Ivy considered whether she should have been more forthright with her opinions of Mauri and what she expected, but it was difficult to dash Dax’s hopes. The fact that Mauri had trotted out Dax’s mother was conniving. It was a whole new level of manipulation that even she wouldn’t have expected from Mauri, but as Dax had frequently reminded her, she didn’t know Mauri well.

Picking up her dress from the floor, she was surprised to hear the door opening; Dax hadn’t taken as long as she thought he would. ‘That was quick,’ she said, unwinding the fabric.

‘Thought the same thing myself.’

The voice didn’t belong to Dax. In an instant, she was off the bed and facing the door, with her dress held to her chest. Fear didn’t invade her when rationale could be used to explain away the actions of men like Mauri. But the man who was in her room now didn’t work off any kind of sane rationale.

‘Trystan,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’

‘Don’t worry,’ he grinned. ‘I’m not here for a replay of the night we met. You’re safe.’

‘That’s debateable,’ she said. ‘So what are you doing here?’

‘Came to say hello, to say sorry for the way things went down.’ Though wearing a grin like that didn’t exactly scream contrition.

‘And you just walked into my bedroom to say that without thinking of knocking on the door?’

‘Sorry,’ he said, swaggering to the foot post of the bed closest to her. ‘But it’s not like I haven’t seen those before.’

Ogling her breasts, his grin morphed into something more salacious, and she stood tall, unwilling to shrink in the face of his intimidation. He’d seen her breasts before because he’d ripped open her shirt in Vegas, he’d violated her, and now that stare was designed to remind her of that sequence.

‘You’ve said you’re sorry, you can leave now.’

‘Oh, I have more to say,’ he said.

Where he stood blocked her from exiting the room, she could make a dash for the door, but she’d have to pass him, and she didn’t trust him not to intercept her and the last thing she wanted was his hands on her.

‘Then say it.’

‘Dax was a bit rough downstairs, don’t you think?’

‘He has reason to be.’

‘Sure he does, he’s jealous. It’s a shame things never worked out between you and me.’

‘A shame? I don’t think so. You wanted a wife you could lock up at home to satisfy your father’s urge to see you married. That’s not the kind of life I could ever embrace.’

‘We knew that, we figured it out,’ he nodded. ‘Dad came up with the ideal scenario, this could all have been settled if Dax had agreed to Dad’s suggestion.’

‘What suggestion?’

‘He didn’t tell you?’ Trystan asked. ‘You remember that meeting you were supposed to come to? That Dax was supposed to bring you to before he ran off?’

The midnight meeting. ‘Yes.’

‘Dad floated an idea that I think Dax would have agreed to if it wasn’t for the big bombshell he dropped at the same time.’ She didn’t like letting Trystan know that he had power over her, and that was what he was trying to exert by not just coming right out with what he had to say.

‘Nothing you can say will interest me,’ she said.

‘You sure?’ Trystan pushed out his lower lip and took his eyes from her for a brief moment. ‘Seems you’d want to know when your husband agreed to share you.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Yeah,’ Trystan said. ‘I guess we could’ve worked out a timeshare or something. I mean you were mine first.’

While he sauntered closer, she backed away until the dresser blocked her retreat. Though they were in shadow, she made out the unmistakable line of a scar on his cheek; that had to be the place she’d bitten him, the way she’d freed herself from him in Vegas. She’d left a mark on him, which would mean he would think of her every time he looked in the mirror.

‘I was never yours,’ she spat out. ‘And Dax would never share me.’

‘I guess not, I mean he’d probably worry that after you got a taste of me, you would never go back to him.’

‘Unlikely,’ she said, resisting the urge to laugh in his face. Trystan was a volatile sort, as displayed when his grin fell away and he grasped the top of the dresser to lean down into her face.

‘Dax would’ve given you to me. I’d have had you and everything would have stayed the same. You took him from dad, from me, from all of us, this is where he belongs.’

‘No, he’s not your lackey anymore,’ she said. ‘Dax follows his own orders now, not yours.’

‘I’ve been locked up in this damned building for weeks. Weeks and weeks of nothing, all because of you and that damn betrayer.’

‘He’s a better man than every one of you.’

‘Still think that, knowing that he would’ve handed you over to me? You’d have been in my bed, for me, for my pleasure and nothing else. He’d have given you up to keep me happy because he’s a Stark underneath all the rest of that bullshit. He’d have done it if Dad hadn’t revealed that Dax was the spawn of the guy he despised.’

‘I don’t understand what—‘

‘Bruno,’ Trystan said. ‘Have you seen him around since you got here? No, you haven’t. He took off a few days ago. Dad told Dax the truth, told him that Bruno was his father and that the bastard never wanted a thing to do with the squirt. Imagine that? Your father turning his back on you.’

The snarl in Trystan’s voice made her go cold, but she wouldn’t let tears form. She wouldn’t let him see any weakness or let him know that her heart was pumping so fast she could feel it in her throat.

‘You’re lying.’

‘No, I’m not,’ Trystan said. ‘Dad signed Bruno’s share of the will over to Dax, Bruno took off a few days ago after he and Dad had this huge blow out about it, we haven’t seen Bruno since. You better watch your back, Lucky, Bruno holds a grudge.’

‘Like someone else I know,’ she said, trying to pass his arm, but he brought his hand to her hair and stroked downward until his fingers reached her breast. Unable to hit him, or use her hands in any way because she was still using her dress as a shield for her body, Ivy remained tense and used her tone to convey her disgust. ‘Get the hell off of me.’

‘Dax isn’t here to save you now, Lucky,’ he breathed, leaning in to whisper in her ear. ‘You’re all alone, why don’t you drop that dress? You give me what I want and all the trouble goes away.’

‘You’re the only trouble here,’ she said. As much as she wanted to push him away, Ivy didn’t want to touch his body with her own for fear he would take it as an invitation.

‘You give yourself to me once, and Dax can have everything that he wants. He can have the family back, he can have the life that he was supposed to have, the life that you stole from him.’

The stifling weight of Trystan’s body vanished. Bewildered by the sudden turn of events, Ivy opened her eyes to witness Dax hitting Trystan so hard that he staggered back and hit the floor, unconscious. This was another first-hand example of why living with a fighter could be advantageous.

‘Did he touch you?’ Dax had hold of her now, but he couldn’t capture her attention, the prone man spread out on the floor behind them transfixed her.

‘Dax,’ she whispered, he’d come in and taken care of business like it was nothing to him. Still caught in the adrenaline of having Trystan up close, it took her a few seconds to rest her hands on Dax’s arms, and be reassured that she was back where she was supposed to be.

‘Tell me,’ he demanded, shaking her, forcing her attention onto him.

‘Yes,’ she said but dug her fingers into his arms to stop him from going back to Trystan to finish the job. ‘His hands on me were enough to make me feel sick, but he didn’t… he didn’t assault me.’

Pushing Dax aside, she dropped to her knees beside Trystan to check that he still had a pulse. Sorry that he did, she got back to her feet and stood over him with her hands on her hips.

‘What do we do with him now?’ she asked.