Chapter Twenty-Six #2
But before I can beg him to fuck me, he pushes away from my body and gets off the makeshift bed. Coming to his feet, he starts to walk away when I come up on my elbows and call out, “Where are you going?”
My words sound breathless probably because I am that way.
But also because I’m watching him move in his space, all naked.
His back, broad and branded, is muscular as ever, rippling with so much power that I’m as stunned as I was the first time I saw it.
It tapers down to his narrow hips with the cutest two dimples that I want to lick and poke my tongue in, that then give way to his ass, and I think I’m dying.
I move restlessly on the bed, clenching my thighs as I stare at the work of art that is his ass.
So muscular and rounded. Like he spent all eight years behind bars doing squats.
Or rather he spent his entire life doing squats, and maybe he did.
My cowboy husband. Not to mention, his ass is tanned as well.
As much as the rest of his body, and for some reason, that makes me even more desperate to bite into it, his honey skin.
He goes to a small dresser at the far end of this bedroom-like space and grabs a bottle of water along with something else that I don’t get to see.
And then he’s turning around and heading back to the bed, and I’m watching his dick.
That looks just as hard as it was last night.
All ruddy and leaking and the place between my thighs gets even wetter, if possible.
I’m sure that I’m leaving a stain on his sheets, but after last night, I don’t care.
All I care about is his dick, hard and pointing up, throbbing and slapping against his hard abdomen, leaving a trail of cum on his dark hair and bronzed skin.
He gets to the bed and kneels down at the end. “Eyes up here.”
Caught at being a perv, I snap my gaze up. “I wasn’t staring.”
“Somethin’ down there says you’re a liar.”
I blush. “Well, you were staring too.”
He drops his gaze down. “I was.”
I follow it and gasp.
He’s looking at my breasts. My naked breasts because I am… naked. I knew that of course. But I haven’t thought about my clothes since yesterday, and while it was okay in the heat of the moment, now I just feel awkward. So coming up to my knees, I go to snatch the sheet, but he grabs my wrist. “No.”
My cheeks are flushed. “But I—”
“Not a chance.”
“I need to cover myself. I—”
His fingers flex. “Not from me.”
There’s so much possession in his gaze, so much ownership, that I wonder if every husband stares at his wife like that. If he does, then how does a woman not spontaneously combust, both from embarrassment and from lust.
“You have your rules and I have mine,” he says. “And it’s that you won’t hide your perfect, absolute dream of a body from me.”
I squirm and bite my lip. “But I’m not—”
“Don’t,” he commands, his jaw clenched. “Don’t finish that sentence.”
I swallow. “But I’m really not.”
His chest moves with a large breath as he vows, “You are and before these three weeks are out, I’m gonna make you believe it. I’m gonna make you believe you’re worth protectin’ too. Because your parents did a shit job of that.”
I ignore his “three weeks” decree and say, “I didn’t protect my mother either. I hid behind the couch. I never even t-told anyone what happened—”
“You were a kid,” he reminds me. “The burden of protection was on her, not on you. You did what you had to, to survive. You’re a survivor, remember? Brave and magnificent. You did what you had to do to stay alive because of the monster who was your daddy.”
“I—”
“And I’m gonna kill him for that. But I’m not broken up about your mother being dead either.”
I shake my head. “I don’t want you to kill him. I don’t want you to kill anyone.”
“Well, you’ve got no choice in the matter.”
He’s insane and I love him. I love him so much that my entire chest spasms with it. Breathing deep, I say, “Fine, I don’t want to fight with you right now. But I need my clothes, Arsen.”
“Yes,” he says, squeezing my wrist again. “But not the ones you wore. I’ll buy you new ones.”
“What was wrong with what I wore?”
“You used them to hide yourself and you’re done hiding.”
I open my mouth to say something, but I don’t know what I could say to that because he’s right.
I did use my clothes, even the ones Haven got me, to hide myself.
I even hid myself in the dress I wore for him that day at the café.
I guess the only time I haven’t been able to hide myself was when I wore my wedding dress, the one he bought me.
“Is that why you bought me that dress?” I ask then.
“I bought you that dress because I was goin’ to ruin your life,” he says after a beat, his eyes dark.
“And maybe through some miracle, there was enough goodness left in me that told me that I should at least buy you a new dress for the day that most girls consider one of the most important days of their lives. Even though it was all a sham.”
This is when I realize something. I don’t think he knows it. That the goodness left in him isn’t there by some miracle. It’s there because it’s a part of him. It’s a part of him that survived the night his life changed eight years ago. It’s the part that survived the fire.
“You did it to yourself, didn’t you?” I blurt out.
“What?”
I don’t know if I should say it or not. But I’m going to. I don’t care if I’m stepping on a land mine and it’s going to blow me to pieces. “The brand on your back. You did it to yourself, didn’t you? You put it on your back.”
He did it as penance. I couldn’t figure it out before, but now I know. I may not know everything about him, but I know this is who he is. I mean, he’s ready to pay for his crimes against me. “You burned yourself for her.”
His eyes flash fiercely. “I’ll do anythin’ for her.”
The pain in my chest is so huge that it’s a wonder I’m not crying out. It’s a wonder my words are clear enough for him to understand. “It means revenge, doesn’t it, that ‘R.’”
He stares at me for a beat. “You don’t need to know what it means.”
Because this is all a sham.
I knew that. I know that. All these games that we’re playing, they are just that, games.
I’m not really his wife and he’s not really my husband.
I’ll be gone at the end of three weeks. He said so himself just now.
But at some point last night, I pushed it to the back of my mind.
I lost myself in his kisses and his body.
In his worshipping hands and penitent fingers.
But he didn’t. He never did.
“What is that?” I ask, motioning to the bottle of water in his hand along with a white pill.
He follows my gaze and replies, “For your pain from last night.”
Even though we’re so far past it all, I still ask because I’m trying to make a point: “You’re not trying to drug me again, are you?”
He looks up, and whatever he sees on my face clues him in on what I’m doing because he says, “Don’t need to.”
“Because you know I won’t run?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “Because you’ll be gone at the end of three weeks anyway.”
See? He never forgot. Not even for a single second. And I have further proof. There’s something that I spy from the corner of my eye, lying discarded by the end of the bed. I motion at it with my chin. “And what is that?”
He doesn’t need to look to figure out what I’m pointing at. “The wrapper that the condom came in.”
“You wore a condom last night,” I say in a flat tone, but I know this is an accusation.
I had no idea until I caught sight of the wrapper that he’d used a condom.
I was so lost in him, so gone that I wouldn’t have cared.
I didn’t care. It didn’t even enter my brain; old Reverie would scoff at my carelessness.
My new self, however, is enraged that he betrayed me in this way.
That he thought I needed protection from him, and I’m going to explain just what kind of protection in a second.
“Yes.”
“Because you thought I might be crawling with diseases?”
“No.”
“Because you thought you were crawling with diseases?”
“No.”
Of course not. He hasn’t touched anyone in eight years. So I keep going, “Because you didn’t want to accidentally get me pregnant?”
I’m super close to the reason, and his next clipped words hit the nail on the head: “Yeah and because I don’t want anything connectin’ you to me beyond these three weeks. Because I want you to be free.”
“Where were you?” Peyton asks me sometime later, and I freeze.
It’s still early in the morning, and I’m coming out of my room, or rather his room, that I’m staying in.
After our less-than-pleasant conversation, Arsen said he’d drop me off at the mansion because he needed to do some things today, and I agreed without arguing because really, what choice did I have.
I’m not sure if what happened there at the end meant that it was over.
This thing between us. I can’t even call it a thing, though.
It was just one night.
And some imaginary games that didn’t mean anything.
Besides, I’ve already forgiven him for everything he did.
How can I be mad at him when he did it all for love?
I know I always wanted a careful kind of love, a love different from my mother’s, but I don’t think what my parents had was even remotely similar to love.
Love is branding yourself in penance because you couldn’t save the woman you loved. It’s doing anything to exact revenge for her death. Love is what he feels for Annie even eight years later.
Love is what I feel for him. So he’s off the hook. Anyway, I come back to the moment and reply, “In my room.” Then, looking around, I add, “Are you sure we should be talking to each other without supervision?”