The Highest Price to Pay (14 page)

“I love you,” she said. Why keep it a secret? Why lie when it was a truth that coursed through her veins, a truth that was in her, a part of her. Just like Blaise was a part of her.

He looked as though she’d struck him. “Stop.”

“No. I can’t. I won’t.”

“It’s the sex, that’s all. You were a virgin when we first made love and you’re confusing lust with love. An easy thing to do, I know.”

“Yes, yes, I was a virgin, thanks for the reminder. I also know that if this were only sex, the rumors of your reputation might have kept me at a distance. If it were only about sex then I would never have asked you about Marie. My heart wouldn’t have bled for you, for the pain she put you through.”

“The pain she put me through? It was a pain we brought on each other. One we both deserved.”

“A pain you think you still deserve?”

He spoke through gritted teeth. “You don’t know what you want. You don’t want me, not for anything more than some fun in bed, trust me on that. I have nothing else for you.”

“I do know what I want, Blaise. And I’m not going to be talked down to, and told that I don’t. You can blame yourself for that. You’re the one who helped me find my strength, who helped me see that I was taking half when I deserved whole just like everyone else. And now, you’re the one that’s confused. You’re the one that’s afraid. It’s so much easier for you to hold on to all of the stuff from the past because then you don’t have to try, you don’t have to take a risk. You don’t have to put yourself out there again and take a chance on being wrong.”

Blaise tightened his jaw, his eyes flat, void of emotion. A trick. One she’d seen him use before when she got too close, when he was feeling intensely.

“Are you really going to define your entire life by one mistake?” she asked.

When he spoke, his voice was low and hard. He didn’t yell; he didn’t need to. “That one mistake showed who I truly was. I thought I was such a great man, I had everything. A family that I was forging a new bond with. Position, power, wealth and honor. But none of it could stand up to my weakness,” he said, his voice strained. “All the good I have done means nothing if I fail when it matters most.”

Anger rose in her, along with desperation. Desperation to make him see himself. Really see himself, like she did. “Is that what bothers you most, Blaise Chevalier? The discovery that you’re a man and not a god? That you’re human, like everyone else? Well, I’m glad that you are. Because I needed a man to show me what I was missing. I needed a man to make me feel beautiful. I didn’t need perfection. I needed someone who could understand
me.
” She put her palm flat against her chest. “And you did. You were there for me. You’ve made me see. You’ve made me see everything I deserve. Everything I spent the past eleven years denying myself out of fear. I’m not afraid now. And it’s because of you.”

“You’re wrong, Ella,” he said, his voice hard, unsteady. “Because you seem to think if you keep digging you’ll find some hidden depth to me, but the truth is, this is it. I have nothing more for you. I have nothing more for anyone.”

Images flashed through Ella’s mind. The yacht. The rose. The night she’d taken him into her mouth and he’d trembled with ecstasy.

“You’re wrong,” she said. “You’re afraid, and also wrong. There is so much to you, Blaise Chevalier. You’re selling yourself short, you’re selling both of us short.”

“And you’ve bought into a fantasy, Ella Stanton. But a fantasy is just that. Fantasy. Nothing.” A muscle in his jaw ticked and for a moment she saw a flash of blinding pain in his golden eyes, pain that ripped into her, echoed through her body. “There is no reason for you to see me again.”

He turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him with a slam that was painful in its finality.

Ella set the papers down on the table, the words across the top blurring as her eyes filled with tears. She gripped the edge of the table, so hard that it bit into her palms, and felt her heart splinter, shatter, the pieces falling and blowing away. Out the door with Blaise.

He had her heart forever, and she knew she would never get it back.

B
LAISE
gazed out the window of his penthouse, out at the view. The view he normally ignored. If he closed his eyes, he saw Ella, the bright lights of the city behind her, the silhouette of her curves much more enticing than any feat of man-made architecture.

He slammed his tumbler down onto the bar, whiskey sloshing over the side. When Marie had left, he’d gotten drunk. He’d called the last woman he’d dated and he’d lost himself in her body, using her to forget.

The thought of doing the same now made his stomach curdle, made him feel on the verge of physical sickness. He didn’t want to forget Ella, he didn’t want to touch another woman. He wanted to keep her essence on his skin, keep the feelings that he had for her at the surface. Even if all he had left was pain, he wanted to hold on to it.

Because there were feelings. Last night she’d torn down every defense he had, left him open and raw and bleeding.

He’d looked at her and seen everything she was. All of her heart and bravery. And he’d looked within himself and seen nothing. He wasn’t afraid of heartbreak. He was experiencing it now in a way he’d never fathomed. As though a hole had been punched through his chest, leaving a bloody chasm where his heart had been.

He wanted to crumble from the pain. Even as the thought passed his mind, he found himself going to his knees, still staring out the window. He had thought he’d known love, and he’d been wrong, he’d realized that years ago.

What he hadn’t realized was that love was very real, and that the power it possessed was much more than he could have ever fathomed.

You’re wrong. And you’re scared.

Damn right.

But the fear of a broken heart was nothing compared to the fear of Ella one day realizing she deserved more than him. To look in her eyes and see the disillusionment and pain he’d seen in his brother’s eyes the day he’d found out about his betrayal.

To see the fire in Ella’s eyes dim. To see the love there turn to hate, that was what he couldn’t face.

He had always counted on his control to shield him from pain, to keep a buffer between himself and others. Playing the bastard was fine, because it meant no one looked inside him. He was afraid that if they did, the truth would be that he was nothing more than a bastard. Hadn’t he proven it with Marie? Hadn’t he proven it by betraying the brother who had welcomed him in France with open arms?

Ella made him want to try to be more. He didn’t know if his best could ever be good enough.

He stood, pressed his palm flat against the cold glass. It would have to be good enough. Because he could not live without her.

“Ella.”

Two weeks without Blaise and now she was hallucinating.

She’d dreamed his voice so many times that she was hearing it while she was awake now. She was in a hurry to get out of the gray, Parisian weather, and she really wasn’t in the mood to experience more time in her own personal hell.

Life without Blaise. A reality she had accepted, but a reality that hurt like an open, never-healing wound every day. She rested her head against the door of her studio, hand frozen on the key that she had jammed into the lock.

The touch on her neck was soft, familiar, as her hair was brushed back. It made her ache. The soft brush of lips on the scarred side of her neck. And she knew if she angled so he could reach the other side he would kiss her twice there.

She turned her head and saw him standing there in the rain, shirt collar open, no tie. He looked like a mess. Cheekbones too prominent, deep shadows beneath his eyes, black stubble on his face. And she’d never seen a more wonderful sight in her life. Or a more painful one.

“Why are you here?” she whispered, her voice thick with tears. “You said I wouldn’t have to see you again.”

He looked down, as though he couldn’t meet her eyes. A first. “If you do not wish to see me, I will go.”

“Why are you here?” she asked. Because she did wish to see him, no matter how cruel the pain, she wanted to see him for as long as she could, to drink in the sight of him, to feel the warmth of his caress. To just be with him.

“Ella,” he said again, his voice gruff.

Her first instinct was to throw her arms around him and kiss him like she was love-starved. But she couldn’t. Not until she knew why he was here.

If only she were love-starved, it might be better. Instead she was filled with it. It colored everything she did, everything she saw. She would put on a dress and actually feel beautiful, and think of him, think of all that he had done to build that confidence within her. She would hear a joke and want to tell Blaise, would taste a new flavor of ice cream and want to share it with him. Alone in her bed at night, her body ached, and there was no relief. Because there was no Blaise.

Because he wasn’t with her. Because he didn’t love her.

“I could not stay away,” he said, his voice rough. “Every night, sleep evades me. Every day my body aches, and I cannot eat. You…you are vital to me, and I did not realize it until I chased you away.”

He took her hand in his, traced the scarring on the back of it with his thumb. “You were right about me, Ella. I was afraid. I am afraid. I said I was never nervous, but I am, shaking to my core, terrified that I have destroyed this thing between us. I have been a fool.”

Rain was still falling, water spots darkening his white dress shirt. He didn’t seem to care. Neither did she. The streets could flood and she wouldn’t be tempted to move. Nothing could entice her away from Blaise, now or ever.

“You told me,” he said, his thumb still moving over her scar-roughened skin, “that I was perfect once. That my body was perfect, and all that time, you saw yourself as damaged when you were more whole than I could have hoped to be.”

She bit her lip and shook her head. “That’s where you’re wrong. I wasn’t whole, I was fragmented, scared. That’s how I recognized that fear in you, because I lived with it for so long. You helped me overcome it. You helped me realize that I was just sitting back waiting to live life when…I had nothing to wait for. You woke me up.”

He kissed her then and her heart expanded. He wasn’t here for work. He wasn’t even here to tell her about his family. He was here for her. She kissed him back, slick lips sliding together in the pouring rain. Her skin was cold, but Blaise’s hands warmed her, his lips on her neck lit a trail of fire that burned through her.

But this fire was different. It cleansed where it touched, burned away all of the debris that life had left both of them, so that there was nothing but Blaise and Ella.

“You’ve changed me,” he said when they parted.

He traced the marks on her neck, reverently, his eyes never leaving hers. “I was afraid that if you ever saw past the walls I had put up, you would see nothing but a barren wasteland. I was afraid I could give you nothing.”

“You’ve given me everything,” she whispered. “You might not see it, Blaise, but you have. I was locked in myself, my body was my prison. And you set me free. When I look in you I see the world. Everything I’ve ever wanted or could ever want.”

“I stand before you with no walls,” he said, brushing his thumb over her lips, “I am not perfect, but I am a man who loves you very much, and I will do everything in my power to be all you deserve.”

Everything in her expanded, filled, all of the love she had for him growing, rushing through her veins. “I didn’t think you believed in love,” she said, a smile on her face she could not hold back.

He pressed his forehead against hers, a smile curving his lips. “It was so much easier to believe that. Because as long as I believed everything had been a lie, I could pretend that I would never falter in that way again.”

He took her hands in his, brought them to his lips. “I was wrong, again. Love is very real, Ella Stanton, and I know it because I love you with every fiber of my being. It’s more than simple passion, more than lust. It is nothing I’ve ever known before. It’s in every part of me. You are in me. The best parts of me. It isn’t a facade for lust or selfishness, how can it be? If it were only my body that needed you, my heart wouldn’t hurt every time it beat without you. If it were selfishness, you wouldn’t have given me so much.”

Tears were sliding down Ella’s cheeks, mixing with the rain. And she didn’t care. She didn’t bother to wipe them away.

“I love you, too. I didn’t even need you to do anything, to change. I just love you. All that you are, all that you’ve been, everything you will be.”

Blaise’s heart beat fast in his chest, without pain for the first time in two weeks, as Ella said the words that he had thrown aside that day at her studio. Words he’d been sure he would never hear from her lips again. Words he knew he’d done nothing to earn or deserve.

“I did need to change, Ella. You have changed me. You talked of being locked inside of yourself, and I had done that same thing, hiding behind my defenses. Defenses you wouldn’t allow me to keep. You demand so much of me.”

She nodded her head, blond curls swinging, flicking rainwater. “Because I needed all of you.”

“You have all of me. I swear it. I will never hide from you again. And you will have my love, my body, my heart, for the rest of my days.”

“How do you know that?” she asked, the tears clouding her brilliant blue eyes.

“Because being without you, losing you, was the lowest point of my life. There is nothing that comes close to rivaling it.”

“Same goes for me,” she said. “Never put either of us through that again.”

“I won’t.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small velvet box. It was the ring he’d bought the night after he’d gone to his knees in his penthouse. Because he’d known that he had to have her back, that he had to do this. That he would lay down every shred of pride left and get on his knees before her if he had to, to try to convince her to take him back. To try to convince her to be with him forever.

Pride was nothing in the face of losing Ella. There was no room for it, not if it stood in the way of this.

“Be with me,” he said, lowering himself to his knee. “Always. Be my wife.”

She knelt down in front of him, the knees of her designer jeans on the wet sidewalk. She put her hand on his cheek, her eyes never leaving his. “Always.”

He opened the box and delighted in the look on her face. “It’s pink,” she said, pulling the round cut, platinum-set bubblegum-pink diamond ring from its box.

“It’s you.” He slid it onto her finger, over the roughened patches that had been touched by fire. A hand uniquely Ella’s and completely perfect in his eyes.

“It is,” she said. “You know me so well.”

“And you know me, and seem to love me anyway.”

She leaned into him, her hands bracketing his face. “I love you because I know you.”

He kissed her. He would never have enough of her lips. He would never have enough of her. He slid his hands beneath her shirt, felt the landscape of her skin. Felt the story of who she was with his fingertips.

“You are absolutely perfect, Ella Chevalier. In every way.”