“A body shaper. So there are no lumps under my dress.”

“There aren’t any lumps anywhere on you. Except for this.” He cupped her breasts. “First order of business is getting you out of that contraption.”

But when he reached for the zipper on the side of her dress, she wiggled out of his reach. “No, I’m not going to have you take this off. Getting out of a body shaper is almost as difficult as getting into it. There’s a lot of tugging and . . . flopping.”

He held up his arms, palms out in surrender. “Okay, hands off.”

“You can’t watch either.”

“Are you kidding me right now?” This seduction was not unfolding at all the way he had intended.

“No.”

Rhett tore his tie off and dropped it on the counter. “Do you think this counts as disobedience?”

For the first time all night, he saw her breath hitch with desire. But she shook her head. “No. You said that you would never force me to degrade myself. Shoving this off my body while you watch constitutes degradation.”

Rhett laughed. “I can respect that.” He ran his finger over her lip. “Thank you for being honest with me. Thank you for being you.”

But for some reason, his words didn’t have the effect he had assumed they would. She pulled a face.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

Studying her expression, he couldn’t read her. She wasn’t even meeting his eye. “Then go take your dress off.”

There it was again, another face. “I suck at these parties. I was awful tonight. I’m sure your family is wondering what you see in me.”

It wasn’t like Shawn to dive into a pool of self-pity, and he was taken aback. “I’m sure they’ll love you like I do.”

Then she totally threw him when she suddenly reached out and started to undo the buttons on his dress shirt, with a sort of manic fervor. He had no idea what this was about, but he wanted no part of it. Something was going on, and they were going to talk about it, not bury those feelings behind sex.

He took her hands firmly and pulled them down by her hips, pinning them in place. “No.”

* * *

SHAWN wasn’t even sure what she was doing. She had just suddenly been overcome with the need to prove herself, to be independent, to be in charge of something because it felt like her whole life had suddenly skittered out of her control. Why did everyone else get to determine her future? Hell, her orgasms.

Feeling mutinous, she pulled a pout, ready to protest.

But Rhett shook his head and gave her a very unexpected crack on her backside. “No pouting, Shawn. You’re better than that. Pouting is for three-year-olds wanting a cookie.”

Maybe he had a point about the pouting. But she was not in the mood for submissive sex play. “You’re not my father.”

“No. I’m your husband. And I’m just trying to get you to see that you’re really much more amazing than you give yourself credit for being. If something is bothering you, tell me. None of this avoidance crap.”

This just wasn’t the way she had operated most of her adult life. She was used to wheedling with the men she dated and using a circular back-door approach to get what she wanted. Rhett despised that.

Which she could understand. But there was direct, then there was just being a dick. She didn’t feel like playing the game tonight, and he should know to back down.

“What I’m feeling is that my husband is an asshole,” she said. The night had been too much. Clinton’s confession. Rhett’s lack of attentiveness. Her own guilt for frauding everyone and their mother. It was all just too much and she wanted, needed to lash out, irrational or not. “Stop treating me like a student whose behavior you need to correct.”

He studied her in that careful way he had. “If I say no or you say no, then the other one should respect that, right?”

She was not in the mood to have him speak carefully to her. She wanted to scream out her emotions, all these unexplained feelings, all this fear, and she wanted him to crack, to break down, and lose it like her. “Of course. But this is about you telling me I’m doing something wrong and I’m tired of it.”

“It’s called communication. When I left a wet towel on the floor, you made it pretty damn clear to me that I was in the wrong, and if I did it again there would be consequences. How is this any different?”

He had a point, but she wasn’t going to admit it. “Because I was pointing out something that is easy to fix and it’s not personal. You were correcting something about me.”

“Tomato, tomato. It’s all the same thing. It’s a matter of letting each other know how we feel so the other can respect it.”

“Well, I don’t feel like being told what to do tonight.” With that, Shawn picked up her swirly bridal gown and stomped off in the direction of the bedroom, tears in her eyes.

She was breaking down. She couldn’t do this. She didn’t want to feel inadequate.

“Where are you going?”

“To Paris to see the Eiffel Tower. Where do you think I’m going? To take my dress off.”

“Come back to the kitchen when you’re changed.”

“No!” she hurled over her shoulder. “I am not having sex with you tonight, so stick that in your libido and smoke it.” She wasn’t sure what that even meant, but it felt good to say it.

Going into her bedroom, she slammed the door shut behind her and locked it. It was a challenge to get the zipper down solo, but Shawn wrestled her way out of the dress while Rhett rattled the doorknob and said, in a very calm voice, “Open the door. Now.”

“No.”

“You’re being childish.”

“I am well aware of that, thank you very much! But I don’t give a shit.” Huffing and puffing, she yanked and shoved and peeled the body shaper until it finally gave way and her entire body let out a huge sigh of relief. All her hills sprang forth like an army of flesh unleashed on the enemy. Instantly her stomach felt less queasy.

Balling the torture chamber of spandex up, she threw it into the corner, where it landed in Coconut’s lap.

Naked, she was stepping into a pair of panties when the door flew open, wood splintering as Rhett broke the lock and shoved his way in with his shoulder. She jumped about three feet and almost fell over, given that she was one foot in, one foot out.

“Are you fucking crazy?” she shrieked at him. “You just broke the door!”

“I’m well aware of that,” he said, echoing her words. “But I refuse to be shut out until we discuss what is bothering you.”

Hurriedly pulling her panties up and into place, she tried to figure out what the hell to do now. She felt vulnerable, her literal nakedness exemplifying her emotions. “I can’t do this,” she admitted. “I don’t want to do this.”

“What this are you referring to? This discussion or something more than that?”

“I don’t know. I think all of it. I feel like everything is spiraling out of my control, that everyone else is dictating what happens in my life. First my father by leaving, then my mother by being a flake, then my grandfather for the stipulations in his will, now you. I need to be the one calling the shots for a change.”

“If you wanted to go straight to bed tonight, you could have just said that. I would never force you to have sex if you’re not in the mood. It was a long day.”

Was he deliberately misunderstanding her? Shawn crossed her arms over her breasts and watched him unbutton his dress shirt and peel if off his shoulders. What the hell was he doing? “What are you doing?”

“Going to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower. Or undressing to go to bed.”

Okay, that had asshole written all over it. And he called her passive-aggressive? “Why are you so afraid to let me have some control, Rhett? Why is it so important to you?”

He paused with his fingers on the zipper of his dress pants. “It’s just a sexual preference, Shawn. Don’t psychoanalyze me.”

“You called me a three-year-old.” Shawn turned her back on him to get herself a T-shirt out of the dresser.

He came up behind her and kissed the side of her neck. “I am not trying to control you. I told you I would be a model husband outside of bed, and I meant it. Just tell me what you need from me.”

Shawn shuddered, the agony of her emotions overwhelming her. “Maybe I need to slow down. Maybe I need you to give me some space.”

He stiffened, then his hands fell away from her arms. “Do you want me to sleep on the couch tonight?”

She nodded. “I would appreciate that.”

“I’m only agreeing to this because I know you’re tired. We’re not done with this discussion,” he warned her.

That was the problem. Her anger spiked all over again. “We’re done with it if I say we’re done with it!”

He didn’t even respond to her. He just zipped his pants again, then started toward the door.

“My lawyer says I don’t need to be married,” she hurled after him, because the secret was weighing on her like ten thousand tons of concrete.

He stopped walking, but he didn’t turn around. “Is that true?”

“Yes. He said that I could contest the will and would most definitely win.”

When he turned around, his expression actually froze her in fear that she had just done something irrevocable. “Is that what you want?” he asked, and his voice was cold, even, devoid of any emotion.

“Maybe.” She was so deep in shit now, she didn’t know where to walk to get out of it.

Rhett slowly shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. You’re either in all the way, or you’re out all the way.”

She swallowed hard, not sure what to say, not sure what she felt.

“I don’t believe in hedging my bets, or taking it slow, or living separate lives that we invite each other into on occasion. If you love someone, ‘me’ becomes ‘we.’ That’s it. One car, two drivers.”

Could she do that? She didn’t know. She honestly didn’t know. “I can’t . . .” She wasn’t even sure what she was going to say, but Rhett sighed.

“Yeah, I guess I know you can’t. But the truth is, I can’t do this if you can’t commit to me. I love with everything, Shawn, not in bite-size portions. And I do love you.”

Anxiety crawled up her throat. Shawn opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She just stood there in her underwear and made nothing but a tiny nonsensical sound.

Rhett nodded. “I’ll sleep on the couch. Tomorrow I can move out.”

That startled her into speech. “Move out? What do you mean?”

“Well, what do you think we’re going to do? Float along, not totally committed to each other, playing house, each wondering when the other one is going to bail? I can’t do that.”

“But . . .”

“We had an agreement, right? Yeah, we did. But that was before I fell in love with you.”

“But . . .” Shawn didn’t know how to deal with this. She didn’t want him to move out. She would miss him. But she knew it was unreasonable to expect him to stay when she had no clue what she was doing or how she really felt.

“I don’t want you to submit to me. I want you to submit to love.” With that, he went out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him.

Shawn was left standing in the middle of the old carpet, wondering how to fix something when she wasn’t even sure what was broken.

* * *

RHETT woke up, his head pounding and his heart aching. He was slightly hungover and he had a crick in his neck from sleeping on the couch, but more painful than either of those was knowing that Shawn didn’t really want to be married to him. It had been on her face the night before at the party, in her panicked eyes, and the stiffness of her body. He had thought it was just nerves, but it wasn’t.

The truth was, she had learned to give in to her desire, to jump off the cliff and trust him, but she couldn’t trust his love, their marriage.

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t stay there day after day wanting something more from her, trying to drag it out of her, until she withdrew and he resented that his needs weren’t being met.

Sitting up with a muffled groan, Rhett pulled on his dress pants and pushed off the blanket. Trying not to make any noise, he went down the hall and crept into the bedroom to find a shirt to wear. Shawn was sleeping soundly, her mouth open on a slight snore, her hands tucked under her cheek. He loved her with everything in him, and for that very reason, he knew he had to let her go. He would emotionally bleed her dry. She didn’t feel the same intensity of emotion that he did, and he couldn’t make her feel it.