The words she’d been thinking for days breathed from her lips finally. “What’s in Paris?”

His fingers were tracing patterns down her back, teasing goosebumps over her pale skin.

Paris.

The city had taken on a new significance for him, one he had swiftly come to hate. For the next morning they would leave the island as a pair, and part at the airport as what they really were — two strangers going on separate journeys.

“MK?”

He startled. “A meeting.”

“I gathered. What’s it about?”

Would her husband make love to her when she returned? Would Saphire let him? What was their sex life like? Was she as wild with him? With Jordan? He frowned. She’d said that she’d never known it could be like this. That, at least, was something.

“A business I’m buying.”

“What business?”

He leaned forward and kissed her shoulder. “So many questions.”

“Yeah.” She drew in a shuddering breath. “I’m trying to distract myself.”

He understood that completely.

“It is not particularly interesting,” he ran his hands lower, to her perfect, round ass. He cupped it and felt himself harden immediately. She was so relaxed. So perfect. With him, she could be completely herself. He would never have stifled her as Jordan had.

Jordan. How he hated the man!

Saphire yawned. It was late, but neither of them wanted to sleep. To sleep on their last night would be a waste.

“My business will only take a day or two.” He reached for a nearby candle and trickled some of the wax onto his finger.

Beneath him, Saphire’s heart kicked up a gear. “And then?”

He shook his head. “Not London,” he responded instantly. “Nothing would please me more than to see you again. But I will not share you. Not with him, not with anyone.”

Her pulse fired like a torrent of volcanic lava. “I don’t want to be shared.” A single tear leaked from her eye and dribbled down her cheek. “I’m not cut out for this. I could never cheat. I hate it.”

“Do you?”

“Not being with you. I love … that.” It was the closest she could come to admitting her feelings; to go further would have been the ultimate indulgence, but it wouldn’t have been fair to Thaddeus or Jordan. “I just feel so horrible. I thought this would atone for his sins. Instead, I’ve just created a heap of my own.”

Thaddeus compressed his lips.

“I thought I’d be able to go back and throw this in his face. I don’t even know how I’ll look at him.”

He dragged his mouth over her shoulder. “You have other options.”

“Such as?” She whispered.

“Stay here.”

The words were just sinking in when she felt the first trickle of hot wax on her back. It sent a spiral of beautiful discomfort into the pit of her stomach. She jerked involuntarily and he smiled. But it was a sad smile; what she had become and what she had made him become … these were not good things.

He was moving the candle methodically, covering much of her back. After the first burst of heat, it felt perfect. Amazing. Sensual. She groaned and felt her insides clench.

“I need you.” She blinked her eyes rapidly. “I think I will always need you. Always want you.”

“Stay.” He said again, sitting up straighter to stare at the wax pattern on her pale skin.

“For how long?” She sighed heavily. “This situation is making you think you want something that you don’t. You’re not interested in me. Not really. You just can’t stand the fact that I’m leaving you for him.”

“You are damned right about that,” he snarled. He gripped her wrist and lifted his hips just high enough so that she could flip onto her back. “But I want you, too. If there was no Jordan, and only you, I would still want you here, Saphire.”

The words should have made her happy but they didn’t. What he was offering felt like a billion miles away from something she could grasp.

“I live in London.”

“With a husband you despise and who certainly doesn’t respect you, no job, friends who sleep with your husband, and parents who love you enough to visit you anywhere in the world as often as you’d like.”

Everything he said rung with truth but she whipped her head away, outraged and upset. Sometimes, the truth really did hurt.

“You don’t have to see him again to begin divorce proceedings. Send the letter. Have your parents move your stuff out. And start a new life.”

She lifted her hands to his chest. “That’s not the right way.” Her mind was heavy with thoughts. “You know it isn’t.”

“Who gives a flying f… who gives a crap about the ‘right’ way. Did he? When he was screwing Anita on your bed?”

“No,” she groaned. “But I do. I don’t know if I’ll be able to move on from this. I just know that I owe it to what we used to be to try. To at least talk to him. If I hadn’t met you, I would have flown back after a couple of days. I would have faced him already, and who knows? Maybe everything would have been fine by now.”

His laugh was scathing. “You are kind of delusional, you know. It’s sweet, except that it is causing you to make the most fundamentally ludicrous decision of your life.”

“Stop.” She held up a hand. “I get it. You don’t agree with me. But I have to do this. I know myself. And I know that I won’t ever accept it’s over if I don’t go back to him and at least try to … to …”

“To what?” He demanded.

“To understand.”

“And us?” He said leaning down and kissing her with all the passion he felt. “You think you are not going to live with regrets over this decision? You don’t think leaving me will make you wake up in a cold sweat? When you reach for me in the middle of the night and find only him?”

Already the ache was spreading, killing off the sensual desire Thaddeus had awakened. “I can’t.” She ran her fingers up his chest. “I don’t deserve you. I never did.” She ran her thumb over his lips and he opened his mouth, nipping it between his teeth.

“Please, MK, please, just make love to me. Just hold me. I don’t want to fight on our last night.”

Their last night … and he was going to make sure it was one she never forgot.

He kissed her as though she was the salvation of his dying breath. His tongue pushed into her mouth and with his body he said the words he couldn’t utter. Don’t go. I need you.

His hands were firm on her softness as they ached to touch her everywhere; to commit to memory the nuances of her form. He made love to her slowly, gently, achingly soft, because all of him was weakened by the specter of her departure.

He held her tight, their breaths mingling and their chests moving in unison, until the sun crested and he took her again, imprinting himself on her and silently asking her to put aside her foolish, slavish devotion to convention and agree to stay.

But she did not.

When the sun shone brightly across the carpeted floor, Saphire eased herself out of the bed with a renewed sense of determination. She was shutting down on him. He could practically see her wrapping ribbons around her heart, tightening her resolve and removing what he had meant to her.

Her nakedness was spectacular. Her back, though, was scored with red marks from the candle wax. Remorse punched through him but he didn’t give it any room to move.

She had enjoyed it. She had been his equal and partner in every way.

And at least he had some insurance that she wouldn’t be jumping straight back into bed with her husband.

“Holy hell,” she murmured, as her eyes caught sight of the marks in the large mirrors. She angled herself so that she could see it properly and slowly, comprehension dawned. Her eyes moved from the clearly written initials ‘T K’ that he had inked in wax, to the artist who had marked her.

His expression was unapologetic.

“You wrote your initials on my back?”

His eyes flashed with a dark, heated emotion, but he didn’t answer.

“Why?” She reached around and ran her finger over the bottom of the K.

“Why do you think?”

Her stomach felt like it had been knifed. “I don’t know.” She looked like a fawn in the forest, completely helpless and confused. “Please tell me you didn’t mean to mark me in some way. To … put your name on me like a possession.”

Again, something seared through his face. “You do not think you are?”

“No!” She was appalled, and it radiated from her every pore.

“Of course you are. As I am yours. How do you not see that?” He hadn’t moved an inch, but she felt as though he was touching her. “I have slept with a lot of women.”

“Gee, great. Let’s talk more about that, please.”

His eyes narrowed. “You do not like to contemplate my past lovers? What if I told you that the woman who had a place in my bed before you is an Oscar winning actress? And before her, a famous singer? And before her, a supermodel. Before that, …”

“Stop.” She lifted a hand in the air; her fingers were shaking.

“Now imagine how I feel,” he said with an attempt at sounding reasonable. “These women are in my past. They are nothing to you and me. You need not feel jealous of them; I did not know you when I was with them. You have been here with me, and felt what I feel, and still you are going back to him.” He dragged a hand through his hair; it spiked in odd angles that made her tummy flop with love and desire.

But she couldn’t soften. It was a crucial moment. “And so you branded me like cattle?”

Remorse slashed through him once more. “Thinking of him touching you is going to kill me.”

Her breath burned and her chest heaved. “I’m sorry,” she said finally, her voice shaking. “The last thing I wanted to do was hurt you.”

“You are hurting us both with this decision.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

He stared at her; his emotions a tornado that was anchored by impotence.

“Do you love your husband?”

She sucked in a deep breath. Her expression was begging him to stop interrogating her. “I … I don’t know.” She said finally.

It wasn’t the denial he needed to hear, but nor was it an affirmative response.

“Do you love me?” He asked, standing from the bed now and crossing the distance. He wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her to his chest. She lifted her hands and curled them around his neck. Every part of her was hurting.

“I … I can’t,” she groaned. “I can’t. It turns out, I’m not a cheater. I wanted to be. I wanted to, so badly. But our marriage vows … they meant something to me.”

“You have cheated,” he groaned, his eyes devouring her face, wondering how he could feel such love at the same time as such desperation.

“Sex is just sex,” she said tightly. “I’ve come to think that emotional commitment is just as important…”

“Jesus Christ,” he barked crossly. “You are unbelievably childish.”

“Don’t,” she whispered, dipping her head against his chest.

“You are going to go to him, and let him tell you that it was ‘just sex’ with your best friend. And because he’s going to say that he loves you, you will make your peace with his behavior?”

“I don’t know,” she shook her head. “I just know I can’t say that I love you. I can’t say that this has been the most incredible week of my life. I can’t say that leaving you is going to kill a part of me, and that I know I’ll never recover.” She lifted her face to his. “I can’t say any of that, because I’m married. I have a husband. And whatever happens between him and me, I have got to respect our marriage enough to deal with it head on.”

“Like he did?” Thad demanded.

Her smile was filled with grief. “That’s the problem,” she said softly. “I thought that too. But it turns out, two wrongs really, really don’t make a right.”

“And one wrong can’t make a right either,” he insisted.

“No. But I know myself, Thaddeus. I won’t respect myself if I don’t respect our marriage.”

“God, you are crazy,” he said, grabbing her cheeks and lifting her face to his. He kissed her with all of the hope in his soul, but they both knew what it was.

A goodbye kiss.

The end was looming.

Only hours later, at the airport, surrounded by tourists, holiday-makers and corporate types going about their business, he grabbed her once more and pulled her to his body. He was wearing a suit now, and he was clean-shaven. He looked completely at odds with the man she’d fallen in love with.

Saphire looked different too. Dressed in the same Prada dress she’d worn on the flight over, she was gradually returning to her old self. Saphire Arana, Version One.

“This is a mistake,” he intoned warningly.

She could hardly meet his eyes. “Maybe.” Her lower lip quivered and he ached to pull it between his teeth. “But you know why I have to do it.”

“Bullshit.” His expression was implacable. “You want to do it.”

Saphire shrugged her slender shoulders. “I want to know. I need to know.”

“To know what?” He was impatient and furious.

“Everything. When did it begin? Was she his first? Did he love her? Does he love her?”

Wanting to know meant she cared, and that meant, surely, that she loved her husband. That she wanted to go back to him. It was a painful, bitter, choking pill to swallow. “And? If he tells you everything you want to hear?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“This is ridiculous.”

“I’m so sorry.” She lifted a hand to his chest but he stepped backwards.

“No.” It was a sudden and emphatic denouncement. “You can’t have it both ways. I’m not yours to touch anymore. No more kisses. No more. You have chosen, and you must stick with your choice.” His dark eyes bore into hers, as though in looking he might comprehend. But he didn’t. He spun on his heel and moved with the appearance of nonchalance through Athens airport, towards his own first class lounge.

Saphire stared until he’d disappeared through the doors. The whole way, she waited for him to turn back, or change his mind; but he did not. And why would he have?

He was right.

She had made her choice.

And now she had to live by it.

The flight to London was too smooth, and too fast. Every minute that passed installed further grief in her heart, as it reminded her that she was moving further away from him.

When they touched down at Heathrow, she was filled with a sense of deep misery, not helped by the cab’s slow journey through central London.

Eventually, though, it began to meander through streets that were familiar. Names that she remembered shone at her from buildings, and cafes she’d run to on slow weekend mornings came into view.

This was her life. She’d lived here happily. Before the affair. Before Thaddeus. She had lived here, and she had been happy.

She would be again.

 

* * *

 

“You sound awful.”

Thaddeus shook his head ruefully; a smile was too much to muster. He stared out over Paris, his eyes taking in the glistening Eiffel Tower, the magnificent Arc De’Triomphe and the golden glow of the low-rise buildings in the late evening.

“Thank you,” he drawled. The evening was warm and Thaddeus wore only a pair of cotton boxer shorts. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine that Saphire would walk up to him and wrap her arms around his waist; press kisses to his naked skin, as she had done so often on the island.

“Seriously, man. What’s up?” Rocco, from his townhouse in Rome, frowned at the quality of desolation in his friend’s tone. “This isn’t about that woman is it?”

Thad grimaced. “Saphire is her name.”

“Right. Mrs Saphire Arana,” Rocco drawled cynically. “Your married lover.”

His lips formed a grim slash in his face. Of course it was about Saphire. She was all he could think of. “No. I have just had a hell of a day.”

“You might be able to fool most people with that, but I know you better. What is it?”

Thad shook his head.

“What happened with you two after I left, anyway?”

“Thee mou,” he snapped. “What do you think happened? She went back to her husband. As was her plan all along.”

Rocco let out a low whistle. “When?”

“A few days ago.” Was her back still bearing the mark of his initials? Was her heart thinking of him? Was her body craving his touch? Was she in hell, as he was? “When I came to Paris.”

“That was four days ago,” Rocco said slowly. “And?”

“And what?” Thaddeus’s sharp response did not invite further interrogation.

“Listen. You need to forget about her. Go out. Get wasted. Meet someone else. Put Saphire completely from your mind.”

Thad instantly recoiled from the idea. “That isn’t the solution,” he said slowly.

“So? What is?”

An excellent question, to which Thaddeus had no answer.

“Look, Thad. You just buried a man who raised you as his son. Your grandfather was an anchor point in your life and now he’s gone. You are not yourself. That’s the only reason this woman has been able to effect you in this manner.”

“Aristotle is not the reason I … came to care for Saphire. She is.”

“She lied to you. She used you. And she’s in love with someone else. You need to forget about her.”

Thaddeus knew his friend was right. He watched as, in the distance, the clock struck the hour and the tower began to sparkle and shine.

And all it did was make him wish Saphire was there with him, to see it.

How her eyes would have lit up at the spectacle.

But she was not with him. She was back in London; determined to stay married to a man who had never deserved her.