Page 34 of The Forbidden Bride He Stole

“Yes, Apollo,” she said snappishly. “About the sex.”

Why not be blunt? Why not say it all? She’d had the man on his knees in front of her with his face buried between her thighs. Where was the benefit in being missish now?

“It won’t happen again.”

“Did I say that I didn’t want it to?”

“I didn’t ask you. You got that out of your system and now it’s time for us to move forward.”

She was angry, mostly because that was exactly how she had thought about it initially, but how dare he say that to her? It was painful, and it felt mean. It felt entirely unfair.

“I don’t... I don’t understand how you can just say that.”

“Hell, I’m your guardian. What happened was wrong.”

“You’re myhusband. You’re the one that took Rocco’s place at the altar. You’re the one who changed things between us. You can’t sit back now and claim that you’re only my guardian. Not when we took the vows. I’m not going to let you do that. Put me back in my place because it’s what makes you feel comfortable. You made your choice, Apollo. Your choice was to do this.”

“Are you honestly suggesting we live as a real married couple?”

For some reason, those words made her want to retreat. “No,” she said. “No.”

“I didn’t think so. So you will see how things must remain the same between us.”

He paused for a moment. “I do want to be very clear that was on a transaction.”

“It didn’t feel like one,” she said.

“Good.”

“But you know, you’re the one who said some really hurtful things about it all. So why you should care now, and why you should be so concerned with what I think about it is beyond me.”

He paused and a strange expression crossed his face. “I suppose that is still about me.”

“I guess at least you have some self-awareness.”

He lifted a shoulder. “Some.”

“You told me attraction was easy. Cheap.”

“I did. Because I didn’t want you thinking anything about my attraction to you.”

He was staring at her, his gaze meeting hers unapologetically, and yet there was shame there. She knew that. It was the strangest thing. Apollo was usually so unapologetic in every way, and yet this seemed to be skirting not only an apology, but an admittance that he’d been wrong in some way. “Is it true then? What you said to me about being attracted to any woman?”

“No. It’s not. It’s complicated. Desire is common, especially for men. But cheap... No. Men will pay dearly for sex. And it is an interesting thing, I find, that something as easy for men to come by as desire is treated with such reverence. It is given priority over other appetites. Because men will start wars, destroy their careers, destroy their families, go into debt, and all for what? Sexual desire. So the truth is, I do not think anyone—a man or woman should rearrange their life because a man desires them, because desire is easily created. But at the same time, men will burn down worlds for the sake of it. It is very easy for a man to justify hideously wrong acts if they satisfy his immediate sexual need. What I said was a lie.”

She tried to process that. It was an interesting insight, and true, she supposed. She might not be well versed in the nature of men, but she did know that men were prone to risking themselves personally and professionally to have their desires fulfilled. But she didn’t know what that said about him. If that meant he had compromised himself deeply for the sake of sleeping with her, and if that still made it of little consequence. Because in the moment his need to be inside of her had been bigger than his caring about propriety.

She didn’t know if she was flattered or insulted by it. But then, he hadn’t connected it to what had happened between the two of them. Only what he had said to her at the club.

“Is that true of you? Are you in the habit of burning your world down to have sex?”

“No,” he said.

“Honesty. Let’s have that. Maybe for you things need to go back to how they were. But I don’t think they can. You were my mentor, you were my guardian, and now you’re my... Well, the things we’ve done, I can’t go back. And so I need you to tell me, the truth. I need you to give me honesty, even if you could never give me that again, I think that you owe me that here and now. I think you owe me a little bit of truth with our coffee, don’t you?”

“All right. You can have that. No. I’m not in the habit of burning my life down for sex. I’m too jaded for that. I have watched too many people burn the world down over it. I’m no longer able to lie to myself that if I do that I will find satisfaction on the other side. Because that’s how that works. Men lie to themselves. This will be the last time. The best time. At least, they lie to themselves while they bother to continue on with the fiction that they are actually good people held at the mercy of something bigger than themselves. There is a point for many of them where they simply accept that they’re debauched and that their own needs are more important than the needs of those around them. But for many, the lies continue. The justification. One last time. And then... And then next time they’ll resist.”

“What did you tell yourself when you had sex with me?”

---