Chapter Fifteen
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Sarelia
“You’re torturing a bad guy in your basement? A bad guy who did bad stuff to little kids?” I ask after a lengthy pause, just to confirm.
Archie’s head bobs. “Yes.”
Hm.
“You wish me to remain here, married to you?”
“Desperately,” he answers, sounding just that.
Well, then. I white out bawling in a stranger’s car from my imminent plans.
“Okay,” I say.
“I can show you his files. They’re awful, but I can prove that he’s bad. The worst sort of bad. I swear.” Archie’s hands shake in his lap, so he moves them behind him.
My brows furrow. “I trust you,” I reply.
“And I don’t really want to see any ‘proof’ of his crimes.
If it’s really that bad… I can barely handle my parents’ non-abusive, non-traumatizing brand of yikes.
I don’t think I could intake details of something much worse and come out of it okay.
Selfish as it is, I do not want a front-row seat to someone else’s nightmare. ”
“You’re not selfish,” he retorts immediately. “No one is selfish for not wanting to look at that.”
I nod, then glance at the floor. My head tilts. “He’s really in the basement right now?”
“He is. I… don’t really have anywhere else to put him right now, but if you’re uncomfortable being in the house with him, Heidi and Basil have a guest room you can stay in while we figure out what we’re going to do.”
“What we’re going to do?”
“About our marriage,” he clarifies. “I can’t really do anything about Ted at the moment. He’s… in the middle of something.”
“What do we need to do about our marriage?” I ask. “You said you want to stay married.”
“Yes,” he says slowly, “but there’s a man being tortured in my basement.”
“I’m not seeing the connection,” I confess. “You said he’s a bad guy?” I mean, he said it a bunch of times. Bad guy, torture, basement.
The intensity of Archie’s focus on me ratchets up from one-hundred percent to about one-thousand. “Can you narrate your train of thought for me?”
I stop thinking all together in order to look at him—really, truly look at him.
He is… bouncing. Feet, legs, fingers, jaw.
Anxious taps and jiggles, small enough that I hadn’t noticed, but big enough that they’re clearly there.
A clammy sheen has taken over his skin, and his coloring has gone from pale to pale.
My heart twists. “We’re married,” I blurt, throwing my previous thought thread out for him as quickly as I can get the words to form.
“You want to stay married. I definitely want to stay married. You’re torturing scum of the earth in the basement, and that is something that will continue, because it’s a job you do.
I feel…” I pause, thinking about all of the dark romances I’ve written—published and unpublished.
The line between fiction and reality is solid, dark, and should not be crossed.
Dark romances are dangerous, no matter how pretty a bow you put on them.
They have content warnings for a reason.
As I’ve mentioned before, reading dark romances messes with your worldview.
Imagine what writing them does.
“I feel not one single negative emotion about the torturing,” I conclude. “If anything, I’m curious.” I remember his talk about mailing fingers. “Since we’re working on me having boundaries and all, I have to say that I will not be dealing with any severed organs.”
He blinks.
I blink.
Then, he lunges.
He’s on me in an instant, mouth against mine in a kiss just as rough as the last one, but this roughness carries a much different edge. His hands stray from my face, following the curve of my neck and lower, to my waist. His fingers dig, then pull.
Frantic breaths fill the space between us as I fall over him. “My princess,” he pants.
“My knight,” I reply, tugging him back to me.
He groans as his lips rejoin mine.
He tastes like cinnamon tea and sunflowers, like cozy nights and summer days.
Like home.
“I love you,” he murmurs against my collarbone, lighting my skin on fire. “I love you so much it aches—burns. To have you here under my touch is the fulfilment of a thousand dreams. That you would let me place my hands—my lips—on you? Me?” He shudders. “You bless me beyond anything I deserve.”
“Say that again,” I plead.
“I love you.” He nips my collarbone. “I love you.” His tongue slides up my neck, ending in a kiss at my jaw. “I love you.” His lips brush mine, and I whimper. “I love you,” he whispers.
“Please don’t stop,” I beg, and so he doesn’t.
He tells me he loves me between every peck, every bite, every lick. When he can’t say it with his words, he says it with his actions, caressing and pushing and pulling until I’m liquid in his arms, sighing my own love back.
“You’re staying,” he mutters. “I love you so much, and you’re staying here with me forever, and we’ll have a marriage kitten and watch each other through the cameras and have little hazel-eyed babies that we can teach how to stalk as well.”
Dizzy, I agree. “I love you. I can’t believe this is real.”
“It’s real,” he confirms, dragging his hand to my neck. His thumb rests over my pulse, pushing ever-so-slightly.
I lean into it.
“Is making out with you the correct response to finding out you’re torturing a man downstairs?” I wonder aloud as his mouth replaces his thumb.
“Making out is the correct response to me believing I was going to lose you, and you proving to me that you really were made for me.”
I huff a laugh, unable to argue. Not that I would even want to.
Because, really, why would I want to argue with my husband when I could kiss him instead?