“Why would you want to forget it? We had an incredible sex life. It was amazing between us.”

She could only look at him, intrigued by his memory of them, as well as appalled. Their sex life had been hot, but their marriage had been empty and shallow.

Obviously that didn’t trouble him. It probably didn’t even cross his mind that his bride had feelings. Emotions. Needs. Why should it? Drakon’s desires were so much simpler. He just needed her available and willing, as if she were an American porn star in a rented Italian villa.

“So on my knees it is,” she said mockingly, lifting the hem of her pale blue skirt to kneel on his limestone floor.

“Get up,” he growled sharply.

“But this is what you want?”

“No. It’s not what I want, not like this, not because you need something, want something. It’s one thing if we’re making love and there’s pleasure involved, but there’s no pleasure in seeing you beg, especially to me. The very suggestion disgusts me.”

“And yet you seemed so charmed by the memory of me on my knees.”

“Because that was different. That was sex. This is …” He shook his head, features tight, full mouth thinned. For a moment he just breathed, and the silence stretched.

Morgan welcomed the silence. She needed it. Her mind was whirling, her insides churning. She felt sick, dizzy and off balance by the contradictions and the intensity and her own desperation.

He had to help her.

He had to.

If he didn’t, her father was forever lost to her.

“I’ve no desire to ever see my wife degrade herself,” Drakon added quietly, “not even on behalf of her father. It actually sickens me to think you’d do that for him—”

“He’s my father!”

“And he failed you! And it makes me physically ill that you’d beg for a man who refused to protect you and your sisters and your mother. A man is to provide for his family, not rob them blind.”

“How nice it must be, Drakon Xanthis, to live, untouched and superior, in your ivory tower.” Her voice deepened and her jaw ached and everything in her chest felt so raw and hot. “But I don’t have the luxury of having an ivory tower. I don’t have any luxuries anymore. Everything’s gone in my family, Drakon. The money, the security, the houses, the cars, the name … our reputation. And I can lose the lifestyle, it’s just a lifestyle. But I’ve lost far more than that. My family’s shattered. Broken. We live in chaos—”

She broke off, dragged in a breath, feeling wild and unhinged. But losing control with Drakon wouldn’t help her. It would hurt her. He didn’t like strong emotions. He pulled away when voices got louder, stronger, preferring calm, rational, unemotional conversation.

And, of course, that’s what she’d think about now. What Drakon wanted. How he liked things. How ironic that even after five years, she was still worrying about him, still turning herself inside out to please him, to be what he needed, to handle things the way he handled them.