Page 72 of Captured Desire

His lids flickered. “In a bad way?”

I shook my head. “No, I think I wanted to be ruined. I think I needed to cut the cord in a real way. Now I just have to…rebuild.”

He swallowed and ran his hand up over his face and slicked his dark hair back. He had a fascinating kind of handsomeness about him. He had traditionally masculine traits—a square jaw, a short beard, a thin mouth, a heavy nose.

But there was something so pretty about his face that I couldn’t look away. Maybe it was the rare moments of softness.

His mouth turned up in the corners. His smile was a little bitter this time.

“I hope you know you’re not different after last night,” he said, a catch in his voice. “What men do to you, Iris, doesn’t define you. It doesn’t change your worth if you’ve been fucked or not.”

It sounded so simple and easy when he said it, but no one had ever said that to me. My entire world shifted a little on its axis.

“My father was an asshole,” he said suddenly. “He was the worst person I’ve ever met and I never wanted to be like him.”

His honesty surprised me. I took a beat, formulating a careful response. I didn’t want him to pull back.

“What was he like?”

His eyes narrowed, fixed to the ground. “He was a serial cheater, a rapist, an abuser, one of the most narcissistic, manipulative people I’ve ever met.”

“Is…that normal? Like for men in those kinds of positions?”

Duran let out a slow sigh. “It can be. Upper classes from all walks of life tend to marry for alliances, for money, for fame. What we do among the highest social rungs isn’t unusual, but it can result in women being paired with men who hurt them. My father wanted my mother so he took her and he resented that she didn’t love him their entire lives.”

“So he did all those things to her?”

Duran dipped his head, probably to hide his eyes.

“Yes,” he said.

“Why?”

He lifted his chin and there was a lingering coldness in his face.

“Answer this riddle for me, Iris, because I’ve never been able to figure it out for myself. Perhaps I know the answer, but I’m too much of a pussy to say it aloud.”

“Okay,” I faltered.

“A man has two sons. One is his heir and the other is the spare. Around the time the spare is born, the father becomes increasingly cruel and abusive towards his wife and essentially ignores his youngest son. The oldest son grows up with everyone telling him how he’s the spitting image of his father, how they have the same shade of brown hair and hazel eyes. The second son has black hair and black eyes and no one has ever said he looks like his father. What do you think the answer to that riddle is?”

I stared up at him, my mouth dry. I cracked my lips.

“Infidelity,” I whispered.

The look in his eyes was glacial.

“Perhaps that’s the most likely answer,” he said. “But we’ll never know. She went to France for a summer when she was eighteen. Sometimes I wonder if the reason she was so insistent that Lucien and I learn the language had to do with someone she met there.”

“You can get tested.”

He shook his head. “Lucien and I have always bonded over how unfortunate it is that we were related to our father. I think it would hurt him if he found out we only shared a mother.”

He surprised me yet again.

“You really love your brother,” I pointed out.

He shrugged. “Eh…he’s kind of an asshole, but he’s all I’ve got.”

---