Chapter 22
CATRIONA
Cian’s lackeys guide us to a room he had fitted with cameras linked to screens in the office. I’m surviving on nothing but fear and adrenaline. I feel numb, disconnected from my body. They shove us inside, then lock the door. Releasing a breath, I’m grateful they aren’t in the room with us.
“You want to watch, fine,” Aiden had said once he told them of my decision. “But the only way I can make this happen is if you watch over the cameras. Is that acceptable to you?”
Niall—no wonder Mara hates him—started to object, but Cian cut him off.
“I wouldn’t be able to perform in front of an audience like this either. We can watch from the security feed in your office. But Aiden, don’t try anything stupid. You’ll show me you can both behave, or I’ll make you pay. Starting with her. Do you understand?”
He’d agreed.
Of course he had.
I’d told him to.
But that doesn’t mean I’m not shaking like I’m in the middle of an off-the-charts earthquake.
“You’ll do it?” he repeats incredulously, once we’re alone. “Are you fucking insane?”
“Don’t ask questions, or I’ll change my mind. Now get undressed. They’re already watching.” His phone buzzes, but he puts it on the side table, ignoring it. Something inescapable pulses in my chest and electrifies my blood.
“I don’t want them to see—”
“We don’t have a choice,” I say in a low voice. I can’t see the cameras, but I know they’re there. My skin prickles with the awareness that we’re being watched. I want to press a hand to my roiling stomach, but I don’t want to show them an ounce of fear.
“W-what should I—” I’m shaking with nerves despite the fact that this isn’t our first time together.
That night with him seems so far away now.
Like a fever dream. Is he really going to go through with this?
Does it even matter to him? He’s kept bodyguards on me, given me money, but none of that means he gives a damn about me aside from protecting his investment.
There was that moment in the shower when he’d held me, but does he only do those things out of obligation?
For his commitment to his mother? Would he have forced me to do this if I hadn’t offered?
I have to push away all thoughts, or I won’t be able to go through with this. I’m probably stupid for even considering it. But I can’t walk away, knowing his mother would be punished. Neither can he. But it’s there, linking us as surely as the rings on our fingers.
Without a word, Aiden undoes the cuff links at his wrists, pocketing them as soon as they’re unclasped.
His silver eyes, devoid of emotion, snare mine as he tugs the tail of his black shirt from his waistband, and there’s something vulnerable about seeing a man like this with wrinkles in his shirt—a crack in his well-manicured facade.
I wish I wasn’t sharing him like this. I don’t want anyone else to see him half-dressed and mussed, but I don’t have a choice, so I focus on undressing as well.
All too soon, the zipper on my dress is undone. Before I can doubt myself, I draw it away, stepping out of the cloud of fabric, trying not to think of the hidden cameras and the disgusting man observing them. Looking at the dress as it falls to the floor now, I try to scrub them from my thoughts.
By the time my attention returns to Aiden, he’s divested himself of his Armani button-down shirt and is working on removing his pants.
The sound of his buckle clinking echoes in my ears, and I feel the tips of them ignite with the flame of embarrassment.
All I can do is keep going, stepping out of my shoes.
Finally, I’m left in nothing but lace and my wedding rings.
I nearly gasp when I glance up again and find Aiden nearly naked in front of me, a pair of tight black briefs the only remaining clothes on his body. If my ears were burning red, now they’re scalding, despite my rational side screaming for me to close my eyes.
I wish it weren’t like this. I wish we were anywhere else.
You’d think I wouldn’t be affected by how absolutely devastating his body is since we’ve been sharing the same bed, but no. As much as I’ve been trying to delude myself, he is nothing if not a work of art.
My brain can’t decide which part of his body it wants to focus on.
It computes only in flashes of understanding.
The delicate, intricate black tattoo art decorating his body from his ankles to his collarbones, with only his nipples, hands, and face unmarked.
The winking piercings from his nipples. But the more time I get to spend with him, the more I’ve begun to understand the real story—one written on his skin by the man who forced us into this situation.
Underneath the swirls of black ink are the thin, raised lines of scars decorating rippling muscle.
There are so many, I can’t tell if it’s from one injury or from thousands.
I hadn’t been with him long enough the night we spent together to see them.
Across his sculpted pectorals. Along his corded forearms and bulging biceps.
All down his carved eight-pack and Adonis belt.
My hands are still in the process of wrapping around my body as I practically gape at him, then I stuff them under my armpits so I don’t reach out to touch them. Question him about them.
I will fuck this man, give him my body, let the others watch, but I won’t let them see him vulnerable.
When it becomes apparent he’s going to wait for my direction, despite Cian’s interest in seeing me cowed, I whisper under my breath, “I don’t—” in a hitching voice, and I point to the bed.
Without hesitation, Aiden turns to the bed and yanks back the stark white duvet and sheets.
He gestures for me to climb on, and I slide under the sheets, unable to look away from him now.
The only way I’ll ever be able to get through this, knowing anyone is watching, is to focus entirely on him.
Pretend that we’re the only two people in the world.
Imagine that I never left him in the first place.
That the subsequent events never happened.
Aiden may despise me for tricking him, may tease me and torture me as retribution, but if there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s that he wants me.
He has since the moment we met. He wants me so much that he nearly married my sister to prove exactly how much the thought of me being around petrifies him.
I’m completely at his mercy once again. To use. To overpower. To hurt, if he wanted. He could do anything to me, and I’d be completely powerless against him. It should be terrifying. I should be mindless with panic.
Aiden’s climbing on the bed, giving me a front-row view of the rippling muscles along his expansive chest and abdomen.
Despite everything that’s going on, my breath hitches.
My blood heats. He flicks the covers over our bodies, and a knot of tension inside me releases.
It covers most of the important things, which doesn’t help much, but what the cameras can see of me is blocked by Aiden’s body.
He hovers over me, kneeling between my slightly parted legs. I’ve never felt more vulnerable in my life. Not even when he had a gun pressed to my head or when he had me on my knees in the limo. This feels like giving him a part of myself I’ve been holding in reserve.
“Ease up for me, love,” he says, his voice whisper-soft as he slides his hands up my thighs to grip my panties.
I nod while biting my lip and trying to control my emotions, my ears damn near burning with the force of my embarrassment.
I’m grateful I styled my long, wavy hair down because it covers the blush that spreads from there to my neck and the top of my chest as he peels the material over my hips and down my thighs.
For a moment, his attention catches on the shadowy place between my thighs, and a shudder escapes his lips. Heat that has nothing to do with embarrassment glides over my sensitized skin in a rush.
The tingling in my fingers disappears completely, and I fight a whole-body shiver at the way he seems wholly consumed by the mere sight of me.
I try not to watch and fail miserably as he shifts to shove his briefs down his legs and kicks them somewhere over the side.
His cock bobs free, already hard. There’s enough light from the lamps on the bedside tables for me to see every delicious inch of him.
The intimate flesh is flushed a beautiful pink, slightly darker at the head, which is already weeping with beads of translucent pre-cum.
I swallow hard as he palms his erection and squeezes the base.
Fear and desire collide in a cataclysmic chain reaction.
One ratcheting the other up in a vicious cycle primed by a history of this man and the way he’s always mastered my body.
I still don’t know if this is an act for him dictated by Cian’s ruthless demands, but the wetness gathering in my core doesn’t seem to care.
Even so, I find myself glancing around, searching for light reflecting off the hidden surface of a lens.
A hand wraps around my jaw. “You keep your eyes on me, you understand?” He punctuates the statement with a hard, thought-melting kiss. I can’t look away from him as his tongue dominates mine. When he pulls away, I’m already breathless. “Tell me you understand me, pet.”
Despite telling myself not to show those bastards my nerves, I jump at his command and nod vigorously. I do as he says and don’t look away from his hard, stormy eyes while he reaches under me to undo the clasp of my bra. My nipples pinch the moment they’re bared to his heated gaze.