Page 3 of The Forbidden Bride He Stole

Then a woman in red had come through the front door. His age. Sophisticated, in her thirties, speaking with him effortlessly.

They’d gone out together arm in arm and she’d understood. It would never be that way between them. She would always be a child to him and he would always be a stratospheric object she wouldn’t be able to touch.

That didn’t mean she stopped having sex dreams about him, that didn’t mean her feelings for him were gone. It was why being around him was still so painful. At least with the agony there had been ecstasy when she’d been able to imagine he might want her back someday. After that, she’d been left with only agony, and as long as she was in proximity to him, as long as he remained in control of her life, it wouldn’t stop.

The violent negative reaction she’d had to the idea of kissing another man had been her wake-up call. No matter what she told herself, she was still in love with Apollo. And that needed to stop.

So she’d gone out with Mariana. She’d tried to find another man to kiss, but when it came down to it, she hadn’t wanted to kiss anyone.

Then when she’d gotten home just past midnight, he’d told her coolly that she wasn’t to do that anymore. No anger, of course. He acted as if she was a wayward child who’d made a mistake.

She’d sat on the edge of her bed with the world caving in around her.

She loved him.

He saw her as a child.

The arrangement wasn’t fair or normal.

It was holding her back.Hewas holding her back.

She’d said as much to Mariana the next day at work.

“You have to get him to release you from the guardianship!”

“I don’t think I can.”

“Sure, you can. Drive him to the brink! Make him wash his hands of you.”

She didn’t want Apollo to wash his hands of her. No matter the twisted-up feelings in her chest, no matter that she needed to get rid of some of them, he was her only real...family. He meant the world to her. He would never be nothing to her. But he couldn’t be everything like this. She had to be able to breathe. To be herself.

She needed to have the control of her life, of her money, of her work, so that he didn’t have all the power.

She’d told people he was easy. Permissive, even. He wasn’t. It was only that she’d never once gone against him because she was so horrifically infatuated with him that she’d let herself be his cheerful little doormat. She hated that for her.

It was like, through the eyes of Mariana and the rest of her friends, she’d gotten a good, hard look at her life for the first time, and she could feel all her certainty, all that she’d ever believed about herself, unraveling.

She was alone. He’d taken care of her, but he’d never offered her anything...emotional, and she was so enraptured with him it was like the sun shone out his billion-dollar butt.

She accepted far, far too little from the people she gave love to.

Another problem.

Questioning things with Apollo made her go back further, it made her question things with her parents. The parents she could hardly remember—not because they’d died six years ago—but because they’d never really been around when they were alive.

They’d loved her. She assumed. Because parents loved their children in theory. An innate instinct that kept them from drowning you when you were too annoying, she’d heard.

They hadn’t been cruel. But she’d never been as important as whatever adventure they wanted to take, or business venture they’d wanted to embark on. She’d been lonely as their child, she’d been lonely as an orphan.

Because no matter how much she loved the people around her, they didn’t show it back.

And she felt...stuck now. Trapped in the consequences of her parents’ actions, their decision to make Apollo her guardian in case they died. Their decision to bind her in the most patriarchal nonsensical trust fund situation she could imagine.

Under Apollo’s care until well after she was an adult. Unless she was under a husband’s care. And it did say,husband. Otherwise, she’d be tempted to ask Mariana to marry her and offer her friend a kickback for doing her a favor.

She wanted to be free of this. Of him.

What she didn’t expect was to see...there was more than just anger in his eyes now. This was something else. There was heat there, and she was no expert on the goings-on between men and women, but she was pretty expert on Apollo and his expressions, his movements. There was a fire in his eyes like she hadn’t seen before.

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