Idle Hands
by Lionel

chapter 9

“I hate you.”

She couldn't say it enough. She was calmer now -- less hysterical, equally distraught -- but still they were the truest words she knew. With his weight on top of her keeping her prone and paralyzed, her sense of suffocation was more acute than ever, and she had her eyes closed, concentrating on controlling each difficult inhalation. She’d given up fighting him – it was no use, it was never any use in the end – and all that was left was to hate him, to hate his power over her and his appetite for using it to crush her. She wasn’t going to hold it in any more.

“I hate you,” she swore again.

Though her voice was ragged and weak, there was force behind the words, and Lorenzo knew they came from the soul. He set his jaw firmly.

“So be it.”

A minute or two had gone by since she’d abandoned her attempts to maim him, but he still maintained his superior position on the hotel bed, with his body full on top of hers and her hands pinned above her head. Originally he’d been defending himself by forcing her into this position, but at this point he was savoring her defeat, rubbing it in, and maybe enjoying it a bit – okay, more than a bit – in a way that he knew didn't speak well of him.

“Please… I can't breathe."

Lorenzo felt a flash of guilt, felt a little foolish. “Sorry,” he muttered, then bit his tongue a moment too late when her lip curled sneeringly at his apology. He was going to have a six-carat scar across his cheek and she was sneering at him? He shifted some of his weight off her chest, but yielded none of his position. She was as powerless as before, but at least she could breathe. “Better?”

“Go to hell,” she grimaced.

Lorenzo smiled softly, cruelly. "Anywhere with you, my darling."

He wasn't certain what he was doing, why he kept her there; he only knew that he liked having her beneath him, and he couldn't very well let her go anyway, not with any dignity. He would hate the moment she moved away; he would feel like a playground bully taken to task, standing there big and clumsy and empty-handed. And he really, really liked having her beneath him. He liked the way she looked on her back, suggestively uncomposed, between the messy way her hair fell against the bed and the subtle changes gravity made to her face at this angle, and he liked the frictionless tension of his own rumpled formalwear against her silk satin-sheathed body, cold as it was.

"Just relax,” he growled, stroking her the wrong way just for the pleasure of feeling her bristle. "That's a good girl."

Her body tensed obligingly as another bit of fight flared and burned out, and a desperate, emotional sob erupted from her chest. "Please, Lorenzo. Let me go."

She sounded miserable, utterly defeated, and she looked miserable, too. Miserable, desperate, helpless. Beautiful. He crushed his lips against hers.

"Never."

She’d been lost in her emotional tantrum, but his response, dark and intense, sobered her up quickly. Her eyes cleared, drawing him into focus, her surprise tempered by caution and a sudden awareness of the situation around her. Her eyes flickered up, briefly, to where he had her hands firmly restrained, and a hint of panic appeared on her face. Or was it excitement? His blue eyes had gone dark, dark as clouds at dusk, and his sexual appreciation for the situation was obvious.

She licked her lips rapidly. “Lorenzo…” she rasped.

He tightened his hold on her wrists, and from the little whimper in her throat Lorenzo knew it lit her fire, too. Her body wasn’t limp beneath him anymore. She was practically vibrating. Sex wasn’t always about domination, but there was no arguing the neural shortcut between the two.

“Yes?” he asked roughly.

She didn't answer, but she wriggled beneath him, her hips straining to make more satisfying contact. Her whole body strained toward his. The message was unmistakable. Take me.

He'd thought about things like this before, at those times when she was being most infuriating and unattainable and when for all of his power over her he felt powerless to attain what he wished he didn't want. He didn't know she'd thought about it, too, in her unrestrained unconscious, dreaming of succumbing to his will, her only point of access to what she wanted and couldn't willingly choose.

His eyes scanned her face, flushed and cold at once, her too-pale skin stained pink-red at the cheeks where blood and heat drew to the surface. Her lips were sealed defensively, the lone, defiant holdout to the impatient invitation the rest of her body extended. Keeping firm hold of her wrists with one hand, he lowered his other hand to her cheek and pushed back a tear-dampened strand of hair. She trembled at the contact, but he wasn't noble enough to ask if she was sure. He didn't want to risk the answer.

He touched his fingers to her mouth and traced the curves of her lips slowly and repeatedly until they relaxed beneath his touch, and then he tugged ever so slightly on her lower lip. Her lips parted obediently, and he moved in quickly with a kiss. She tried to shake him off but he insisted, stroking every inch of her mouth as conquered territory until her resistance dissolved and the staunchly defended boundary between them gave way.

With her distracted by his insistent occupation, Lorenzo’s hand snaked down over her hip, certain of its path, heading straight for the shortcut to her skin offered by the high slit in the side of her dress. It had taunted him all through the opera with hints of the lace edge of her stockings, and he’d be damned if he was going to wait any more. He was in control now, as he should be. She jumped as his hand settled in, an entitled and outrageous marauder, warm and demanding against her deeply chilled flesh. Her attention shifted entirely to the assault on her faltering southern front, and he relinquished her mouth.

“You’re freezing,” he whispered, rubbing heat into her thigh with his hand.

Her eyes were shut tight, and she shook her head slightly. “No, I’m burning.”

She was panting, taking short little breaths with long seconds in between, long stretches of time when everything was still except his hand on her thigh and every sense was concentrated on its slow motion seduction. He rubbed slowly, rhythmically, launching warm waves that carried farther and farther until they washed over her tingling groin and she felt every move of his hand through her belly and low in her back.

"Let me go." Her cadence was rote, tentative, deeply distracted, and Lorenzo knew there was no will behind the words. They were a token, intended to be refused, and he ignored them.

Still pressing her taut, delicate wrists flat against the mattress, he hitched her leg up a bit, over his hip, and her dress fell away, giving him more flesh to work with. He slid over, forcing his thigh in between her legs, and a little whimper slipped from her lips when he applied pressure. She squirmed beneath him, her eyes squeezed closed. It was killing him to move slowly when what he really wanted was to lay claim to his wife's body once and for all with a single shattering stroke, crumbling the wall between them into so many pieces she could never hide behind it again, but it was killing her, too, so he did it.

He said something, but she didn't hear it. Her sense of hearing had receded now altogether in favor of a heightened sense of touch, tuning every nerve ending in her skin to him. He kissed her again and nibbled on her lip to draw her attention. The light pain pierced through the fog, shooting down her over-sensitized spine, and she opened her eyes, drawing him into focus, questioning him.

"You okay?" he repeated.

She didn't answer, but he saw it, a small flinch at the question, as if she wished he hadn't asked. She closed her eyes again, pretending he hadn't, and though he sensed somehow he had ruined the moment, he played on, too. He pushed her hands higher above her head, stretching her farther, admiring the arch of her body and the vulnerable way her breasts were pushed up into the air, undefended. He nibbled his way down her throat, sucking lightly at the hollow at the base, and discovered it was a magical place that made her raise her hips and try to grind against his thigh. Pleased with his discovery, he went back to work, licking more intently, drawing her out.

And then there was pain. Starting with indirect blunt force to his groin and exploding fast straight up his rapidly curling spine. Stars. A strangled grunt. His shoulders hunched over, brain and body closing in defensively, anticipatorily, and he rolled off of her onto his side. "Shit!" Curled in on himself like an armadillo, he waited to throw up, but the urge dissipated. Once he'd sorted out pain from the expectation of pain and caught his breath, he focused around him again. There was Alexis, sitting up at the edge of the bed now, looking scared and a little sorry.

"What the hell was that for?" he growled when he could finally speak. Thank god she hadn't been able to get any leverage. He'd been racked much, much worse in his life, just never at such an inopportune moment.

"I told you to let me go," she grumbled. She set her jaw stubbornly and rose from the bed, all offense and righteous dignity, rubbing her wrists very deliberately.

"You didn't mean it."

"Obviously I did." She straightened her dress with one good indignant yank, turned her back on him and crossed the room to the dresser, where a bottle of champagne sat in an ice bucket beside an enormous vase of flowers and a plate of chocolate-covered strawberries. The flower arrangement was almost obscene in its abundance, a thick, overflowing, fragrant mess of nature's most extravagantly sensual displays: gracefully splayed white dendrobium orchids and delicate cattleya, arching snapdragon and perfect pink roses, frilly lavender lisianthus and fleshy blue hydrangea. The whole thing had been arranged by her forward-thinking husband a seeming lifetime ago, when he was obligingly trying to navigate her hoops.

"Dammit, Alexis – " Lorenzo stopped himself short, glaring at her.

"Dammit, Alexis, what?" she snapped, yanking the champagne bottle out of its bucket and slamming it down on the dresser. "Dammit, Alexis, be a good girl? Dammit, Alexis, get over it? Dammit, Alexis, just forget about the whole forced-marriage-threatening-your-kid thing, lean back and enjoy?"

She stalked back to the bed, shoving the ice bucket in his face, and rather than risk a lapful of ice, Lorenzo accepted the rough offering. His eyebrows flexed derisively as he looked from it to his trousers and back up at her.

"Dammit, Alexis, what the hell am I supposed to do with this? Stick my dick in it?"

She didn’t want to laugh. She didn’t mean to laugh. He was a stubborn, domineering, egotistical asshole and she wanted to rip out every hair on his chest with her bare hands, but then she pictured him with his dick in a bucket of ice and she couldn’t help it. She laughed. The question was belligerent and crude and ridiculous all at once, triggering half a dozen tragicomic images involving Lorenzo’s dick. He couldn't be the devil incarnate with his dick in a bucket of ice. His precious dick, which he so loved to dangle in front of her in that utterly smug, cocksure way of his. Little Lo.

As she stood there with the back of her hand pressed to her mouth, vainly struggling to contain her giggling, Lorenzo stared at her as if she'd gone officially, clinically, full-blown crazy before his eyes. But then finally he saw it, too. It was ridiculous, all of it. Blackmail, sex, forced marriage, the endless contrapositional games. She might be a lunatic, but he was right there with her. God knew he had to be nuts to have ended up here.

He laughed at last, a little snorting half-laugh of agreement that obliterated her tattered and tenuous self-control. Her laughter erupted, bubbling over beyond polite bounds. She tried to get serious again, to remember how angry she was at him, but once she started laughing she couldn’t stop. She thought about his dick, and she giggled like a maniac. She thought about every rotten thing he had done to her, and she sank onto the edge of the bed, helpless with laughter. Funny and awful became one and the same, and she was laughing because it was better than crying, but she was crying, too, with streams of tears pouring down her cheeks. Lorenzo sat beside her on the bed, rubbing her back to calm her, but laughing along with her, too, as months of tension poured out in a messy cathartic puddle.

She laughed until she couldn’t cry anymore, and then, exhausted, she leaned her head on his shoulder, letting his two hundred dollar tux shirt soak up her mascara and tears. He kissed the top of her head as they both sobered up.

"Dammit, Alexis, why does this have to be so hard?" he asked gently, rubbing his chin against her hair. "I just want to be your husband."

She shrugged. “You are my husband. You have made it so.”

“You know what I mean."

A little involuntary laugh bubbled up and died in her throat. “Oh, you mean sex.”

Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed and his mouth set in a frown. “Among other things.”

The traces of her weak smile faded, and for a moment she was silent as she rested against him, contemplating the immense abstract appeal of the idea of sex, heightened at the moment by the surrounding pleasures of Lorenzo’s warm masculine solidity. The arm that had soothed her through her fit of laughter had slipped low around her waist, holding her close, and his other hand curled around the nape of her neck, anchoring her head against his shoulder. The evening’s emotional exertions left her soft, too tired to pull away when he felt so good, too weary to don her protective cloak. She breathed in, breathing him in, and heaved a slow, wistful sigh.

“Sex is nice.”

Lorenzo bowed his head, his entire being confirming his assent. “Yes, it is.”

She bit her lower lip. “But you and me…it’s not that simple.”

“No," Lorenzo conceded, burying his smile in her hair. “But does it have to be this painful?”

She cast an appropriately pitying glance downward. "Poor baby.”

"It's okay. I'll recover." He settled her head back against his shoulder and brushed a kiss to her forehead. “I’m recovering as we speak.”

“You should have listened to me when I told you to let me go,” she scolded.

“I was a little preoccupied by the other things you were saying. You're the queen of the mixed messages, Alexis. 'Come here, sailor, so I can kick you in the nuts.'"

The complaint was delivered with a teasing smile, and Alexis giggled bashfully. She turned her head down, hiding her face against Lorenzo’s chest. He smelled good, comfortable, a mix of starched cotton and tangy sweat and cool breeze or whatever it was that he put on his face and neck after he shaved.

“I’m a little confused," she confessed.

“No…” he teased, feigning disbelief. His fingertips moved lightly through the hair at the nape of her neck, and he bent his head down, finding her temple with his lips.

“Yeah. Believe it or not." They both chuckled softly. "You see, I hate you…”

“You seemed pretty clear on that.”

“…but I also have some other feelings that I’m not entirely comfortable with.”

“Such as?” His thumb pressed lightly beneath her jaw, nudging her chin up so he could see her eyes.

“Such as … attraction.” Her eyes flickered away.

Lorenzo’s head cocked a fraction of an inch. “Attraction?”

"Attraction." Having settled on a word, she clung to it, repeating it with greater certainty. Wearing it like a cloak, taking cover, she was able to brave his gaze again.

"Anything else?"

“Nothing I could put a name to.”

Lorenzo didn’t realize he was holding his breath until he found himself releasing it in a long exhalation. “Okay. Attraction is good. I’m … attracted to you.”

Alexis swallowed nervously. "And I thought it was okay that I was attracted to you. I thought we could maybe do this, you know, have our cake and eat it, too, with a fork in one hand and a very sharp knife in the other. But I can’t seem to do it. I can’t ignore the knife. I can't get past the fact that you hate me."

Lorenzo frowned. "I don't hate you."

"Of course, you do. And it's always there, just beneath the surface, ready to erupt whenever I do something you don't like."

“I don’t hate you, Alexis,” Lorenzo insisted. “Why won’t you believe that I want to leave the past in the past?”

“‘You’ll see me miserable to the grave?’” she quoted pointedly.

Lorenzo closed his eyes and sighed at having his words tossed back at him, words thrown out in the heat of anger. “I don’t want you to be miserable.”

“But you’re determined not to let me go, aren’t you?”

Lorenzo nodded slowly. “Not because I hate you.”

He said it very carefully, as if some precarious truth hid in the words, and Alexis felt the room around her freeze and then fade as all the nerves in her body jangled to life. He was looking at her in a way she’d never seen before – was it the utter absence of smirk or scowl or sneer that was so strange? -- and what had been a comforting closeness felt too close all at once. His left hand was too low on her hip, almost on her ass, really, and the gentleness of his big right hand curled around her neck, thumb at her throat, forefinger at her spine, strong enough to break her, was too intimate. His mouth was maybe two inches from hers, and the serious way he was looking at her made it difficult to breathe, or smile, or think. His thumb stroked her throat, soft and encouraging.

“I don’t hate you, Alexis,” he insisted, his voice a seductive growl.

The exposed skin on her back and her arms felt newly cool, as if she were perspiring to counteract her rising body temperature, and she wasn’t certain how much was lust and how much was sheer terror. There were only two choices, as she saw it. Kiss him hard and get things started, or get the hell away. Because this was unbearable.

She stood up abruptly and took a step back from the bed, swallowing hard.

“What’s wrong?” Lorenzo asked, unable to keep the frustration out of his roughened voice. He stood up, too, right in front of her, looming dark and determined.

“I can’t do this.”

“What?”

“You.”

Alexis instinctively took another step back, reaching blindly behind her for guidance, but Lorenzo moved with her, his eyes never leaving hers.

“Sure you can.”

“No, I can’t.”

For each step she retreated, Lorenzo seemed to get closer, his hands reaching for her hips.

“Yes…yes, you can, Alexis.”

She hit the wall and had nowhere else to go. Lorenzo moved right up against her, so close his thighs and hips and chest met hers, and she felt him everywhere. With the cool wall hard at her back, and warm Lorenzo everywhere else, she couldn’t move an inch. She could only stand there as he slowly bent his head down, holding her petrified gaze as long as possible. His hot dry lips brushed across her cheek and then burrowed suddenly, unexpectedly, in the tender crevice behind her ear. She drew in her breath, moaning unwillingly, and her whole body arched back to meet him.

“Oh, I wish you weren’t such a bastard,” she groaned. “I really do.”

He growled low against her ear, and the vibrations rippled down through her. “I wish you weren’t so beautiful. But you are and I am. So what do we do?”

A part of her thrilled at his wish, his admission that his desire was beyond his control. There was something intoxicating about it, something wicked and powerful that made her want to rub her body against his and tease him into madness, but the rest of her was terrified. Her defenses were shot, her judgment impaired, and what he was doing was just unfair. His breath was hot against her skin, venom holding her still while his fingers were slowly, surreptitiously, slipping the strap of her dress off her left shoulder. She cleared her throat unsteadily and dug her fingers into the weave of his shirt at his stomach.

“I vote you change,” she grumbled.

“You can’t change people, Alexis, only your reaction to them. I’m always going to be a bastard. And I’m always going to be your husband. There’s only one thing you can change, and that’s how much fun we’re going to have along the way.”

She felt the tip of his tongue wet and hard against her skin, unfairly, unbelievably, as his mouth moved down her throat and along the curve of her collarbone, and she moaned needily without meaning to. He was probably fantastic in bed, damn him. That mouth? She’d die to feel it hot and soft between her legs.

“God, I hate you.”

“For this?” He leaned his hip into her just so, and her lower body melted. She was glad for his hands at her waist steadying her or she’d have ended up in an ungraceful heap on the floor.

“No…”

"Forget about the rest, Alexis. Forget about everything but what is right here, right now.” He brought his mouth to her neck again, dragging his lips slowly across her skin. “It’s just you and me,” he growled against her throat. “A man and a woman, and we’re alone, hell, we’re married. There’s no one else who’s going to be hurt by this. We're just going to do what comes naturally.” As his mouth laid a hot, wet trail up her throat, he rocked his hips against hers, and her stifled groan made her throat vibrate.

Her body was all on board, full steam ahead, but her mind wouldn’t rest. There were too many images in her head, too many memories, bad memories, harsh memories of the things he’d done. The rest of it wouldn’t go away, even if he was being very, very nice to her at the moment. He was about to lay claim to her mouth, on the verge of losing all control himself, when she put her palms flat against his shoulders and pushed him away.

“I can’t do this,” she insisted, though her voice was shaky. She licked her lips, frustrated by the way her voice betrayed her. “You don’t even like me, Lorenzo.”

“You know that’s not true,” Lorenzo objected, his shoulders rising and falling in a heavy sigh. “I wish it were, but it’s not. I think you're beautiful and sexy and pretty damn amazing when you want to be, and I want you. I want to make love to you.”

Alexis brushed away a tear with an angry swipe at her cheek. “Obviously you feel capable of separating out your feelings. Apparently you can hate me for who I am and what I did, while on the other hand wanting to make love to me. That makes no sense to me. I can’t accept tenderness from a man who treats me the way you do the rest of the time.”

“Maybe it makes no sense, but you understand, Alexis. You feel it, too. You want me to touch you. You want me to make you feel good. And that’s what I’m going to do.”

With his blue gaze seemingly holding her steady, Lorenzo moved close again, put his hands on her cheeks, and leaning down, touched his lips to hers, soft and gentle and slow. Alexis let him kiss her, let the tremors shoot through her nervous system, but she didn’t kiss him back, and when he pulled back from the kiss, her eyes fluttered down.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she whispered fiercely.

“I’ll show you. Just tell me you want to.”

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

Lorenzo’s fingertips curled against her cheeks as he contained a sigh of frustration. He rested his forehead against hers, filling her frame of vision in some hope of shutting out everything rushing through her head, everything but him, now.

“I know you want this, Alexis. Maybe it’s your deep, dark secret, your great shame. But you want me to be your husband in every way god intended. And you want to be my wife. You like being my wife.”

Alexis’s eyes closed. "I hate myself for that."

“I know. But I’m not going to hurt you. It’s going to be okay.”

She shrugged. “I don’t believe you.”

“What do I have to do?”

“Let me go. Set me free.”

“I can’t do that.”

“And I can’t do this.”

She pushed him hard away with an anguished whimper, and Lorenzo fell back onto his heels. He ran a frustrated hand roughly through his hair.

“Alexis…” he protested.

“What do you expect from me?” she exclaimed. “Do you understand how angry I am? I am so angry at you, Lorenzo. You have tortured me for three months, taken away all my choices, taken away my life. You expect me to forget that?”

“No, but – ”

“And you still have me pinned! You won’t let me up. You like it that way. You like having power over me. You like controlling me.”

Lorenzo shrugged helplessly, confused by the charge. Of course he liked it. How did you counter a truism like that? “Am I supposed to feel bad about that?” he asked.

“Yes! Am I supposed to enjoy being told what to do?”

“No. Fight me all you like. I like it when you fight me.”

“I don’t want to fight anymore, Lorenzo,” Alexis realized as she said it, her outrage dissipating in a long, weary sigh. Once upon a time, she might have responded to a challenge like that, but now the thought of the battle exhausted her. “I want to be loved.”

As soon as the words were out, Alexis wished she could pull them back in. She hadn’t meant to go there, or anywhere near there – it was only the late hour and trying day that made her speak her uncensored heart – and she prayed Lorenzo would slide by it. But instead, after a brief flicker, his gaze firmed, and he nodded slowly. “I can do that, too.”

Alexis thought she was going to break from the strain of so many contradictory emotions, so much confusing information she couldn't begin to sort. She knew he was lying, he had to be lying, he was just trying to get her into bed, and tomorrow it would count as a victory for him, leverage he could use in their ongoing battle. It was their game, it was what they did. Nothing straightforward, no avowal without an angle, no engagement without a point value at stake. She was too tired to keep up, but the game was always being played.

“No, you can’t,” she muttered dismissively, pushing by Lorenzo and walking across the room. Lorenzo watched her go in frustration.

“Alexis!”

“I can’t do this, Lorenzo. Not now.”

She grabbed her nightgown out of her dresser, closing the drawer roughly, and escaped into the bathroom, but when she tried to close the door behind her Lorenzo was there, blocking the way. She tried harder, and the door hit him in the forehead.

“Damn!”

Lorenzo fell back a step, palm pressed to his head, and Alexis tried not to laugh. She guided him toward the bed, where he sank down wearily on the edge of the mattress. “Here,” she said, offering him the bucket of ice. “You’ve had a rough night.”

Lorenzo took a piece of ice and, resting a weary elbow on his knee, rubbed it across the back of his neck. As Alexis turned to go back to the bathroom, he stopped her with a hand on her arm and an unexpected question.

“Why do you get such a kick out of hurting me?”

"Me?" she choked out, her eyebrows arching high in surprise. Was he so utterly lacking in self-awareness? He was the one hurting her. Anything she did was in self-defense, just desserts. "I don't," she said defensively, straightening her spine. "You're the one…"

"I'm the one who what? What did I do tonight?"

"Tonight? Nothing."

"Yesterday? The day before? This week?"

His half-hidden grin teased a smile out of her, but she rolled her eyes at him. "You're being deliberately obtuse."

“I enjoy pissing you off. I don’t enjoy hurting you. Anymore.”

"Is that 'anymore' supposed to make everything else okay?"

Lorenzo shrugged. "It’s just a fact. We were having a nice time tonight. You were enjoying yourself. And then you blindsided me with the thing about the opera, and I swear you enjoyed doing it to me. And I know you enjoyed your little Bobbitt moment earlier. You like hurting me."

Alexis frowned at the accusation. “Can you blame me?”

Lorenzo considered the question for a moment. “I can wish it were different. You don’t have to keep track of who done who more wrong, Alexis. You could just decide to start fresh from here.”

His words sounded so reasonable, plausible if you forgot everything else, and Alexis’s brain felt heavy and sluggish, her analytical reasoning ability fast decaying. It was late, too late for these conversations, too late to follow the twists and turns lurking in every discussion of their bizarre marriage.

“Here is not neutral territory, Lorenzo. It’s not a level playing field.”

“Here is here. You’re making this too complicated. It’s simple. I want you to be my wife, Alexis, really my wife. I want to be the husband you need me to be.”

Alexis scowled. "You want it on your terms. And those terms aren't acceptable to me."

"We negotiated new terms. You dictated, I agreed."

"It's not enough. Not for this."

"Then tell me what else, Alexis. If I need to wear pink every Tuesday and carry your purse on my left shoulder and place one perfect blue sapphire on your pillow every morning, tell me, and that's what I'll do.

Alexis lifted an eyebrow. "Jesus, you'll do anything to get laid."

Lorenzo reached for her hand, pulling her to a seat on the bed next to him. "I will do almost anything to get past this ridiculous, torturous impasse. Tell me what you want.”

“I want to go to sleep.” She tried to pull away.

“Come on,” he coaxed. “Tell me.”

Alexis bit her lip. “Okay, I like the sapphire idea. But don’t ever wear pink, and I can carry my own damn purse.”

Lorenzo smiled. “Okay. What else?”

“I want my car back.”

“Consider it done.”

“I want you to get over this reflexive habit you have of telling me what to do. Enter the modern age where a husband and wife are on equal footing.”

“I’m there. Anything else?”

Alexis stared at the floor for a long while. What did she need? What would make it okay, make her forget every lousy thing he ever did? Nothing really could, but maybe he was right and they could start anew.

"I want a choice, Lorenzo. I want you to let me go."

She looked up, meeting his gaze again, but this time he was the one to look away. "I can't do that. Not yet."

"When?"

Lorenzo sighed. "When I think there's a chance in hell you're going to stay."

Alexis’s first instinct was defensive – of course there’s a chance I’ll stay! – and when she realized it, she froze. When had things changed so much? In the early weeks of their marriage she had dreamed often about what she would do if she ever got the upper hand over him, how quickly she would have them up and out of there. She showed up at Lorenzo’s compound the day of the wedding with two suitcases, her briefcase, her purse, and Kristina. Enough clothes for a week or two, toiletries and nothing more. As if she weren’t planning to stay. She left behind furniture and books and photo albums and summer clothes. She left her life behind in the apartment, ready to step back in the day she found a way out of this mess. But some time around day fourteen Lorenzo got tired of her transient living and sent for everything left behind in her apartment. She still didn’t unpack, but piece by piece, one thing at a time, as needed, the boxes ended up empty and her things ended up scattered throughout his house. Their house. The lease on her apartment had expired last month, and she hadn’t renewed.

Her breathing slowed to a crawl as the question unfolded in her mind: what would she do if he set her free? She hadn’t thought about it, not lately. Would she get on the first plane back to Port Charles, pack up all her things and Kristina and leave? Where would they go? Would she ever see him again? Would she … miss him?

Alexis stood up, took two halting steps across the room, half-turned back, and crossed her arms across her chest. “There is a chance I'll stay," she said seriously.

Lorenzo looked briefly surprised, but then he rubbed a weary palm against his temple. “How big a chance?”

“I don’t know. A chance.”

Alexis walked into the bathroom again and turned on the water in the sink. Lorenzo followed and stood in the doorway watching her. After a long minute, he finally spoke.

“If I tell you you’re free, will you believe me?”

“Maybe.”

Lorenzo sighed. “You’re free, Alexis. You can leave. Go home, divorce my ass, if that’s what you want to do. I won’t tell Sonny. But I really want you to stay.”

At one in the morning, the words didn’t feel very momentous. They didn’t feel like freedom. They didn’t feel like anything.

“‘But you really want me to stay?’”, Alexis repeated, looking at him in the mirror. “What does that mean, Lorenzo? That sounds like a threat.”

“It’s not a threat, Alexis. It’s the truth. You’re free to go, but I wish you wouldn’t.”

She waved both hands wildly in the air. “It’s just words. I see your mouth moving and I can make out the sounds, but they don’t mean anything.”

“It’s more than words. You know how I feel as well as I do. You know how you feel a hell of a lot better than I do. You put it together and tell me.”

Alexis leaned down over the sink, letting the cold water run over her hands. She’d been pretending forever. Pretending, for the world’s benefit, to be in love with her husband. Pretending, for Lorenzo’s benefit, to be falling for him against her will. She shook her head, and then she stood up and turned around to face him.

"I don’t know how you feel, Lorenzo,” she said honestly. “I don’t know how I feel. We’ve been faking so long I don’t know what’s real. All I know for sure is that your brother is dead, my sister is dead, and you were willing to threaten my daughter’s safety and happiness to keep me in line. You did it before. Who’s to say that the next time I’m late for dinner or refuse your advances you won’t hate me enough to do it again? You know what you know; I can’t take that back.”

Lorenzo squeezed the door handle hard in frustration. “Short of killing Corinthos, I don’t know how I’m supposed to prove myself to you. How do I set you free?”

Alexis shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe you can’t.”

“I refuse to accept that.”

“You built the box, not me. You figure it out.”

Pushing his chest with one hand and closing the door with the other, Alexis shoved a non-resistant Lorenzo out of the bathroom. She closed the door in his face and Lorenzo stood there a minute, listening to the sounds of her undressing: jewelry being laid on the counter, shoes dropping onto the tile floor, the long zipper on the back of her dress sliding down, all without his help. Her rituals were her own tonight, not fodder for his hopes and fantasies, not a game. He sat down at the desk and buried his face in his hands.

When she emerged from the bathroom later, she was wearing a short cream nightgown he had picked out, but the matching robe, worn so tantalizingly loose at the start of the evening, was belted securely around her waist. The remains of her makeup were gone, leaving her face bare and exposed, all of her weariness and vulnerability plain. No romantic fantasy anymore, but a real woman. It was more intimate somehow: a vision of womanhood it was only a husband’s place to see.

Lorenzo stood up from his chair, gesturing toward the laptop computer on the desk beside him. “ I thought you might want to use this to listen to the disc Victor gave you. I’ll get out of your way if you like.”

Alexis nodded slightly, surprised by his solicitude. “I’d like that very much. Thank you. But it’s late. I don’t want to put you out – ”

“It’s nothing.” Lorenzo waved his hand, dismissing the objection, trivial in comparison to the offenses between them. He leaned over the desk and scribbled something down on a slip of paper. “Will you tell me about your mother?”

Alexis shook her head nervously. “Not now. Later, okay? I’m…tired.”

Lorenzo nodded. “Okay.” He walked over and pressed the slip of paper into her palm. “Here. These are the passwords to get you in. Pretty much the entire business is on there, so make sure you burn that when you’re done.”

Alexis stared at the paper. Was he really giving her the keys to his kingdom? It was like handing her a loaded gun.

“You know how to use it?” he asked.

“Yes. I think so.” There was a longer pause. “Where are you going?”

“Just for a walk. Down to the bar maybe. I have some phone calls to make.”

She lifted a tired eyebrow. “At one in the morning?”

“Never too early to start on your Christmas present.” Lorenzo bent down and kissed her on the mouth. It was a slow kiss, full and intimate, but not very aggressive, and just when the pure intimacy of it sparked something and heat flared, he pulled back. Wearing a resigned smile, he walked to the door and turned around.

“Dig around a little and you might find something juicy and incriminating,” he suggested. “Or you can just listen. There’s your choice.”

chapter 10