‘I don’t want his money,’ Dax panted, resting his head on her shoulder while he regained himself. Then he flopped onto his back and she rolled onto her side toward him, to keep their bodies in contact. ‘I’m sorry, I put you through all of this again.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘We had to come and see this.’ He shoved an arm around her and tucked her head down under his chin. ‘If we don’t want his money or the familial bribe, all that’s left to consider is this: the mansion, the offer of taking over here.’
‘Brad must know something about it, but I can’t see him happily signing over half the assets,’ Dax said. ‘Trystan too, he’ll go crazy if he thinks that I’m going to be in control of his budget, or any aspect of it.’
‘You think that Mauri is setting you up? Or that Brad will just pull the rug from under you when Mauri is gone?’
‘Maybe, I don’t know, the point is, I’m done. I told them when I walked out on that midnight meeting that I was through. I should’ve stuck to that. We should never have come back.’
‘I don’t see my things here, do you?’
His head moved above hers. ‘No. What’s so important to you in this bag?’
‘My birth certificate, all of my pictures, my memory stick, my jewellery… things that can’t be replaced.
Kissing her hair, he moved her body aside, away from his, and got off the bed. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked. But he was already getting dressed again.
‘Wait here, I’ll get your things.’
‘How will you do that? Are you going to tell Mauri how we feel about his offer?’
‘Not until after I’ve gotten your stuff back,’ he said, fastening his shirt and sticking his feet in his shoes. When he was dressed, he dropped a fist to the bed to balance his weight as he leaned down to kiss her. ‘Get dressed, but stay here. I’ll come back in a minute.’
‘I can come with you if—‘
‘No,’ Dax said. ‘I can be more persuasive if I’m alone.’
Still naked on the bed, she watched him depart the room then lay back to look up at the canopy over the bed. If they didn’t want Mauri’s money, family, or empire, then they could leave here and close this chapter for good.
Recovering from the exertion of their lovemaking, she took an extra few seconds to herself before she rolled off the bed and began to don her underwear. Being back here had been difficult for Dax, and she knew that he had high hopes of what he would get from Mauri, like maybe some respect and a bit of reassurance. Instead, he had received none of what he aspired for.
Ivy considered whether she should have been more forthright with her opinions of Mauri and what she expected, but it was difficult to dash Dax’s hopes. The fact that Mauri had trotted out Dax’s mother was conniving. It was a whole new level of manipulation that even she wouldn’t have expected from Mauri, but as Dax had frequently reminded her, she didn’t know Mauri well.
Picking up her dress from the floor, she was surprised to hear the door opening; Dax hadn’t taken as long as she thought he would. ‘That was quick,’ she said, unwinding the fabric.
‘Thought the same thing myself.’
The voice didn’t belong to Dax. In an instant, she was off the bed and facing the door, with her dress held to her chest. Fear didn’t invade her when rationale could be used to explain away the actions of men like Mauri. But the man who was in her room now didn’t work off any kind of sane rationale.
‘Trystan,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’
‘Don’t worry,’ he grinned. ‘I’m not here for a replay of the night we met. You’re safe.’
‘That’s debateable,’ she said. ‘So what are you doing here?’
‘Came to say hello, to say sorry for the way things went down.’ Though wearing a grin like that didn’t exactly scream contrition.
‘And you just walked into my bedroom to say that without thinking of knocking on the door?’
‘Sorry,’ he said, swaggering to the foot post of the bed closest to her. ‘But it’s not like I haven’t seen those before.’
Ogling her breasts, his grin morphed into something more salacious, and she stood tall, unwilling to shrink in the face of his intimidation. He’d seen her breasts before because he’d ripped open her shirt in Vegas, he’d violated her, and now that stare was designed to remind her of that sequence.
‘You’ve said you’re sorry, you can leave now.’
‘Oh, I have more to say,’ he said.
Where he stood blocked her from exiting the room, she could make a dash for the door, but she’d have to pass him, and she didn’t trust him not to intercept her and the last thing she wanted was his hands on her.
‘Then say it.’
‘Dax was a bit rough downstairs, don’t you think?’
‘He has reason to be.’
‘Sure he does, he’s jealous. It’s a shame things never worked out between you and me.’
‘A shame? I don’t think so. You wanted a wife you could lock up at home to satisfy your father’s urge to see you married. That’s not the kind of life I could ever embrace.’
‘We knew that, we figured it out,’ he nodded. ‘Dad came up with the ideal scenario, this could all have been settled if Dax had agreed to Dad’s suggestion.’
‘What suggestion?’
‘He didn’t tell you?’ Trystan asked. ‘You remember that meeting you were supposed to come to? That Dax was supposed to bring you to before he ran off?’
The midnight meeting. ‘Yes.’
‘Dad floated an idea that I think Dax would have agreed to if it wasn’t for the big bombshell he dropped at the same time.’ She didn’t like letting Trystan know that he had power over her, and that was what he was trying to exert by not just coming right out with what he had to say.
‘Nothing you can say will interest me,’ she said.
‘You sure?’ Trystan pushed out his lower lip and took his eyes from her for a brief moment. ‘Seems you’d want to know when your husband agreed to share you.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Yeah,’ Trystan said. ‘I guess we could’ve worked out a timeshare or something. I mean you were mine first.’
While he sauntered closer, she backed away until the dresser blocked her retreat. Though they were in shadow, she made out the unmistakable line of a scar on his cheek; that had to be the place she’d bitten him, the way she’d freed herself from him in Vegas. She’d left a mark on him, which would mean he would think of her every time he looked in the mirror.
‘I was never yours,’ she spat out. ‘And Dax would never share me.’
‘I guess not, I mean he’d probably worry that after you got a taste of me, you would never go back to him.’
‘Unlikely,’ she said, resisting the urge to laugh in his face. Trystan was a volatile sort, as displayed when his grin fell away and he grasped the top of the dresser to lean down into her face.
‘Dax would’ve given you to me. I’d have had you and everything would have stayed the same. You took him from dad, from me, from all of us, this is where he belongs.’
‘No, he’s not your lackey anymore,’ she said. ‘Dax follows his own orders now, not yours.’
‘I’ve been locked up in this damned building for weeks. Weeks and weeks of nothing, all because of you and that damn betrayer.’
‘He’s a better man than every one of you.’
‘Still think that, knowing that he would’ve handed you over to me? You’d have been in my bed, for me, for my pleasure and nothing else. He’d have given you up to keep me happy because he’s a Stark underneath all the rest of that bullshit. He’d have done it if Dad hadn’t revealed that Dax was the spawn of the guy he despised.’
‘I don’t understand what—‘
‘Bruno,’ Trystan said. ‘Have you seen him around since you got here? No, you haven’t. He took off a few days ago. Dad told Dax the truth, told him that Bruno was his father and that the bastard never wanted a thing to do with the squirt. Imagine that? Your father turning his back on you.’
The snarl in Trystan’s voice made her go cold, but she wouldn’t let tears form. She wouldn’t let him see any weakness or let him know that her heart was pumping so fast she could feel it in her throat.