Page 20 of Wed to the Devil
“Look. I need to know that I can leave you unattended and turn my back for more than a minute without you running away again. I feel like one of the reasons that you can’t trust me is because you don’t know anything about me, not really. So I am offering you a free pass to ask any question that you want.”
She toys with a pawn and nods slowly.
“Okay. Let’s set up the game again. You can be black this time.”
As we reset the board and swap sides, Talia appears pensive. I start to worry that she is going to pry into my past and try to figure out what makes me tick. Having someone else poke around inside my brain makes me fidgety and shifty. But Talia is looking at me expectantly.
“What?” I ask her.
“You’re white,” she says, gesturing to the board. “You go first.”
The back of my neck heats and I grimace. I think about the moves available to me and then select a pawn to move forward. She is quick to make her first move, glancing at me with a tiny smirk. I won’t give her the satisfaction of getting under my skin so I just move another pawn. The game progresses fairly quickly until she captures the first pawn.
Talia sits back, holding the pawn between her thumb and forefinger and giving me a considering look. She leans forward and places the pawn on the side of the board and then gives me a cool little smile.
“I think you know exactly what I think of your deception and what you did to force my hand when it comes to this marriage. So I will just let that lie. But I want to know… What happened to the agreement we made to be completely honest with each other? No, wait. I have a better question. What was going through your mind when you looked me in the eye and swore you’d tell me the truth?”
Ouch. She went right for my throat with that question. I wave my hand over my chin and give her a long look.
“I guess I was thinking that you would never find out that I guided your hand in accepting my proposal.”
Talia bleats out a laugh. “Guided my hand? That’s rich. If you can’t even admit that you lied, I’m not sure that a game of chess will solve anything at all.” She begins to stand up, pushing up from the armrests of the chair. I grit my teeth and glare at her.
“Wat!” I say. “Just sit back down.”
Talia freezes where she is, arching a brow. My lips thin but I manage to force the words to leave my mouth. “I lied. Okay? Now will you sit back down?”
She collapses back into the chair and flips her hair out of her face. Before she can say anything, I reach out and move my rook several places.. Her eyes tighten on my face but she leans forward, putting her elbow on the table and concentrating on the game. After a moment, she moves her bishop a few spaces. I immediately capture it with my rook.
I steeple my fingers and consider my question for half a minute. “What will it take for you to move on from this?”
“From what?”
“My… deception. What will it take for you to let it be in the past in the rearview mirror?”
She toys with her queen, watching my face carefully. “I don’t know. I feel like I’ve been foolish when it comes to you. I’m embarrassed, actually. And frankly, I don’t trust you not to hurt me if the choice is between doing something that hurts me and doing something that benefits you.”
She is staring at me, putting the feelings out there on the table between us, plain as can be. I’m completely taken aback by her sentiment.
“I thought that I had made my priorities perfectly clear when I married you and gave you my name. Something that hurts you hurts me, too, I suppose.”
She bangs her fist on the table. “That’s not enough, Dare! How can I ever trust you when I wonder if I’m just a pawn to be sacrificed in your chess game?”
I lean back, realizing only then that the rift between us has become something larger. It’s gone from being a gully to a gulf.
“As far as I’m concerned, you are Mrs. Morgan. I made vows and I take the ‘till death do we part’ bit quite seriously. I never wanted a wife, but now that I have one, I intend to keep you.”
Talia stands up, her gaze direct and intense. “You made promises in the past that you didn’t keep. I can let that go, but the only way you can make up for it is by showing me that you want to change.”
She starts to move past me, but I grab her arm and pull her onto my lap. She struggles but I lock my arm around her waist and grab her chin between my thumb and forefinger, forcing her to look at me.
“If it will keep you from running away, I’ll do better. Okay?”
Her blue eyes are wide and they study my face. She frowns for a moment and I think she’s about to push me away. But then her eyes drop to my mouth and she wets her lips.
I haul her closer and kiss her hard, stealing the breath out of both of her lungs. Then I turn her loose. She stays on my lap for a few fleeting seconds, the corner of her mouth tugging down in a frown.
“Okay, Dare. I don’t forgive you for lying. But I won’t run away again. That’s as much as I can give you.”