Then Came You (The Gamblers #1)(79)

“You don’t want…” She stared at him blankly, and began to simmer with fury. Had he been teasing her all this time? Had this been some vicious plan to humiliate her? “Then what the hell have we been talking about?” she demanded.

He pleated and smoothed a corner of the sheet, giving the task unusual concentration. Suddenly he raised his eyes and looked at her steadily.

“I want you to be my wife.”

Chapter 10

“Your wife,” Lily repeated dully, turning hot and then sickeningly cold with humiliation. So it had been a joke—a deliberate drawn out, cruel game he must have planned during the long night he’d been bound to her bed. But perhaps he still wanted her as his mistress, and this was his way of ensuring that she knew how things stood. He would be in control—she would be his to toy with and torment. She felt him watching her, and she wondered if he despised her as much as she despised herself. Her hurt went almost too deep for rage. Almost. She spoke raggedly, unable to look at him. “You and your perverse, disgusting sense of humor make me ill—”

He shushed her immediately, pressing his hand to her mouth. “No, no, dammit…it’s not a joke! Hush. I want you to marry me.”

She bit his hand, and glared at him as it was promptly removed. “You have no reason to propose to me. I’ve already agreed to be your mistress.”

He stared incredulously at the impression of her teeth marks on his hand. “I respect you too much for that, you hot-tempered bitch!”

“I don’t want your respect. All I want is five thousand pounds.”

“Any other woman would be flattered by my proposal. Even grateful. I’m offering you something a hell of a lot better than some scandalous liaison.”

“In your conceited, self-righteous opinion I suppose it is! But I’m not flattered, and certainly not grateful. I’ll be your mistress or nothing at all.”

“You’ll be my wife,” he said inexorably.

“You want to own me!” she accused, trying to crawl away from him.

“Yes.” He flung her down on the bed and flattened his weight on her. As he spoke, his hot breath fanned her mouth and chin. “Yes. I want other people to look at you and know you’re mine. I want you to take my name and my money. I want you to live with me. I want to be inside you…part of your thoughts…your body…all of you. I want you to trust me. I want to give you whatever elusive, impossible, goddamned mysterious thing it is you need in order to be happy. Does that frighten you? Well, it frightens the hell out of me. Don’t you think I’d stop feeling this way if I could? It’s not as if you’re the easiest woman in the world to—” He checked himself suddenly.

“You know nothing about me,” she burst out. “And what you do know should scare the bloody wits out of you…God, now I know your brain has been addled!”

“I won’t pay for Harry Hindon’s failures, or the other one’s, whoever the bastard is. I haven’t failed you, Lily. I haven’t betrayed you. I asked you once why you hate men. You’re free to despise them all, every last one on earth. Except for me.”

“You think my refusal is because I’ve been disappointed by love?” She stared at him as if he were the biggest fool alive. “I can live with your bloody conditions and rules and whims for a time—perhaps even a few years—but if you think I’d subject myself to that for the rest of my life, and give away the properties and legal rights I have to you, and for what? For the privilege of servicing you every night? It’s pleasant enough, but hardly worth sacrificing everything I value.”

“Pleasant,” he repeated grimly.

She stared at him defiantly. “You’re heavy. I can’t breathe.”

He didn’t move. “Tell me how happy you are, Lily. Do you enjoy your freedom when you’re forced to spend every night gambling for your survival? Are you going to claim there aren’t nights when you’re lonely, when you need companionship and comfort—”

“I have everything I need.” She tried to hold his piercing stare, but the intensity of his gaze made hers fall away.

“I don’t,” he said huskily.

Lily turned her face away. “Then find someone else,” she said with desperate determination. “There are so many women who would want to marry you. Women who need the things you have to offer, who would love you—”

“There’s no one like you.”

“Oh? And when did I become such an endless source of delight for you?” She looked back up at him, just in time to see a slow smile spread across his face. “What’s so damned amusing?”

Relieving her of some of his weight, Alex propped his chin on his hand and regarded her thoughtfully. “We were drawn to each other from the first. We were meant for each other. I think we’d have come together even if we’d been born on different continents. You feel the attraction as strongly as I do.”

“You must be reading Byron,” she muttered. “To hear such romantic drivel from you—”

“You chose me.”

“I did no such thing!”

“Of all the hundreds of men you’ve met at Craven’s or at weekend hunts or soirées—young and old, dandies, intellectuals, barons and bankers and fortune hunters—I’m the only man you ever involved yourself with. You provoked an argument with me, you came to my home and interfered with every aspect of my life, plotted to stop me from getting married, lured me to London and tied me to your bed, gambled with me and staked your body against my money, knowing there was every chance you would lose…Sweet Jesus, do you need me to elaborate further? Have you ever meddled in some other poor bastard’s life the way you have mine? I don’t think so.”