Chapter Seven #3
And all through it I smile, meet eyes turned black fire and offer him my throat.
He hisses, tightens his grip. ‘You…you’re a damn sorceress, you know that?’ he slurs.
‘And do you want this sorceress to stop. Or do you want to finish?’
‘You know damn well, what I want, wife,’ he rasps.
Something about the label fills me with a combination of higher power and despair. I push the latter away, embrace the former. I swirl my tongue around his bulbous crown. ‘Then do it. Your turn to show me what you got…husband.’
He thickens between my lips, then with a rumbling roar no less spectacular for its muted ferocity, Ashon climaxes. And dear heaven but I can’t help but stare, consume every moment of his pleasure, store it deep down, for what purpose I’m too chicken to examine right now.
And when it’s over—when he’s breathless and glassy-eyed—he pulls me into his lap again, cradles my face like I’m more than just a beautiful distraction. And that’s when the panic sets in.
Because this is starting to feel like something real.
And I don’t know how to stop it.
Leave, then. Do the necessary. Protect yourself.
Aware he’s watching my every move, I rise. But before I can retreat, he catches my wrist.
‘Not this time,’ he says, eyes gleaming with something too complex, too potent, to name.
And then he kisses me.
Not hard but slow, sure, devastating, like he’s imprinting something he won’t say aloud. My breath stutters, caught between the soft glide of his mouth and the sudden, terrifying warmth blooming in my chest.
Before I can think, before I can stop him, he sweeps me into his arms.
‘Ashon—’
‘Relax,’ he rasps, his voice rough with something dangerously close to tenderness.
A mellowing I might be enjoying a little too much.
‘You’re right, I’m a firm believer in the concept of quid pro quo so the least I can do is help you back to your bed.
Besides, I’m discovering finding my pregnant wife literally barefoot and walking through my house is digging up all sorts of primal urges I won’t bore you with so the quicker I get you to your bed, the better for both of us, hmm? ’
I want to argue, but I don’t. Because I don’t want to leave him just yet. Not really.
He carries me down the corridor, the light from the cinema flickering behind us. When my head lulls to rest against his chest I allow it, letting the steady beat of his heart echo the chaos and yearning in mine.
At my bedroom door, he pauses, looks down at me. ‘I’m looking forward to Botswana.’
My breath hitches. ‘Why?’
There’s a flicker in his eyes. Calculation. Anticipation. Something deeper, indecipherable. ‘Because I suspect,’ he murmurs as the walks into my bedroom and lowers me to the bed, ‘there’s another plot twist coming in our particular script.’
He brushes my cheek with his thumb. One last kiss, potent and lingering. And then he steps back looking much too composed much too soon while leaving me reeling.
‘Goodnight, Cilla,’ he says in that deep voice.
I probably respond or I don’t. But I welcome the drowsiness that arrives quickly, as if now the stimulus of Ashon has been delivered, my body is ready for rest.
And as I shut my eyes, and sigh into my pillow, my heart a confused, fluttering mess, his words echo in my head.
Plot twist. Plot twist. Plot twist.
I’m not sure whether I want it.
But I’m starting to think my heart and mind will decide it for me, with or without my permission.
Ashon
The jet hums like a soundtrack I can’t fall asleep to, cabin lights dimmed to a dusky gold. Outside, the sky is ink-black, the stars swallowed by altitude.
Cilla sleeps in the private bedroom, one pale sheet thrown over her body, one steady rise of breath, and everything in me aching to be next to her. Spooned behind her, palm curved over the small swell of her belly, feeling what’s mine…ours…shift between us like a living connection.
Instead I’m out here, wide-awake and restless, replaying every frame of last night like I’m directing it again in my head: the scrape of her nails, the rasp of her voice, the power in the way she took me apart and then tried once again to slip away.
The look in her eyes as she did it all—equal parts defiance, apprehension and determination—won’t leave me alone.
For one reckless heartbeat I’d toyed with what could’ve been if she’d wanted me for me, not land or leverage.
Like I was simply a man—her man. The one who could boldly answer that yes, I could trust and yes, I could expose my feelings and yes, I could say to hell with past histories and lessons learned about chancers and gold diggers.
That I could harness a fraction of the certainty my father held when he looked at me with hope and told me family is everything.
Except I was right there, bearing witness to the truth that family wasn’t everything to everyone.
That self-worth was measured by accolades and power.
But… God help me, I must be a fool because I want that look again, make believe or not. I want it regardless of the cost and consequence. And what does that make me if not the fool I was that night in LA?
I don’t care about what other people think…
I rub a hand over my jaw, knuckles tight. My father used to say altitude makes the truth louder. Right now it’s deafening.
Seriously? You’re catching feelings for your fake wife?
I want to growl so what? But even the silent words stay locked in my chest, a step too bold and brazen and incredibly stupid to be given room to grow.
The phone buzzes. Renée. With more than a chest full of relieved gratitude, I answer the call.
‘Yes?’
A pause. ‘Catch you at a bad time?’
I glance at towards the bedroom, grit my teeth. ‘Not at all.’
‘Okay…how’s the honeymoon going?’
Great in parts. Frustration in most. Infernal longing I can’t rid myself of. ‘You’ve never expressed interest in my personal relationships. Let’s not change what works, hmm?’
‘I could argue that you’ve never put a ring on any of the others, but okay. I’ll stick to business,’ she returns.
‘Thanks,’ I growl.
I hear the smirk in her voice before she clears it. ‘Projects are sailing,’ she reports. ‘Botswana team’s prepped for your visit, Italian site is back on schedule.’ She continues with a brisk report of every project, taking my mind off the woman occupying it all of twenty minutes before she’s done.
‘Enjoy the honeymoon—if you remember you’re on one.’
I grunt.
She stays on a beat. ‘You all right, Ash?’
Not even close.
‘Fine,’ I lie. She hears it but lets it go.
I’ve barely pocketed the phone when it rings again—my lead attorney.
‘I have good news. The final deed transfers are ready. By dawn you’ll own the site outright and well on your way to realising your dreams, Mr Biney.’
Years of fighting for my legacy and the finish line is hours away. I should feel triumphant.
Instead a cold weight settles in my chest because the moment the ink dries, the marriage-of-convenience loses its only stated purpose.
Doesn’t it?
Will she even stay the year we agreed or will she insist on immediately dissolving this union regardless that she’s carrying my child.
I close my eyes, head thumping against the leather seat. The plan was simple: get the land, build the studio, become the Biney who finally lived up to the name.
She gets her family’s property back, I get my father’s dream secured.
We part ways amicably.
Except nothing feels simple any more.
Images carousel through my mind. Cilla’s shy hand sliding over the ultrasound photo. Her laughing with a fisherman’s wife on the Cap Ferrat pier. The way she said ‘I think he’d be proud of you.’ No one has ever spoken my father’s memory back to me so gently.
It was a balm and a blade.
I’m used to fighting for things. Winning them.
But keeping something—someone—requires a different muscle, one I’m not sure I ever exercised.
I thrive in power and empire-building and tailoring a narrative to achieve my epic ends, not indulging in feelings of the non-carnal kinds.
Love is a language I only know how to invoke others to speak on film.
Hell, I never even realised how much I needed my father’s until I had to live without it.
And the memory of that loss, that emptiness, is a searing reminder not to toy with invoking even the ghost of it.
Besides, what do I have to offer except what I’ve already given her, wealth and my name… for a time?
What if I offer her more and she laughs? What if she says yes and I fail her the way Nana always said I’d fail everything?
Cilla shifts in the bed, just a sigh and a tumble of braids across the pillow. The sheet dips low on her hip. Moonlight paints her skin silver. She looks fragile. She looks unstoppable. She looks like temptation and mine, and the realisation slices clean through my defenses.
Maybe the true plot twist isn’t locking down the deed and my legacy.
Maybe it’s standing in front of Cilla—and the world—taking complete possession of all that truly matters and saying this marriage isn’t ending.
That the child she carries won’t grow up watching his parents pretend.
That the studio, the land, the legacy will carry both our names. If she wants it to?
But to do that, I have to risk the one thing I’ve guarded harder than the inheritance, this emotional fortress I’ve built.
My father’s voice echoes—You’ll see. Maybe this is what he meant.
I scrub both hands over my face, then stand. The cabin is still, only the soft click of the bedroom door latch breaks the quiet as I open it.
I don’t wake her, just watch her breathe, memorise the calm before we step into whatever storm Botswana brings.
Land or legacy or life or…even more. For the first time, I don’t know which I want more, which I’d want to choose.
Some plot twists you don’t write, they write themselves and rewrite you.
And maybe, when the sun rises over the Okavango, I’ll decide what I’m prepared to do to give this story a different ending.
If at all.