“Nothing in life has guarantees, bella.”
Nausea bubbling up her throat, Clio searched his face, wondering if he was joking. Praying that it was a nightmare she would wake up from. Hoping it was one of her migraines playing a trick on her.
Because this couldn’t be happening, could it? Another man wasn’t measuring her worth, equating her love with money, was he?
“I don’t get it, Stefan. You’re paying me so that you can buy the trust you apparently can’t show in me? Like all the celebrity couples who first draw prenups to protect their assets from each other?”
“You do not have any assets.”
“Exactly. So are you protecting yourself?”
He cursed so long and loud that Clio had goose bumps on her skin. “You’re completely misunderstanding this. I tore up the old contract. I hate how Jackson cheated you. I want you to never have to worry about…”
“Really? After a decade of knowing me, you think all I want is a free ride through life?”
“No. This is something I want you to have, something for my own peace of mind.”
Clio shook her head, understanding dawning. She shot up from the divan, furious energy burning through her, looking for an outlet, even as a deluge of pain broke her within.
It was so easy to think it was her fault, so easy to think he was doing this because she didn’t have any money, to think it was because he lacked trust in her motives, in her.
It wasn’t.
It wasn’t about her at all.
Stefan knew her better than any other person in the entire world. But the freeing thought only gave way to another gut-wrenching truth.
“Five hundred million dollars—is that my price tag, Bianco?” she said gasping for breath. “Because I’m sure if you have a chat with your buddy Jackson, he will tell you that I should come in a lot cheaper.”
The most unholy fury dawned in his gaze. He grabbed her arms in a viselike grip, a vein throbbing in his temple. “Don’t you dare talk as if Jackson and I are the same kind of man, bella. Don’t you dare cheapen yourself.”
“So the man does bleed,” Clio threw at him, agonizing fury coming to her rescue.
“Stop twisting my words.”
She grabbed the contract and threw it on the ground, tears falling over her cheeks. “God, you still don’t get it, do you, Stefan?
“This is the price for everything we share, Stefan. This is the price for our happiness, our life together that you’re talking about. You’re buying me, my affection, tainting every word I would say to you, attaching a price tag to even the sex we have.”
“Enough, Clio! You’re reading this all wrong.”
Shaking her head, she ran a hand over her cheeks. “The sad part is you don’t even realize it. You’re giving me money because that way anything I offer you, you already have a reason for it. Because you don’t have to accept anything I give you.”
“No, bella.” His olive green gaze turned hard, untouched. “You told me you didn’t want anything from me. And I told you I don’t want anything from you.”
“All I wanted was one sentence that you wanted this to be real between us, that you wanted to at least try. That you want to see where we could go from here.”
“It is what I want, too.”
“With a caveat, yes. The awful thing is I’m so anxious in here—” she rubbed her chest, as if she could relieve the tightness there “—so tempted to just sign the damn papers, to accept the little crumbs you will throw me. So in…so in love with you that I’m prepared to just take whatever little you give me. How pathetic is that?”
Stepping back from her, he looked as though she had struck him again. As though he couldn’t bear to hear the weight of her confession.
As though he never wanted to set eyes on her.
As though she had stuck a knife in his back while smiling to his face.
And it was the haunted expression in his gaze, the horrified look that sealed her fate for Clio, that ripped her last thread of hope into pieces.
He would never accept her love. He would never give her his trust.
“You’re not in love with me. You’re deluding yourself like every other woman that has come into my bed before you. I warned you about that, bella.”
The nasty barb landed where he intended, lacerating her, carving a nice little slice in her breastbone.
That he would throw his own past in her face, that he would dirty him and her and what they shared, only showed how much her declaration rattled him, how deeply buried his heart was.
She wished she could be furious with him, she wished she could hate him for it.
But all she felt was a keening gnawing that ate through her gut.
“I didn’t think I would ever feel like this again, that I would ever want to place my happiness in another man’s hands. But it’s not my fault. Even with the block of ice you have for a heart, even with the poison you have held on to all these years, you’re kind and funny and you’re the most honorable man I’ve ever met.”
He recoiled as though she had struck him again. “That is proof enough that you’re still lost, Clio.” He sounded so far away.
“No. Finally I know myself, Stefan.”
“How can you forget the pain Jackson caused you? How do you even know what you…what you claim is real?”
“By putting a value on you and me, our happiness together, you have showed me how priceless I am, how all consuming and incredible my love for you is. And how little it will always mean to you, how we could do this—” she moved her hands between them “—for the next decade and you will still never give me what I want, what I deserve.
“You’re my knight, Bianco, once again saving me from my own desperation. You’re the best friend a girl could ask for, the best lover for a woman with tattered self-esteem. But to spend a lifetime with you…it will destroy me.”
His gaze darkened, inch by inch of his face hardening as if he was willingly shutting himself down.
“Don’t do this, Clio,” he said, grabbing her. His mouth branded her in a fiery kiss that almost broke her resolve. Her knees melted and she clung to him as he seduced her with tenderness and passion. “We can have a good life together.”