Chapter 2 – Matías
The door clicks shut behind her, sealing us in.
For the first time tonight, we are alone. We: My wife and I—what an absurd fucking joke.
Unsurprisingly, the woman—Noa—isn’t about to be the one to shatter the silence.
No, she seems happy to pointlessly loiter near the bed instead, her shoulders tucked in on themselves.
Her frame, if possible, seems even more petite in the insipid amber dance of the candles someone has scattered all over my fucking bedroom.
Still (out of habit, I’d imagine) her spine remains straight, her chin lifted.
Exquisite posture, Magdalena would deem. Right. Since that is certainly what a man most desperately longs for in his woman.
I can feel her eyes on me even though I refuse to meet them. I’ve no stomach for it. Not yet at least. I’m just as comfortable standing by the window, my back to her, staring out into the darkness beyond the estate.
The view is easier to look at than her. And maybe I’m just hoping some motherfucker will take a second fucking swing at it and shoot me right in the damned head again. Put me out of my fucking misery.
Outside, the jungle stretches endlessly before me, a black void swallowing everything in sight.
It reflects what I feel, a yawning emptiness that nothing, not power nor blood nor whiskey, can seem to fill.
I idly roll the glass in my hand, swilling the untouched liquid.
Gabo had handed me the glass, in celebration or condolence. Either way, I don’t need it.
My anger is intoxicating enough. Though, notably, not enough to dull my senses when it comes to my wife.
I can practically feel it myself when she shivers.
A small, involuntary tremor stiffens her shoulders.
I can see her in the window glass; I don’t turn, but I hear the sharp exhale she tries to suppress.
The sickening churn of unease in my stomach is unignorable.
Is she afraid? Or simply cold? It shouldn’t matter to me, but it does.
I grit my teeth and force my thoughts to still.
She is just another pawn in the game, another sacrifice to keep the illusion of strength intact.
That is what my mother and the elders wanted—a display of control, of order, of continuity.
If I had refused to marry her, it would have been an admission that the Castillo empire had weakened with Tomás’ death.
And weakness in our world is an invitation to be hunted.
But Noa should’ve said no. Had logic, or the spine she seems to be in sore need of, prevailed, she would have rejected this improvised match made between us. She should have declined the mere suggestion.
Noa was meant for Tomás. I’d spent months watching him court her.
I had heard her not so much as let him touch her, shying away from his kiss.
I already know she is a magnificent, uptight little prude with a stick up her ass where a cock could be.
Am I supposed to forget all of it now? Pretend that the both of us do not know what we clearly do?
I am not going to coo sweet nothings in her ear. A bullet in the head, apparently, isn’t quite the same thing as a lobotomy.
Tomás would have been gentle with her. He would have reassured her, touched her with soft hands, whispered things that made her believe in love.
I am not Tomás. The thought is bitter.
None of it is helped by the memory of the last time she had been in this room—for she has, in fact, been in here before.
Only a matter of weeks ago, while my pathetically trembling limbs had been strewn across my sheets, and I’d been out of my fucking mind, delirious with the agony survival had afforded me.
I still remember the sheer pity in her eyes, those irises that are the color of my drink.
Wrath unravels at the rotting core of me. I embrace it, and let it fuel the fire already burning in my chest.
I need it for when I turn, finally, and drink her in.
It is an inevitable mistake.
Fuck. She is still in that dress. The one that fits her like she was poured into it. Its intricate beading catches the candlelight, refracting it like shattered mirror glass across the dark wood floor. For a moment, she looks otherworldly. Stunning. Untouchable.
Except she is not untouchable any longer, is she? They all ensured that.
No, she is mine. On paper—by rings, vows, blood, and the kiss I had furiously pressed to her rosy, puckered doll’s mouth.
Yet when my eyes drag lower, taking in the cinched fabric at her tapered waistline, I feel like a sinner.
When I revel at the opulent flare of her hips beneath the river of white silk...
Wide hips. Hips meant for gripping. For holding.
For spreading open. I am a sinner. That knowledge hardly keeps my cock from twitching against my zipper.
My fingers tighten around the glass in my hand like a grasp on self-preservation.
Fucking hell.
I force myself to look away. I roll my shoulders, trying to ease the tension creeping up my spine. But all she must do is shift in my peripheral view, just slightly, and my gaze snaps right back to her. Just in time to catch another shiver, barely perceptible.
Why does it bother me?
My teeth clench hard enough to ache. I should not care if she is cold, I remind myself. She can climb under the fucking duvet if she is. I should not care if she is afraid. She will have to get used to it. Better sooner than later.
And yet, some restless, unspoken force within me urges me forward.
It pulls at my limbs, whispering temptation into my veins.
I want to close the distance—to feel the heat between us shrink to nothing.
I want to touch her, to brush my fingers against her skin, just to see how she would react—if she would pull away, or if she would let me linger.
Would she flinch? Would she soften? Would she fucking break? Such dangerous, treacherous thoughts...
I stay where I am.
“Take it off,” I say. It isn’t a question. It is a demand.
I watch as Noa tenses, like I’ve poured ice water down her pristine gown. Maybe I should. I can just envision it, the way her nipples would peak against the cold. How the fabric would grow heavier and more transparent simultaneously, baring her to me even faster.
Somehow, I don’t expect her to lift her head the way she does.
Her whiskey-colored eyes lock onto mine.
She does not look away. I expect hesitation.
I expect submission. What I get is a woman who meets my gaze head-on—unyielding, untouched by the walls meant to contain her.
The iron bars may hold her body, but not her will.
Why has she married me?
I can’t make sense of her.
If she is meek enough to be trapped in a marriage to a beast, then she should wear terror across her features—not this bald-faced question I can’t interpret.
She should be begging. She would sound pretty doing it, I’m sure.
She’s almost unnerving when she stands there, subdued, rigid, watching me with those same damned eyes that I once dismissed as soft, sweet, harmless. They are none of those things now.
I could rip that dress off her myself, let the silk tear between my fingers, let her feel just how much of a monster I truly am. I could pin her down, force her beneath me, make her look at me—not just as the man who owns her on paper, but as the one who could consume her entirely.
I could make her moan.
Maybe she would fight it at first, that resistance in her bones refusing to bow.
But I know how to unravel a woman. I know how to coax a broken breath, a strangled gasp.
I know how to take control in the most intimate way, to force surrender from something deeper than fear. Therein lies the problem.
Because Tomás would have never thought this way. He’d been happy to have a marriage of duty, utilizing it the way it was meant to be. He could have earned her heart, the way a little principesa like Noa almost certainly yearns for.
I force myself to stay still. I have already taken too much from him.
Noa chooses then to suck in that deep inhale. It fissures the stillness and propels her into motion. She lifts her hands to the zipper at her back, her lithe fingers making quick, robotic work of it. Regal. Even now, she refuses to be graceless.
I watch wordlessly. The faint rasp of fabric shifting fills the yawning space between us, more deafening than the storm brewing outside. My pulse pounds, a ferocious, primal drum against my ribs.
The gown loosens.
The silk doesn’t billow or flutter; it slips and pools at her feet, cascading seamlessly down her body like a final surrender. And I—
I forget to breathe.
Her skin glows, golden in the dim light, transcendently untarnished, as if she has never been held, never been claimed.
My gaze trails the dip of her collarbone, the pert mounds of her breasts, where dusky nipples tighten in the cool air.
I almost have to dig my heels in when my eyes skim lower, over the gentle swell of her waist, returning to the devastating flare of her hips, this time in all their glory.
My cock throbs, painfully tight in my trousers. My fingers twitch by my sides. Now, I raise my glass to my lips and toss back the two fingers of burning liquor down the hatch.
The hunger inside me is a frenzied dragon beating its wings, snarling, clawing at my ribs.
I can almost taste the caustic smoke in my mouth.
It whispers dark things, coaxing me forward, tempting me to close the space between us and claim what belongs to me in every way but the one that matters.
Still, I could do it now—strip away the last of this fragile distance, force her beneath me, drag my name from her lips until neither of us can remember she ever knew, was meant and had planned for, another to be joined with hers till the end of her life.
I could make her beg, I think again. I could make her break.
For a terrible, fleeting second, I want to. But then color rushes to her cheeks, and her lips part—and the misery in her eyes is a goddamn noose around my throat.
I inhale sharply, forcing the burning need back into the pit of my stomach. My breath is ragged, my body coiled so tightly it threatens to snap. My pulse is a hammer against my skull.
No.
I take a step back, my hands curling into fists at my sides.
Tension knots in my face, a slow burn of restraint searing through every muscle.
I ache to claw at the scar marring my face.
An invisible pressure writhes between us, squirming, pregnant with nothing she will admit to me, well-bred chattel that she is.
“Go shower,” I snap at her, every syllable precise, lethal. “You fucking reek of everyone you’ve touched today.”
A flicker of something crosses her face—something sharp, something fleeting—but she does not speak. She does not defy me. She simply turns, her bare shoulders rigid with quiet defiance as she moves past me.
The bathroom door shuts. The lock clicks into place.
I stand there, staring at the barrier between us, my body still thrumming with hunger, with anger. The nostalgic, sugar and roses smell of her perfume stays with me—faint, maddening, a ghost of warmth I can’t touch.
My scars burn as I drag a furious, digging hand down my face, the rough texture grounding me. My jaw is so tight it threatens to crack. My cock damns me to hell, like I am not already in it.