like swimming, I guess it does not go away.”
“You make me... You make my heart beat faster.” She couldn’t look at him, he noticed. “You make my body feel like it’s too sensitive.”
“Too sensitive for what?” Desire gathered at the base of his spine, tightened within him. “Or is it something that I could help with?”
Then she did something unexpected. She reached up and touched his face, her fingertips dragging down his cheek, along his jawbone. “I keep thinking about those moments of joy. Taking moments, even though you know they won’t sustain you forever. Even though you know they can’t last. I... Maybe there’s something to that.”
Without thought, he turned his head and pressed his mouth to her palm.
He was hard now. His desire a raging beast, and he knew that if he actually did take her to bed he would have to find a way to take it slow. He would have to put her pleasure first.
And he would give thanks for all the times that he read books that left him hard and unsatisfied in the end, because they were lessons. Because they had taught him about female pleasure, and the way that it had to be treated. Because he had learned that a woman could reach her peak over and over again, even if a man could only reach it once in a prescribed amount of time. He had learned all the ways to make a woman wet. To make her desperate.
That was what he wanted if he was going to take Brianna as a lover.
It was not about his own needs, not simply. For his needs were linked with hers.
He wanted her to desire him.
Heneededher to.
