Chapter 11 Hired
ELEVEN
HIRED
SEBASTIEN
If there’s one thing you need to know about a Reynolds, it’s when we fall, we fall hard.
I already knew from the moment I was reunited with Annaliese that she was mine. What started as obsession has quickly turned into something more, and I now wear evidence on my skin so that I never forget—and I don’t just mean the wedding band that I’m proud to wear beneath my motorcycle gloves.
I used to tease Adrian for how whipped Loni made him.
If he had any clue what I was doing, he’d give me the biggest ‘I told you so’.
Good thing no one else knows… except for Connor, but considering the trouble he had convincing Haven that he worshipped her, he’s probably the only one of my bros who understands.
At least Adrian and Loni had history. The history that I have with Annaliese revolves around me being a manwhore and her trying me on for size just because she was trying to forget another man.
There’s no other women for me. No men for her. It’s just the two of us, even if my wife… she doesn’t quite know that yet.
You see, according to the Order’s bylaws, once a week, the Owed and the Offering he married are supposed to sleep in the same bed.
Even though she keeps insisting she’s not necessarily an Offering because she was supposedly dropped down to a Used, that’s not the reason why I don’t enforce that clause in the Order’s manifest.
Nope. The reason I don’t enforce it is because we’ve been spending the night in the same bed every night since our wedding.
That’s on me. I told her that I wanted her to be safe. I wasn’t lying. I’ll kill anyone who tries to hurt her, but when I looked around her apartment, trying to figure out what sort of security measures she had, it’s because I was already trying to figure out how I could get back in.
When she made the comment that she has a chain lock when she remembers to engage it, I can tell you that Annaliese…
she doesn’t. I brought a pair of wirecutters with me if that’s what it took, but I never even needed them.
A simply lockpick kit to break in through the shitty lock was all it took to let me in.
I didn’t touch her. I’m not that kind of perv.
When I have my wife again, it’ll be because she panted my name, begging me to fuck her.
It’ll be when I know she’s ready to fully be mine.
But ever since she proposed marriage and, fuck me, I really, really liked the idea of being able to call Annaliese Crawford mine, I haven’t been able to sleep that well.
So I thought: what if I stretch out next to Annaliese in her bed? I’ll know she’s safe… I’ll know she hasn’t returned to the man who had her running to my arms in the first place… and I’ll see if I could find some semblance of peace that I’ve been missing for a long ass time.
It helps that she’s a super deep sleeper and I wake up at the drop of a pin. Any time she shifts, I’m up, and by the time she’s stirs enough to get up, stumble to the bathroom in the dark, I’m already crawling under her bed.
Hey. I dress in black, I’m stealthy as fuck, and a good girl like Annaliese never expects to have a man sneaking into her bedroom to sleep next to her so she never looks. Instead, she rubs her eyes, shuffling out of the room, oblivious to the fact that the only way I can sleep at all is beside her.
I have an internal alarm clock. I’m up by dawn every day, slipping out of her apartment.
It’s easier now. I borrowed her keys that first dinner at Guiseppe’s, then went to get a copy made.
Since then, I don’t have to break in. I unlock the door, locking it again by the time I leave, and if any of her neighbors notice… well, I am her husband.
That’s not all my sudden obsessiveness has led me to do—or the only thing I borrowed. As organized as Annaliese is, she’s too damn trusting. As soon as she left her phone out, I installed a tracker app so that I always know where she’ll be. I stuck another track to the underside of her car.
I’m going to burn in hell for it, but as far as I’m concerned, she gave me permission to protect her when she stood in front of Father Francis and said ‘I do’.
She said ‘I do’. So did I.
And now I will.
I’m so fucking desperate to have the real Annaliese let me in.
Oh, there are glimpses. The woman I can’t stop fantasizing about, who sat by me at the Last Prayer, and followed me to the bathroom.
The no-nonsense woman who walked into the King’s Court, proposing marriage to whoever would listen.
The determined woman who walked into my living room with a pair of binders and a plan.
But, more often than not, I’m treated to the ice queen.
Prim and proper and perfect… the way she does her make-up whenever I see her, not a single strand out of place, the dresses that flatter yet do so much to hide her mouthwatering figure…
for someone who insists they’re not an Offering, she does a good job of pretending to be one.
And that’s not fair. I know it’s not. Someone did this. Someone took a firecracker and broke her until she was just another woman in the Order. At least, they tried to. Knowing there’s something under that carefully cultivated facade… it’s why I’m so obsessed. It’s why I’m so hungry.
It’s why I want her so badly.
I want to be the one she opens up to. The one she shows her real self to.
No matter what it takes.
It isn’t long before I notice that the only time I really see Annaliese come alive—when I’m sure I’m witnessing the real Annaliese, not the Offering she once was—is when she’s doing something that has to do with a binder.
Our marriage agreement… the wedding plans…
when she gets to organize and plan and make shit happens, she’s fucking radiant.
It’s after another dinner. Another date that, if you asked her, she would staunchly deny that that was what it was. I just tell her where I want to take her, and she goes, as though she’s following one of the clauses in her contract.
She has to have that sucker memorized. Considering I stole it from her apartment about a week after our wedding, the way she keeps casually dropping clauses and sections into conversation…
yup. She either has another copy or has it memorized, but she hasn’t said anything about the signed copy being missing yet.
She hasn’t said anything about the scent of my cologne in her bed, either, so maybe my dear wife is just that oblivious.
Could be. She’s sure as hell doing everything she can to convince herself that she isn’t my wife.
Of course, that’s why I’m doing everything to prove her wrong. Including taking her out for dinner, and before I drive her back to her place—then wait until she’s sleeping to let myself in—inviting her into my living room so that I could talk to her about something.
I don’t beat around the bush. Once we’re back in my living room, I wait for Annaliese to fold her skirt under her and sit down before I metaphorically pounce.
“So… why don’t you work as an event planner anymore?” I ask casually, leaning into my seat.
Her shoulders tense like I slapped her. Whoops. She definitely wasn’t expecting me to ask her that.
I wait, hoping that I made the right decision by bringing this up.
“I loved my job, but I had to leave it,” she says softly. “And then when I was told that I would be demoted to one of the Used, it made no sense to return to the field. I mean, who would hire me then?”
I would. And I plan to. But first… this is the moment I’ve been waiting for. The opening I would be a fool not to take.
“Annaliese… who hurt you?”
I just want the fucker’s name. That’s all.
But she shakes her head, looking anywhere but at me. “I can’t. Sebastien… please. I don’t want to talk about that.”
No. She doesn’t want to talk about him.
Smart. If I ever find out who broke Annaliese before I ever met her, I’d borrow Adrian’s Tomcat and pump a pair of bullets into his skull.
I plan on it. One day, I’ll get the chance. For now, I let it go.
She needs me to.
“Okay, but you’re not one of the Used now. You’re the wife of an Owed. I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t start your own event planning service now.”
“What… really?”
“Yeah. You did an amazing job when it came to our wedding. Look, I want to throw a party for my brother.”
Interested in spite of herself, Annaliese asks, “When’s his birthday?”
“September,” I answer. “He turned thirty last year, but I want this part to be soon, like a belated celebration.”
Alexandre didn’t want to throw a party last year because of what that age means in the Order. He can still Claim someone—especially since Dallas gave him a year reprieve due to canceling last August’s Claiming ceremony— but now that I’m married, he doesn’t have to if he doesn’t want to.
I love Alex. Despite him being the golden boy in the Reynolds family, he’s my brother, too, and I think celebrating him… showing him that he doesn’t have to fear being thirty… would be good for him. Plus, it gives my wife something to do.
Way I see it, it’s a win-win all around.
“What do you think? Throw Alex a party, then I bet everyone in Harmony Heights will want to hire you for their next shindig. But, please, block off the June after this one for Adrian. He’ll have my head if you can’t help him celebrate his wife when she turns thirty.”
Annalise offers me a small, almost shy smile. “I liked Loni. She was very nice to me… and Adrian is—”
I decide to throw her a bone. “Devoted to his wife,” I supply for mine.
Her expression turns wistful.
“I used to want a marriage like that,” Annaliese says under her breath, more to herself than to me.
Too bad. “What happened?”
She lifts her head, looking at me. “Life did.” A small shake of it, as though she’s trying to convince herself when she says, “A marriage of convenience is best. A fake husband…” She gulps. “It’s better this way.”
Not this shit again. “Fake? No, love. I told you before. I don’t do fake.”
Panic flashes over her features. It’s there and gone again, but I know what I saw.
She banishes it quickly, and for the next moment, I almost think she’s going to argue with me over my statement.
Nope. Instead, she folds her hands in her lap, the gesture obvious as hell that she’s done with the topic of conversation.
Feeling generous, I give her an out. “So, about Alexandre’s birthday…”
Her face screws up into an adorably puzzled expression. “You’re really are you just going to blow past that? I know we don’t know each other well yet, but that doesn’t seem like you, Sebastien.”
See? That’s where my wife is wrong. Because she can claim we don’t know each other all she wants, but she’s right: I didn’t want to blow past it.
I want to make myself as clear as possible when it comes to this marriage.
I didn’t think she was ready, so I didn’t push it.
But if she needs me to push her a little…
I lean back into the couch, propping my ankle on my knee, amused despite myself. “When I saw the look of fear on your face? Yeah. I didn’t think you were ready to continue that conversation.”
Annaliese juts out her chin, showing off the slender column of her throat. Fuck me. If this wasn’t so goddamn important, I’d have her flat on her back beneath me in an instant just so that I can swipe my tongue up the length of her neck, finding out just how good she tastes there before—
“I’m not afraid.”
If she had any idea the sort of dark, twisted, perverted thoughts racing around my head right now, she would be. “Good, because this ain’t no marriage of convenience. If anything,” I add, “I’d consider it an inconvenient marriage because my wife acts like we’re strangers.”
“Because we are—”
I tap my fingers on my knee, working hard to keep my easy grin. Don’t scare her, Bas. Not when you want to keep her… “I had my cock inside of you, your legs wrapped around my waist. We’re not strangers, Annaliese. Not anymore.”
She gulps. I follow the motion of her throat and, damn it, I still want to lick her up and down. Fucking everywhere. “You called me ‘love’.”
I shift, trying to get comfortable even as my growing erection screams for relief. Not even this lazy pose is helping, but at least I won’t frighten Annaliese with how much I want her with my legs spread like this, tamping down the bulge jeans.
“I did,” I tell her, “and now you’re my wife.”
She blushes. God, she’s so fucking beautiful. And the way her cheeks go pink like that? It just reminds me of the blood rushing to my junk…
Annaliese clears her throat. “So when exactly are you thinking about hosting this party?”
I laugh under my breath. “Looks like I’m not the only one who changes the subject when it gets too real.”
“How about May 1st?”
Okay. I guess we’re forging ahead. I think about it.
May 1st. That would give her a month to plan it.
If she was able to pull off getting everything ready in eight days for our wedding, she can do this.
Especially when my family’s name, wealth, and status in the Order will make a lot of vendors pretty damn agreeable.
“Mayday. I like it.”
She purses her lips. “So am I hired?”
“I don’t know if you realized it, but I slipped my card into the back pocket of your tiny purse on our wedding night.
” I shrug as her lips part, stunned at my admission.
If only she knew what else I’ve done… “Of course you’re hired.
And do me a favor, love. Make sure you pay yourself whatever you think you’re worth. ”
“Sebastien—”
I’m not done. “Then go ahead and double it because that’s what you’re worth to me.”
And, sooner or later, she’ll figure that out.