Rafe’s eyes are unreadable. “Are you thinking about what to demand in return for your silence?”
I start dabbing foundation back on his bruise and ignore the way my heart speeds up. It’s a logical assumption on his part. We make bets all the time. Demands and games and concessions.
It’s the language of our marriage. The only common language we’ve ever spoken.
But it feels dirty to ask for something in return for this. I don’t understand why he fights. Not yet. But he’d preferred me thinking he was breaking a promise of celibacy than to tell me the truth.
I focus on his bruise. “After Monaco… can you look at my proposal for the new Mather & Wilde direction? I know it has to go to the people in charge. I know that. But I want your eyes on it, too,” I say.
His eyes are valuable. He delegates, sure, but his word is law within Maison Valmont.
This is why I’m here. Why I married him.
To save my employees and my family company. I didn’t marry him to do this. To kiss him on docks and fly in helicopters and help him hide secrets from those he’s closest to.
“All right,” Rafe says.
I lean back. “All right?”
“It’s a fair trade.”
“Wow.” The bruise is covered, mostly. I’ll have to go over it with my bronzer to even out the change in skin tone. But the one on his neck, the one I thought was a hickey… that’s still there.
I start gently padding his neck.
He shifts.
“Hold still,” I tell him.
“I’m sitting still.”
“You moved.”
He looks at me while I pad foundation onto his skin. “It’s not a trade,” I say. “I mean, I know we said it was. But I’m not going to tell Nora regardless. I wouldn’t do that.”
He stays silent until the bruise on his neck is entirely covered, and I start brushing bronzer on with whisper-light touches.
“Thank you,” he says, and I wonder if I’m the one getting off lightly here. I raced after him in anger last night and found something so different from what I expected. And now this.
Life with him is many things, but it’s not boring.
“Tonight,” he says. “I should prepare you.”
“Nora told me a bit about the party. Although she has no idea who the woman throwing it is.”
He closes his eyes. “I hate that my sister has been. I hate that she’s going again.”
“It sounded cool.”
“Don’t be excited, Wilde.”
“Why not?”
He opens his eyes again, and they burn on mine. “Because you excited is a dangerous thing, and this party will be dangerous enough.”
“But you like to live dangerously,” I say, and think of last night. The cage, the shouts, the fists. Of his arm wrapped tightly around me as we left that place behind.
“Not this kind,” he says.
