‘Unlikely,’ he replied, walking himself forward and forcing her to walk backwards until he’d barged her all the way to the bed. ‘You’ve already been naughty and we’ve only been back in the room for five minutes.’

‘I have?’

‘I told you to get ready for bed, what does that mean?’

‘I don’t have any jammies,’ she said, squeezing out from the restricted space between him and the bed to cross to the closet which contained the sports bag that he’d retrieved his clean clothes from earlier in the night. ‘I don’t suppose you packed me anything to wear.’

‘Your birthday suit is all you’ll ever need in my bed, Minx, stop that fucking teasing and get over here.’

But she’d already tugged out the sports bag, so she opened it to see if he had indeed packed her any clothes. The item on top broke the spell of seduction and she explored no further. With a rubber band looped around them to keep them together, a large stack of a dozen or so zip ties stared up at her. She took them out of the bag and held them up; this time it was her turn to frown.

‘What’s this?’ she asked, rising from her crouch. ‘Why do you have these?’

‘They’re mine,’ he said as though they held no significance.

‘Why did you bring them? What use do you have for them on our wedding night?’

Having never considered herself an insecure person, this unfamiliar wave of timidity and doubt came with a flourish of nausea.

‘I plan to be prepared,’ he said.

‘For kidnapping other women or—‘

‘None of your business,’ he said. ‘I do what I want and I don’t answer to you.’

‘No, you answer to the man behind the curtain. You have all of this respect for Mauri Stark, but all I see is him sending you out to get your hands dirty. I haven’t seen him do any work at all. He’s taught you to subjugate and—‘

‘What’s Mauri got to do with this?’

‘You feel the need to go back there, to apologise for falling in love with me! I mean how dare you think that—‘

Storming over to her, Dax snatched the zip ties and tossed them onto the bed. ‘We’re going back there, if I have to sling you into the trunk of the car and—‘

‘No! We are not going back to those people. I was dragged to that beach house and held prisoner so that you and your buddy could make me into the perfect wife for… for him. But it didn’t turn out that way, did it? You were my only sanctuary,’ she said, uninvited tears burned her eyes, but she grit her teeth and carried on, determined not to let them fall. ‘I don’t know why you let me in, why you chose to show me mercy when—‘

‘Ah, hell,’ he said, turning his back on her. ‘Don’t get into all that romantic hero bullshit. You were a decent lay who—‘

‘That doesn’t explain this, now,’ she said, moving across the room and around his body so that he had to look her in the face. ‘You married me! You brought me here to marry me for a sole reason: to prevent Trystan from marrying me. You’ve made it impossible for him to do it because my name is already on a piece of paper with yours.’

‘Yeah, I get it, we did the commitment bullshit already, now strip down for me, put on a show.’

Backing up to sit in a corner arm chair, his relaxed pose was one of a man waiting to be entertained, and in a far more intimate way that a standard lap dance. ‘I’m not going back there, Dax,’ Ivy said, unwilling to let the issue go as he wanted her to.

‘I already told you, I’ll go to the mansion and—‘

‘No. I’m not going back to California to watch you turn yourself inside out for them. It’s not worth it.’

‘It’s not worth it for you maybe,’ he said. ‘But after everything I’ve done for you—‘

Tilting her head she let out a whine, ‘Aww, yes, thank you so much for making me strip naked in front of strangers and parade around doing your chores. I especially loved the part where you left me down in that dungeon to rot for days, happily allowing your buddy to grope and ogle me to his heart’s content. Is that what I have to look forward to in my future?’

‘It’s not gonna be like that, babygirl. I’m gonna talk to Mauri and to make him see that—‘

‘I’ve heard this before, Dax,’ she said, shirking her sarcasm. ‘You weren’t man enough to stand up to him then, how can I believe that you will be now? For whatever reason you’re afraid of him—‘

‘I am not afraid!’

‘Whatever, Dax,’ she said, crouching to pick up her shoes. Before she’d stood upright again he was out of his seat and coming toward her.

‘What the fuck do you think you need those for?’

‘I’m going to take a walk,’ she said.

‘No you’re not,’ he said, lashing out to grab her wrist.

Ivy tried to pull away but his strength was far superior. ‘I am not your captive anymore, Dax. You’re going to have to learn that you won’t always know where I am. We won’t always exist in the same space. Let me go, please.’

‘I told you that you’d never be free,’ he snarled and with one yank her body clashed into his.

He got hold of her other wrist and because she knew she couldn’t pull free, she tried to back away. But he followed, carrying on until she fell backwards over the sports bag she’d discarded on the floor.

Dax’s muscles bulged as they contracted to seize her weight, though his act of catching her wasn’t altruistic. He hauled her up and slammed her into the closet, wrenching her upstretched arms so high that the tips of her toes almost didn’t touch the floor.

‘Let me go,’ she whispered, sensing that this was about more than them being physically apart.

‘No,’ he huffed with a sullen edge. ‘You’re mine. You stay. You go where I go.’

‘You can’t truly love me until you trust me, Dax. You have to be able to watch me walk out that door and know that I’ll come back to you.’

‘No.’

‘Do you think that I’m going to run away? I’m not. If I didn’t want to be with you then I wouldn’t have married you.’

‘Vegas is a dangerous place.’

‘Uh-uh,’ she said with a shake of her head, but her shoulders were beginning to burn. ‘That excuse won’t fly with me, I can take care of myself, Dax.’

‘Like you did the last time we were in Vegas together?’

‘I got myself out of there, without help from you or any of your friends… Now let me go.’ Ivy tried to tug down her arms, but she had no chance of freeing herself. The discomfort in her shoulders was building and gashes of searing agony flitted the length of her arms.

‘You’re not walking out that door.’

‘I am.’

This had become a battle of wills, whoever gave in now would struggle to claw back power in enough time to have a say about whether or not they journeyed back to California.

‘You’re gonna stay here, put on a show for me as you strip down, then you’re gonna open your legs for me and spend the rest of the night screaming my name.’

‘Don’t hold your breath,’ she murmured.

Undeterred, and perhaps in an attempt to win the war, he squashed his mouth over hers and probed her mouth with his tongue. The usual frisson of arousal zipped through her bones, but this punishing kiss was one of power, he was trying to exert authority over her and she realised then that she had to break through this conditioned behaviour. He’d been taught to be tough, to be the best, to overpower and crush an opponent, she had to teach him that they were on the same side and that not everyone was his enemy.

The only person he seemed to trust was Mauri and she couldn’t see why at all. Although she had never witnessed them interact, Ivy couldn’t imagine what Mauri Stark had done to deserve such reverence; she had quite the towering idol to compete with.

‘No,’ she said, but when he squatted to wrench her up, her legs twined around his hips.

She told herself that this manoeuvre was to offer relief to her aching arms, but in truth she just wanted to feel the reassuring bulge insisting itself against the yielding flesh of her centre. Giving in to him would be easy, she could let him fuck her here, or let him take her to the bed for a slower joining, but teaching him that she could be distracted by sex set a dangerous precedent, so she tried to push him away, but his grasp remained steadfast.