Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 447

Footsteps came up the stairs, soft and careful, and I knew them. I had no desire to see Scarlett, no desire to hear her excuses, so I lay down, pulled the sheet to my chin, and closed my eyes. I heard the door open, heard her stop, heard her sigh. She picked something up off the floor, the dress I had left there, and moved quietly around the room, smoothing the sheet over me, and I kept my breathing slow and even until the door clicked shut again.

When I opened my eyes, I was starving. I had been so overwhelmed at the wedding, so caught up in the wonder of it all, that I had not eaten a single bite, and now my stomach was gnawing at my spine. But I could not go down there, so I took a long shower instead, put on my nightdress, and paced the length of my room, thinking.

I had to do things differently. I understood that now, clear as glass. Sparrow did not love Scarlett. A man like him took women at will, and Scarlett was exactly the kind of woman who would spread her legs for any man if it served her purpose, so what she had given him tonight was cheap.

It was the oldest trick in the book, and any woman could play it. But I was different. I had never been touched by a man, truly touched, and that was a card she could never play. There had been close calls. The woman I had been forced to call mother had turned a blind eye while her son tried to force himself on me, and I had fought him off with my nails and my teeth.

The man I had been forced to call father had tried more than once, and I had learned to sleep with a knife under my pillow. Then Big Bryan had taken me in, and he would look at me sometimes with hunger in his eyes and come so close I could feel his breath, but he always held himself back at the last moment, telling me he had bigger and better plans for me.

But I was young, untouched, and capable. I could be Sparrow's wife in every sense of the word. I could give him sons and daughters, and we could be a happy family, the kind that lasted. All I had to do was make him want me, make him love me, and I knew better than to do it the way Scarlett did, spreading my legs like a whore to buy a man's attention.

That was the oldest currency in the world and the most easily spent. If I gave him what every other woman gave him, I would be just like the rest, forgettable. I had to be something else entirely, something he could not buy. I had to make him fall in love with me, and that took patience.