Chapter 31
thirty-one
CILLIAN
I’m not sure I thought much about how it would feel to have her here, like this.
I couldn’t. Not without risking this carefully constructed house of cards.
But tonight…
I circle Briar slowly, absorbing every fine detail of her form and the fabric hugging it.
This leotard is one of dozens. She doesn’t know that yet, though. I’ve stored them in my closet, along with scores of evening gowns, sexy dresses, and accessories I’ve chosen or had made for her.
Which reminds me.
I take a slow sip of my drink, letting it unwind some of the tension stretched across my shoulders. My free hand slides into my pocket, fisting the gift I want to present to her.
Though, perhaps not while she’s glaring.
There is a knife notched into her waistband, after all.
Instead, I lean down and brush my lips along her cheek. “Hello, wife. It’s nice to see you.”
Briar glowers, lifting her chin to the maddeningly stubborn angle that drives me wild. Her body quivers, but her voice does not.
“Why did you bring me here?”
The truth springs to the tip of my tongue. For a moment, I consider allowing it. What would happen, I wonder, if I admitted this is my favorite room in the manor? Or if I told her about the nights I watched my mother and father twirl around this very floor?
But, no. I’ve already decided what her story for tonight will be.
And this plan is still in progress.
Keeping my stride loose, I leave her alone at the center of the ballroom, moving to the lone dining chair I carried in here. There’s a remote sitting on it. I set my glass beside it and turn back to her, asking, “Do you know where I saw you for the first time?”
God, if I could freeze time, I just might do it at this moment. With Briar standing under the stained-glass dome, surrounded by warm licks of light.
The candles dip and flare, casting their glow onto the gilded walls behind her. And it doesn’t matter that she’s dressed like a dancer. She looks like a queen.
I knew she would from the first moment.
That’s why we’re here.
Some of Briar’s animosity dissipates as she considers my question. Her lips and brows turn down. “At the church,” she replies. “On the altar.”
She’s wrong, but so stubborn about it that I feel the side of my mouth twitch. I come back to her side, circling until I stand at her back, admiring the elegant arch of her neck as she turns her face.
It takes every ounce of my control not to touch her. Instead, I step into her personal space and lower my voice. “I will remember watching you walk down that aisle until the day I die. But it wasn’t the first time I saw you.”
Shock stiffens Briar’s body. She tries valiantly to hide it, keeping her eyes on the black marble floor.
I loom a little closer, inhaling the rich tartness of black cherries. “I was at the performing arts center,” I rumble, memories flying through my mind. “Some luncheon for important donors.”
Before the accident, Rhys was very involved in funding for the arts. He never asked me to go that day, but I knew the symphony meant a lot to him, so I attended anyway.
It was deathly dull. Three hours of nauseating self-importance and pseudo-intellectual drivel. I amused myself by imagining how much Rhys would have loved it.
When the interminable meeting finally came to a close, I took the shortest possible path to the parking lot. Which meant walking past the main hall. And the rehearsal inside.
“You were practicing,” I recall, her image still crystal clear in my mind. A black leotard with gossamer ribbons of tulle instead of a full tutu. Worn satin pointe shoes. Her thick hair coiled into a tight bun, flawless skin on display. “Swan Lake.”
This time, she can’t help the surprise filling her face. We both know when she did Swan Lake.
And it wasn’t recent.
The bitter tang of fear leeches into the air. I feel my canines ache, saliva welling as I nod. Intensity swarms my bloodstream, turning my next confession into a dark rumble.
“I watched you.”
The smallest gasp trembles from Briar’s lips. Her scent changes, the fear sharpening. Melding with something new. Deeper and more delicious.
My wife is a fighter, though. She claws for her dignity, forcing her chin into a haughty angle as she tosses me a narrow-eyed glance. “Is that why you bought me? Because you’d seen me dance?”
For a moment, I fall into her swirling green eyes. Wanting nothing more than to give in to the tide. Let myself drown there.
But she asked me a question.
This is dangerous goddamn territory we’re treading. I choose my words carefully, pairing them with a slow nod. “And your father’s patent.”
An acerbic smirk pulls at her pretty lips. “Not sure why you wanted two of his failed inventions.” She scoffs, quiet but strong. “I hope you didn’t pay too much.”
I would have paid anything. I didn’t have to, because that idiot, Brynn, thought his daughter was an incorrigible brat and believed the story I told him about his new weapon technology being astronomically expensive to reproduce.
They weren’t lies. The tech is costly—enough to push most other firms out of the market.
But not Blackwood Corp.
And as for Briar?
Well… the same is true.
She is an incorrigible brat. But she’ll soon learn that nothing is too rich for my blood. Including whatever it takes to tame her.
“For you, wife?” I return her barbed smile with one of my own, fingering the single lock of loose hair that’s fallen from her stage-worthy bun. I tuck it behind her ear. My mouth curves higher when I feel her answering shiver. “Never.”
Briar’s eyes darken as she jerks away. The prettiest shade of rose floods her high cheekbones.
So lovely, my little rosebud.
She huffs, smoothing her skirts and casting me another glare. This one more suspicious than anything else. Like she can’t quite believe I’d lain in wait for so long. “Swan Lake was nearly two years ago.”
As if I haven’t counted each individual day.
“Yes. It was,” I reply, burning my gaze into hers. Letting my answer and all of its implications sink in before I add, “Do you remember the steps?”
Briar blinks, the motion laggy. Probably from trying to process so much at once.
“Yeah,” she murmurs eventually, looking at the floor. “Of course. But I don’t have pointe shoes. And I can’t do the leaps anymore.”
Her injury. I clench my molars, breathing through the rush of pure fury that scorches my center. When the burn is manageable, I nod at the mirrored sideboard beside the entrance.
She turns and sees the shoes there. I know she’s sharp enough to notice that they aren’t new—that they’re hers—but she doesn’t ask how I got them. Perhaps she doesn’t want to know.
Dismay colors her features for a brief moment.
I expect more of her attitude but instead her chin trembles.
“No,” she snaps, watery. “I won’t wear those while we—No.
You have me here, Cillian, and I agreed to do what you want, but I won’t get all dressed up and prance around just so you can fuck me. ”
I can tell the thought of dancing—her art—being used as tawdry foreplay hurts her. My gritting teeth grind harder.
Not yet. Not now.
Soon.
“I would never ask you to do that,” I reply, my tone brusque enough to straighten her spine. “I won’t fuck you until you want me to. We agreed on that in our contract. And I won’t ever break any vow I make to you.”
Her eyes bounce between mine. I see her mind spinning. Likely recalling the promises I offered at the altar.
To honor and cherish.
In sickness, in health. For richer, for poorer. For better and worse.
Until death do us part.
Briar’s posture loosens as her brows pinch. Some of the ire drains from her irises, replaced by cautious confusion. “Then… what do you want?”
So many goddamn things.
But not yet.
So I simply gaze at her for a long moment, projecting sincerity. “I just want to see you dance again, Briar. That’s all.”
For tonight.
Our relationship, I’m realizing, is more about the things we don’t say to one another than the things we do. As if proving my point, some unexplained emotion flares, deep and true, behind my wife’s eyes.
But she only nods. “Deal.”
It takes enormous willpower to move to my chair. I call on years of practice, stalking to the seat without allowing myself time to linger. With one punch of the remote’s main power button, the soft strains of Tchaikovsky’s melancholy melody float above us.
Briar stands at the center of the ballroom, listening. For a second, I worry she’s changed her mind—but then, slowly, she assumes her first position.
God. She’s fucking beautiful. A silhouette of grace, bathed in candlelight.
My wife only pauses to look over her shoulder at me, asking one final question. “The day you first saw me… was that the only time you watched me?”
I swirl my scotch and lounge back in the chair, sprawling with my legs open and my drink in one hand. Forcing my shoulders to stay loose when I shrug. “Of course.”
Another untrue fact. It—all of this—was technically one time.
Because I started watching her that day. And I haven’t ever looked away.