The Wedding Night They Never Had by Jackie Ashenden, Millie Adams

CHAPTER SEVEN

ANNICKWASSTILLstewing by the time she made her way downstairs. She had put on a pair of black wide-legged trousers and a navy blue shirt. Mostly because she knew that he expected her to come down in a dress, given that he was already clad in a suit in the early hours of the morning speaking of dance lessons.

So, she did not comply, because it was the only power she could find in the moment.

She had the terrible feeling that she was outclassed in about a thousand ways as she walked down the stairs that led to the ballroom.

Perhaps it was all a false sense of security. Being able to take him from California in the first place. She had gotten the upper hand, but she had the sense that she hadn’t had the true scope of what was happening. She had engaged in a battle and won a tentative victory. But this was a war, and Maximus had the controlling power.

She’d wanted that power. Finally. To be in total control of all that happened around her, and by engaging Maximus, she’d entered into a devil’s bargain where control wasn’t possible. Even though he was fighting for her, he had still superseded her.

So, small rebellions it would be.

Her heart fluttered strangely as she approached the ballroom, and she took a breath, pushing both doors open and making a rather dramatic entrance. He did not even give her the satisfaction of looking surprised.

“It took you long enough. Come over here.”

“I don’t think you understand. I don’t like orders,” she said, fixing him with her most narrow stare.

“I don’t think you understand. I don’t care what you like. You asked for a very specific thing—in fact, you demanded it. Now you must face the consequences of your own actions. You were a prisoner for a great many years, subject to the whims of other people, so perhaps you have forgotten what it means to have agency.”

“I have always had it. No one could ever get in here,” she said, tapping her temple.

“Perhaps. But I meant in the real world, where real actions take place outside of here.” He tapped the same spot she had just tapped. And she flinched. His touch aroused strange sensations between her legs, and she didn’t like it. “There are real consequences. If you are going to run around acting tough enough to take me on, then you have to be prepared for what comes of it.”

“Threats,” she said. “Many, many threats. And yet here you are, standing in the middle of my ballroom.”

“It would not do to let you die. It would not do to let you fail.”

“Why?” she asked, feeling emboldened. “What is this sudden caring that you have for if I live or die?”

“I’m not a monster,” he said.

“Are you not? For I was under the impression that you were.”

“There is one code that I have, one thing I live by. I will not let innocent women be destroyed. I will not do it. I will not take part in it. I will not allow it. If there is a chance for me to stop atrocities being committed against the innocent, then I will. It is the only thing that keeps me from being a monster. And you should be grateful that it’s a vow I’ve taken. It’s why I won’t just leave you. It’s why I have agreed to help.”

“Why?”

“That, my dear, is none of your blessed business.”

“And why not?”

“You might have discovered some of my secrets, but you don’t get to know me.” He leaned in, and the scent of him wound itself around her, made it difficult for her to breathe or think. Made her head fuzzy. “No one knows me.”

He moved away from her, and she did not find it any easier to breathe now. She could still smell the vague impression of him. Skin and cologne and something very uniquely him.

“You don’t get to know me either,” she said.

He chuckled, and then he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her up against his hard chest. “You don’t know yourself, darling.” He moved one hand to her lower back and grabbed her hand in his other, holding it outstretched. “Now, we learn to dance.”

He moved her over the ground like she weighed nothing, his strength calling to something inside of her that she could not quite grasp. His strength making her feel vulnerable and empowered all at once.

She had never felt anything quite like this before. The sensations of being held in a man’s arms. She resented that he made her feel this.

But then...

She met his gaze and her stomach turned over.

She could read nothing there. It was impossible. His mouth was set into a grim line, his jaw forbidding and square, the stubble that darkened it making him look even more dangerous and disreputable.

She sort of wished he were the ravening wolf she’d been led to believe he was from the tabloid stories. Because if he were, then he might have done something to answer the restless calling that rose up between her thighs. If he were, then maybe none of these strange feelings inside of her would be questions. They would simply be action.

She was supposed to be learning to dance, but what she was learning was the unexpected joy in feeling feminine and fragile. It had always been something she despised.

She was small, and it meant she could not fight back physically against the men who kept her imprisoned. The men who oppressed her people and her country.

She had taken no joy in the things that made her a woman. In her softness. Had never found her breasts to be at all useful.

But he made them feel heavy. Aching with desire to be touched.

Suddenly, their existence seemed to make sense, and that was a wholly awing and unexpected sensation.

But he was controlled. Dispassionate. And he seemed not to feel any of the things that she did. None of the sparks that rioted over her skin as he shifted his hold on her.

She had forgotten she was learning to dance. She was simply following his movements. Her feet somehow naturally gliding over the floor in a rhythm, following along with his own.

“You’ve done this before,” he said.

She shook her head. “No.”

Yet as he said that, she had a memory. A faint one. A small one.

Of laughing and twirling in the ballroom, standing on her father’s feet.

She pushed it away.

“No,” she said, her throat going tight. “No. There was never any dancing.”

“Well, you are very good at it.”

“Why compliment me?” She looked at him, feeling angry. Angry that he was trying to bring memories up inside of her when she would just as soon not have any. “You hate me.”

“I don’t hate you. I find that I hate the world that brought you to the place you’re in now. But not you.”

“Disappointing.”

She didn’t know why that made her angry. Only that it did. Perhaps because it would be satisfying if he felt something as hard-edged for her as hatred.

Because she felt like she was being cut open from the inside, being held in his arms, and he was like marble. Unmoved. In...everything.

“Don’t be petulant, Annick. It does not suit you.”

“Don’t try to be kind, Maximus. It does not suit you.”

“I have never met a woman filled with so much spite when she’s getting exactly what she wants.”

“And I have never met a man who so determinedly did not live up to his reputation. Disappointing.”

He cocked his head to the side, his eyes keen. And suddenly she felt naked in a way that was disconcerting but not entirely unpleasant. “What exactly is disappointing you?”

“I don’t know, but you are legendary. Playboy. Soldier. Either identity. I would have expected you to be something a bit more... I don’t know. Dangerous.”

And suddenly, she found herself being propelled back, her shoulders butting up against the wall of the ballroom. “Am I not dangerous enough for you?”

She huffed. “I have subdued you.”

And that was when she felt the air between them change. His lips curved into a half smile, the light in his eyes turning into a blue flame.

His hand drifted from where it held hers, slowly, the tips of his fingers gliding over the tender skin of her wrist, up to the curve of her elbow. “Subdued?”

They drifted along to her shoulder, across the line of her collarbone, to the base of her throat. And then he raised his hand slowly and rested it on her neck. He did not squeeze. Did not tighten his hold at all—rather, he simply let it rest there. But she could feel the danger. The threat.

And winding through it, as if it were a threefold cord, eroticism.

Something that made her skin crackle. That made her nipples tighten and that place between her legs go soft and damp.

“You only think that because you still labor under the delusion that you have captured me. You invited me in. I am in your palace. Ready to take the position of power that you have offered to me. Nothing will happen here that I do not decide. Do not mistake control for subjugation, Annick. It would be a grave mistake on your part.”

Then he released his hold on her, and she found herself still there, pinned to the wall, her heart beating wildly.

She didn’t know what had just happened.

She had made a study out of engaging in power plays that the other party did not know they were involved in. But this was an open war for power, naked and on display.

He was right. She had invited him into the palace. She had offered him carte blanche. And she didn’t actually know what he would do with it.

He claimed that he would protect her. That he would help her.

But he was clearly going to do it only on his terms.

And for the first time she did wonder if she were foolish.

If she had sought emancipation at the hands of a man who only knew how to control.

His business training women how to control their images—that was a facade. That was a piece of him that wasn’t real or true.

So who knew what he was actually doing. What the end result truly was.

Remember what you want. Remember what you need.

Yes. She would do well to remember that. Who she was. What she had come to him for.

And suddenly, she was not content to allow him to have the final say in this interaction.

And so she flung herself away from the wall, wrapped her arms around his neck and crashed her lips against his.

And the world burst into flame.