“Shit.” Danica tossed the phone back. She faced the wall, seemingly staring at a large painting of a yellow daisy against a splattered black backdrop, but Alicia knew she was thinking, not looking. “Shit!” There were those ambers. Boring right into Alicia as if she were the dumbest woman in the world. “You fucking believed him? You know he’s a megalomaniac who will tell you a million lies until he gets what he wants. He wants you gone, Alicia! One of the best ways to make that happen would be to turn you against me!”
Alicia slipped her phone back into her pocket. “I know.”
“Do you? Because you were apparently jonesing to believe that I would cheat on you. With Natsuko?”
“I kept trying to tell myself that you wouldn’t do that. Except you wouldn’t respond to my texts… and they said you came here with her.” Ah, there were the tears. For a few hours, Alicia had descended into madness thinking about her wife, the woman she had gone through so much for already.I’ve almost been killed. I’m stressing myself out over how much your father hates me and how quickly we have to make our corporate move. And this baby shit!Alicia sank into one of the chairs and covered her tears with her hands. “Tell me what’s going on!”
“Nothing is going on.” Danica stood before her but did not touch her. “Ms. Matsuda and I have been having blunt conversations about us, yes, but not in the way you’re thinking.”She scoffed. “My father has asked her father for her hand in marriage. My father and a woman younger than me.”
“So you brought her to a sex club?”
“Why the hell not? It’s mine, is it not?”
“Danica!”
“All right, all right. I can see how it looks, but after we had a few drinks, I came down to talk with Sid, and she met up with her boyfriend. I haven’t seen her since.”
I have. Alicia couldn’t wait for her wife to find out about what happened. “I’m so sorry, Danica. I let him get in my head.”
“No, precious.” Danica knelt before her, taking her hand. Their cursed wedding rings glittered together. “I should be the one apologizing. I should have communicated with you better.”
“No, it’s my fault. I not only let him get in my head, but…” Alicia sobbed, her other hand clutching her stomach. “These fucking hormones.”
“We’ve both played a part. But it’s going deeper, isn’t it?”
Alicia leaned back in the chair. I’m so tired. She wanted to go home, take a bath, and sleep for the next five days. Yet she couldn’t get those feelings out of her head. She couldn’t shake the images she had conjured of her wife and Natsuko. Compared to what she actually saw? Shit. “I don’t really know you, Danica.” Alicia needed to confess the one thing lurking beneath her conscience every time something felt off. “We jumped into this so quickly. I love you. I don’t doubt your love for me. But I don’t really know you.”
She shook her head. “What else is there to know about me?”
“I’m not talking about your general personality or things you like. I mean, how you respond to situations. How you get when you’re down or angry.” She shuddered, remembering how she could get when she was upset with a business associate or her own shortcomings. Yelling. Smacking pillows.Scaring me. Never in Alicia’s presence, but none of the staff denied that shecould get that way when stress was high. A person could only self-medicate with sex and some alcohol for so long.What if it gets worse? What if it’s ten years and three kids later, and I’m packing my bags because I can’t do this any longer?Love wouldn’t last her through that.
God, they needed therapy already. They only had themselves to blame.
No, they had someone else to blame. They wouldn’t even be in this situation if it weren’t for Russell.Hewas the reason they got married so quickly.Hewas why the moment Alicia had a ring on her finger she agreed to carry her wife’s child.Our child.What had she been thinking about earlier that year? Definitely not getting married and having babies. Yet here she was!
“You’re right,” Danica conceded. “There are still things I’m shocked to find out about you. Like the fact that you snore.”
Alicia managed a weak smile. “You snore worse. I had to get up and go to the other room the other night to get away from the horrible noise.”
“I’m giving you practice for the baby.”
Their smiles grew. “I’m sorry, Danica,” Alicia apologized again. “I guess I worried that I really didn’t know you. How naïve have I been already? Maybe I was naïve to marry you so quickly and think you would stay true to me.”
“Alicia,” she said drolly. “Do you think I would be so stupid as to bring my date to Midnight of all places?” Her cheeky smile was going to get her slapped. I didn’t even know she smiled at all until we were nearly married.Smirks and grins didn’t count.
“Do you love me?”
She pulled Alicia against her, stroking her head and rubbing her lower back. “I love you more than anything or anyone I’ve ever loved before. I can’t explain it. Don’t ask me to put logic to emotions like this. You’re a good woman. You’re smart and capable. You have a big heart and, well, you’re gorgeous. Whywouldn’t I be in love with you? Now that you’re my wife and going to be the mother of my children? Life could still be better, but it’s not because of your shortcomings.”
“Yes. We all have our shortcomings.” Alicia knew hers.I’m brash and naïve. I have little experience in the corporate world. I still have the mind of a lower-middle-class girl.There were others, but those were the biggest ones coming to mind.
Danica wasn’t so perfect, either.
She was quick to anger and idealistic to a fault in love. When things didn’t go her way? God, there was a reason the common thread between all these Moreaus was the wordcontrolling. Even Clarissa Livingston, who married into the family, was called controlling first and foremost.Does that make me controlling, too?Was that why Julia ultimately succumbed? Because she wasn’t controlling enough to head off her husband at his worst? Alicia knew that wasn’t a fair thought, but the longer she stayed in this family, the more she realized she needed to come around to this whole controlling thing, too.
Unfortunately, being controlling went against everything her wife initially laid out for their relationship. Yet Alicia had spent her whole marriage thus far taking control of shares and business endeavors. At home? She hadn’t had much time or energy to give her wife what she really desired. Their rush to get pregnant didn’t leave a lot of room for kinky play when the most important thing was making sure all of her went where it was supposed to.
“I haven’t been giving you what you want and need, and for that I am sorry,” Alicia said. Her hands toyed with both of Danica’s ears, forehead touching hers. “You wanted a woman who would be your happy domestic submissive. You wanted a lifestyle that afforded that kind of love and devotion between us. I wanted to go there, too. Making sure you’re happy and comfortable is so important to me, Danica. I don’t want you to gohome, with or without me, and not be pampered after a long day of stressful work.”
