“You’re not a fool, Romeo, you know what happened between us to create this situation. Do you think that it just appeared there? It didn’t. You know that.”
“But even then…”
“I told my roommate Catherine about you. She said it sounded like we needed to work it out of our systems. I agreed then. Except I was a virgin and… Your anger was more comfortable than the other things that I felt.”
“You were far too young to feel something like that.”
He didn’t know why he needed to resist that.
“I was eighteen. I knew what I wanted, but I didn’t. It’s different now. That’s why it happened. I knew what I wanted.”
“Some sexual experience taught you the extent of your feelings, I assume?”
She laughed and looked away from him. “No. Does that make you feel good, Romeo? You got my virginity after all.”
Shock tore through him. It had never occurred to him that she could’ve possibly been a virgin, not with the way that they had attacked each other. Not with the intensity of the encounter. Or the skill with which she had tormented his body.
“Impossible.”
“You are so arrogant,” she said. “You think that you know me. You think that you know me better than I know myself? You think that you know me better than all the evidence around you. You just think that you know. Back then I was somehow grasping and greedy enough to try to seduce you, while also knowing that I had stolen your father from you. That I wouldn’t need anything from you because I had so effectively cut my way into his affections that I would be getting the lion’s share of the inheritance anyway. And now you think you know more about my body than I do? You bursting in and ruining what was supposed to be my first time actually caused emotional damage.”
“I should’ve let that drunken frat boy have his way with you? I’m not the villain in that story—that clumsy, grasping bastard is the villain. I saved you.”
“Why?”
“Because it was the decent thing to do. Because I wanted you for myself. Do you have any idea the manner of torture that you have meted out to me for the past ten-plus years? I have been in hell. You appeared and turned my entire life upside down, and then you had the audacity to be beautiful with it.”
He was breathing heavily, his heart raging.
“And this is exactly why we have to make legal deals,” she said, moving away from him. He could see the pupils in her eyes dilate, darken. She wanted him. Just as he wanted her. Even now. Even as they were facing down the prospect of having a child. Having to deal with each other for the rest of their lives because they would always be linked. Now, they would always be family. The thing that they were running from they had inadvertently run toward.
Or perhaps it hadn’t been an accident. It was so difficult to say with her. Always.
“The truth is,” she said quietly, “you don’t know me. Maybe you have wanted me all this time, but that doesn’t mean that you know me. I am a creation of your imagination, and very little else.”
“And does that mean that you can accept that perhaps I’m the same to you?”
“You’ve been cruel to me.”
“As you have been to me.”
He let out a long, slow breath. “I will have the estate put back in order. Go back to New York, and get everything sorted that you need sorted. My lawyer will be in contact with yours and we will begin drawing up the prenuptial agreement. There will also be a separate contract regarding expected spousal behavior.”
“Oh, how lovely.”
“You of course are free to revise it and add what you would like.”
“Fantastic.”
“The final revision will be done in person. I will require your presence back here. You will live here primarily for the duration of the pregnancy, I assume that you can arrange remote work with limited time in the office?”
She looked filled with spite. “Yes. I can.”
“Good. Let us start this off on the right foot, and not in opposition to one another.”
“I’m happy to do that, but that doesn’t mean letting you be in charge of everything.”
“Of course not.”
