“Baby, please listen to me… Whatever she said back there, I need you to know that nobody else matters?—”
He sounds cautious, gentle—the voice of someone diffusing a crisis. I know him well enough to read the panic behind it. He’s already spiraling toward damage control for fear of me leaving. He doesn’t realize that running from him hasn’t even crossed my mind.
“My love…” I interrupt, voice soft but sure. “I know.”
He goes still.
“I trust you had a reason for not telling me about her. And I’ll want to know why—just not now.” My eyes stay on a crack in the marble. “I just can’t listen to your explanation right now.”
The words tremble. Not from doubt, but from the effort of containing too much. I turn away from him, pacing toward a pool of light near one of the muraled alcoves. My fingertips trail along the cool wall as if contact with stone might keep me from spiraling.
“I’m not angry with you,” I murmur, almost to myself. “It’sher. The way she looked at you. The way she talked about you.” The image flares and I grimace, as if I’ve tasted something spoiled. “As if she could still have you.” A mirthless laugh slips out. “I didn’t even know I could feel this way.”
“This way…?” he asks, brows furrowed.
“I hate her!” I blurt. “I hate her so much, Nathaniel. I hate her for having the audacity to bring up your history. I hate that she’s ever had you at all.” My hands clench. I press them to my stomach as though I can hold the feeling in place.
He approaches slowly, palms lifted in truce. “No, Olivia. Anne has never had me.” His voice doesn’t waver. “No one’sever had me. Not like you do.”
I believe him. I can feel the truth of it down to my marrow, but it’s not enough to calm this brewing storm inside me.
“I can’t stand it…” The feeling swells through me, hot and consuming, leaving no space for reason. “You’re mine. I won’t let her have you.”
He exhales—something reverent unfurling across his face, awe braided with relief and desire. “You’re…jealous,” he says, almost disbelieving.
“Yes!” I snap, lightheaded with it. “I’m fucking jealous!” I step closer, pulse thrumming. “You’ve spent all this time losing your mind over me, and now I finally understand it.”
It hits me in a dizzying rush—how the world looks from his side of the glass. I see it now, the current that drives him, the logic of his obsession that I could never wrap my head around…until now. Every irrational thing he’s ever done suddenly makes perfect sense.
Something in him shifts. The fear of me bolting dissolves and fascination takes its place.
“Finally,” he murmurs, a thrilled, disbelieving laugh caught in his throat. “Now you know what it’s like.”
But I barely hear him with how loudly Anne’s taunts are echoing in my mind.
“I can’t stop thinking about it,” I say, voice rising. “How you used to go to her. The way you wanted her so badly one night you could barely sit through dinner before—” My breath snags as I force the rest out. “Before you had to have her.”
“Olivia, no,” he cuts in, sharp, the first edge of temper in his voice. “I don’t want her?—”
“But you did,” I press. “You were starving for her!” The words rush out, wild now. “Why? Did she taste that sweet? Is she sweeter than me?”
Nathaniel snaps. His hand seizes my wrist—firm, unyielding—as he drags me flush against him. My spine meets the lip of the oak table, wood biting through silk. A champagne flute tips, rolls, and shatters.
His mouth finds my temple, breath ragged. “No onetastes sweeter than you,” he says, voice gone dark with certainty. “You are an aphrodisiac. My drug of choice. I’d inject you in my veins if I could, andyou fucking know it.”
Heat arcs through me, jealousy transmuting into power. “Prove it,” I say, low and steady. My fingers fist in the front of his tux, yanking him closer until fabric strains over the buttons.
I angle my knee between his, deliberate, forcing him down half a step. “Prove she doesn’t compare to me.”
He catches himself on my hips, breathing hard. A slow, dangerous smile curves his mouth as the realization settles over both of us—this is mine to take, and his to give.
Nathaniel sinks to his knees.
His eyes—clear, steady, impossibly blue—find mine. “May I?”
It’s a question he’s already asked many times before—his assurance that no matter how heated things get between us, I hold the line. I will always get to decide how far we go. It’s in that power I realize I’ve never felt safer with any man than with him. All my reservations slip away, and I surrender to the basest part of my desire.
My fingers slip into his hair, tracing his scalp before curling in. “How can I refuse,” I breathe, “when you’re asking so nicely?”
