Chapter 6 Marriage Agreement
SIX
MARRIAGE AGREEMENT
SEBASTIEN
Ispent the entire day at home, halfway convinced that Annaliese talked herself out of choosing me to be her ‘fake’ husband. That she would’ve done some kind of recon, taken my name and asked around Harmony Heights before being like nope and backing out.
That’s what I did—minus the backing out part, of course.
I didn’t even have to try that hard. One call to Adrian and, twenty minutes later, I had the deets.
Annaliese Crawford. Twenty-five as of February 21st so she’s four years younger than me.
She graduated from Harmony Heights High that many years after I did which meant that we never crossed paths in school since I was done the year before she started.
She has a younger sister. Miranda Jane Crawford.
Seventeen. That caught my interest. Seventeen and an Offering…
she’ll be eighteen in July, and due up for her first Claiming ceremony in August just like Dallas said.
No wonder Annaliese said she was looking for a husband for her sister’s sake.
She probably didn’t want the fact that she went unClaimed to affect her sister’s future in the Order.
The one thing that Adrian couldn’t find out? Was why no one has already Claimed Annaliese. Dallas mentioned that there were rumors that a member of the old guard had his eye on her, but if they did, they fucked up by not making her theirs when they had the chance.
I already fucked her. In the Order, that’s enough to earn her a brand on her neck if she’s an Offering. Marrying her is the least I can do when my carelessness means that one night with this woman was enough to make her one of the Used.
There’s some confusion about that, too. According to Adrian, rumors run that she’s been blacklisted.
While she hasn’t been moved to the Court formally—and, staring at her neck, I can still see she hasn’t been branded—it’s clear that she won’t be attending next August’s Claiming ceremony.
If she wants an Owed for a husband, being Bait was her only shot.
Thank fucking God I went out for drinks with Dallas last night so I could be the lucky prick to swoop her up before some other bastard did…
I didn’t know she had once been an Offering.
I’ve met my fair share of the pristine princesses that are groomed to end up as a Stepford wife to the men who sell their souls to the Order of the Owed.
Virginal and obedient, meek and quiet… none of that describes the woman who took my hand, leading me to that bathroom, fucking me in a stall.
But it was her. The moment I looked into her face, the flash of recognition telling me that she knew who I was—her nameless lover, not Sebastien Reynolds—I was sure she was the one who walked away from me.
The woman I haven’t been able to get out of my head for months now, and she was desperate enough to come crawling to the Court to do what so many women in Harmony Heights do: offer herself up to the men who rule it.
I would’ve killed any of them to be the one she chose.
I didn’t even give my would-be rivals the chance to take her for themselves.
She went from Bait in my mind to bride the second our eyes met, and though she refused to come home with me last night—again—she called my number this morning, shaky voice requesting an address where we could meet to lay out our terms in the early evening.
Terms? Fuck that. She can tell me what she wants, I’ll say whatever I have to to have a second chance with the ghost who’s haunted me since that night in the Last Prayer, and nothing will stop this marriage from happening.
Oh, I’m sure there are plenty of those who would insist I slam the brakes if they knew about it.
Alexandre, for one. My folks. Dallas would shit a brick if he heard I’d shut down the Bait last night by being the one who got caught by the pretty lure, snagged on her hook.
Adrian… okay. Adrian would probably find it highly amusing that the one of us who swore up and down he’d never give in to the Order’s pressures was entering into a secret society-arranged marriage like so many others.
But that’s the thing. It wasn’t arranged by the old guard, the council…
even if Dallas tried to force me to get hitched, I’d slap the King upside the back of his head, then tell him to suck my dick first if he wanted to fuck me over.
I’d have my fun with the Used, maybe settle down with a townie who was kept out of the Order, or just take my bike up to the mountains and become a hermit before I took a Barbie doll bride and started popping out Reynoldses to grow up into the same insanity that I did.
And then a woman with a determined glint in her eyes and the lushest lips I ever stole a kiss from walked into the King’s Court with an offer I couldn’t refuse and, well, here we are.
Annaliese sits stiffly on the edge of my couch, her arms wrapped tightly around the binder she’s clutching to her chest; the matching one is perched on my thigh.
Her legs are crossed demurely at the ankle, a far cry from the woman I fucked in a seedy bar bathroom.
Today, she’s wearing another dress that screams Offering: soft pink, fitted waist, clean lines.
She looks like everything I shouldn’t touch.
I want nothing more in this moment than to touch her anyway. To muss up her perfect updo, to trail my finger down the slender column of her throat, to pluck the pristine fabric to the side and press a kiss to the top of her tit before working my way south…
Down, Bas. Control yourself. If she had any idea how bad I want this… how bad I want her… she’d take that binder and her offer and run for the door. I have to lock her down first, then do whatever it takes to keep her.
I lean back into my chair across from her, spreading my knees wide, watching her in a way that’s not half as predatory as I feel. I smile, she gulps, and I lazily glance down at the open binder in my lap.
Thank fuck it’s not in legalese. My parents have a lawyer that they assigned to me for whenever I screw up, but the thought of going to old Jerry with this…
nah. This is between my future wife and me, just the way I like it.
Besides, I’d put money down that this isn’t a legit contract so much as a list of rules and conditions that Annaliese is laying out so that we both know what we’re getting into.
I tap the top page with my fingertip. “So. Marriage agreement. One year.”
“Yes,” she says firmly. She wears an icy expression like armor, swallowing her nerves, her binder a shield as she forces herself to meet my obvious stare.
“Then you can walk away. I know the Order doesn’t do divorce, not really, but there are plenty of couples who live separate lives.
I just need to have it appear like I’m under your protection until after my sister is Claimed and established. After that, I can take care of myself.”
It still amazes me that she’s willing to offer herself up to the highest bidder for her sister.
Adrian’s intel told me as much, and Annaliese herself confirmed it.
After I invited her into the house, leading her to the living room where I spend most of my time when I’m home, she quieted any attempts at small talk on my part by handing me the binder—the ‘contract’, she called it—and explained that she was doing all of this to keep her family’s standing in the Order exactly where it is.
I don’t know why she is convinced that the Order will turn on Miranda Crawford just because Annaliese believes she won’t be Claimed herself.
These days, there are more Owed than Offerings, and though Dallas is gunning to shut all that shit down, even he can’t stop the next Claiming ceremony from coming without a total revolt.
If Miranda wants to be Claimed, she’ll be Claimed; I have no doubt about that.
But if Annaliese is willing to hook up with me to make it so that her sister does what she’s going to do anyway, that works, too.
I’m not above using her fears against her. Does that make me an asshole? A prick? A piece of shit? Probably, but it also makes me her husband.
One year. Oh, love. If she really thinks I’m going through all of this for only one year, she’s adorably naive. I’m a Reynolds. If there’s one family trait that I’ve inherited, it’s a sense of entitlement.
I want Annaliese. Not for a night. Not for a year.
I want her for as long as I can have her, and that begins with today.
I’m sold. Nothing she has typed on any of these pages… and fuck… there’s gotta be like twenty thick ones making this sheaf up… none of these sections and clauses and lines will do a fucking thing to change my mind.
Oh, no. That’s just Annaliese who, despite this being her idea, is doing her best to talk me out of it without realizing it.
“I’ll do whatever you want me to. Be the perfect wife. Like I told you, if you prefer to sign this and forget about me once the marriage license is filed, that’s fine. I just need the Order to consider me your wife.”
I couldn’t fucking care less what the Order thinks. “You think I’d marry you, then pretend we didn’t already consummate this union before we ever knew each other’s names?”
Her cheeks turn pink, though there’s steel in her pretty brown eyes as she meets mine purposely. “I assumed your memory of that night is the reason you agreed so easily to this. If that’s what you want from me, you can have it.”
How nice. My wife is doing everything she can to avoid dropping from an Offering to a Used, and that includes her whoring herself out to me.
Not because there was a spark, a connection between two people who happened to meet one night, but because she thinks promising to fuck me is the only way to get me to sign this contract.
Look. There. She even has a whole section devoted to it in her contract.
No sexual intimacy is required as a condition of marriage…
should either party request intimacy, the other may decline freely without penalty…
if intimacy is mutually desired, it must remain consensual, private, and free of obligation…
no expectation of monogamy is required, though discretion is preferred.
If I had any doubt that Annaliese is what she appears to be—a fallen Offering—then that would’ve smashed it.
All the Offerings are raising with the idea that their husband will have a woman who sleeps at his side, and at least one who sleeps with him whenever he wants.
It’s rarely the same woman, but while I won’t deny that my sexual history is…
extensive, the one thing I’ve never done is fuck around when I’m in a committed relationship.
And what’s a bigger commitment than holy matrimony?
I underline the section with my fingertip. “I see. You got a whole section about fucking in here.”
Her flush deepens. I wonder if, like me, she’s remembering the way she threw back her head and moaned as she rode me. “I like to be very clear.”
“Very organized, too.”
A single crisp nod and a slight pursing of those lips.
Fuck. Who knew I had a hard-on for the prissy, prim act she’s got going on?
Especially when she says, “If there’s any addendum you’d like to, well, add, please do.
This contract is to protect us. So we know what we can both expect.
It is, after all, a marriage of convenience.
Nothing more. If you keep flipping through the pages, I even outlined an initial prenup that makes it clear that, what we enter this marriage with, we leave it with. ”
I swallow my scoff. Does she think that I’d sign this thing if I was worried she was only marrying me for money? I have too much of it. She can fucking take it. I just want her, and it’s getting a little tiring how much she is really pushing this fake marriage thing.
“If that’s what you want.”
Something in my flippant tone has Annaliese frowning. “If you’ve changed your mind—”
Why do I get the feeling that she’d like that if I did? As if she’s having second thoughts?
It’s possible. Shit, it’s more than likely. But if she learned anything about Bas Reynolds, it’s that I never do what’s expected of someone with my fucking pedigree.
Then again, my old man is Guy Reynolds. He gave up being King because he was so obsessed with Maman that he trapped her in Harmony Heights, then baby-trapped her by getting her knocked-up with Alexandre first, and me immediately after. To him, his wife was worth more than the promise of power.
My left sock is worth more to me than what being a Reynolds in Harmony Heights means. But the promise of keeping this woman as mine… it’s worth the fucking Order thinking that I’m finally falling in line at last.
Because that’s what I’m doing. Taking the weight off of Alex’s shoulders, getting married to an Offering—former or not, I don’t give a shit—so that he doesn’t have to.
To protect Annaliese, I’ll have to play along with Order politics, something I swore I would never do…
until she fought back her obvious surprise at seeing me approach her before boldly asking if I would marry her, and if that’s what the price of having her is, I’ll pay it.
“Fuck, no, I haven’t changed my mind. You?”
Annaliese goes still. She swallows, and with my gaze locked on her, I watch the motion of her throat.
It’s intoxicating—and so is she.