Chapter 19
Chapter nineteen
Martine Lilian Herron
Usually, I know better than to argue, and usually, I’m more inclined to behave.
But I’m lonely, tired of being cast aside and kept in the house like some delicate thing that is required to remain in her gilded cage.
I’m exhausted from trying to read between the lines of everything he won’t say.
I know the Society limits what he can share, but what about everything else?
I have questions, and he hides behind silence like it’s protection when it’s just control.
I miss school, I miss my horse. I miss my matching sweater sets and books back in my dormitory flat. I miss having a voice and using it. But now that I know what it feels like to have it taken away by the devil himself?
Salvation.
With a pettiness that shocks even me, getting a rise out of Hayden is intoxicating.
I watch the control he has over his life, his tight, organized life built on gold pedestals of perfection, and I can’t stop myself from wanting to fuck it all up.
It’s why I crave being close to him. My desire to be his bratty whore consumes me.
And I miss him while he’s away.
He towers over me on the bed, his voice edged with that sharp tone that cuts deep without ever needing to shout.
Stay where you fucking belong.
I cross my arms, lift a brow, and fire back before I can stop myself. “I will once you figure out where I belong.”
His jaw clenches, but I don’t back down. I’ve kept too much in for too long.
“Because let’s not forget, I did not come here willingly.”
I don’t know why I’m pushing him like this. I feel so unconnected, so disoriented from my old life and this new one I’ve been thrown into. I miss my brothers desperately, and I feel myself changing so quickly, so drastically into an entirely new woman. One neither Ford nor Dex would recognize.
He throws me around in a way that’s becoming too exhausting to bear. I’ve barely maintained a hold on his volatility, and I find myself failing to understand what’s holding him back from being completely with me.
I’m losing my grip on reality, and I need Hayden to remind me of my place. I feel like any time apart fractures the closeness I’ve gained with him, and I’m desperate for his intoxicating control to straighten my head out.
His expression darkens, fast. Like I’ve crossed into dangerous territory, and it stokes the fire in my belly. I can’t help but push just a little more.
“Am I even allowed to be here?” I press on, “Or am I just warming the seat until Dale is ready for it?”
I don’t know why I say it. I’m so angry at his constant unpredictability, marred by his tenderness that’s only shown at the slip of his resolve.
I see it shocks him as much as it shocks me, and still, I poke and poke until I find just a little bit more of it.
Hayden, wild and out of control, is the next best thing.
He brings his face closer to mine, nearly nose to nose. His voice drops low, sharp with fury he’s barely containing. “You’re mine,” he growls. “And that question is quite rich coming from an ungrateful brat wearing my mother's jewels.”
There’s a pulse in his temple, ticking, a storm gathering in his eyes.
“You’re my wife,” he says, each word deliberate.
I should be scared. I should shut up. But I don’t.
“Then prove it, Hayden. Because right now, it feels like you’re trying harder to protect your secrets than me.”
That does it. His eyes go wild.
“Everything I do, every goddamn thing, is for you,” he spits, putting his hand in my hair and yanking my head back so I only have the chandelier above to look at. “And I fucking hate it.”
The pressure on my scalp from his tugging my hair burns, and I cry out.
“I hate that I think about you when I’m supposed to be focused. I hate that I have to try not to check in with the house staff every half hour to ensure you're safe.” His chest rises and falls like he’s been running. “You’ve wrapped yourself around everything in me. You’re in my bloodstream now.”
Unsettled by a kind of intensity I’ve never seen in Hayden before, I retreat to familiar ground, my voice softer than it was moments ago, “How do you know I don’t feel the same?”
I’m terrified of how much I want him. His grip is painful; his eyes are wild, his teeth clenched.
“It’s making it hard to think. It's hard to breathe when you’re not around.
I don’t sleep. I don’t fucking rest. And you ask if you’re supposed to be mine?
” His voice drops, lethal now. “I made that decision long before I ever dragged you out of your parents’ estate, and way before I stamped your name on half of everything I fucking own. ”
He doesn’t stop talking. I’ve never heard him say so much, and I want to beg him not to stop.
His voice makes my thighs clench, and the words on his tongue send a pulse straight to my hardening nipples.
He is unaware how long I’ve craved this, craved hearing him unravel, letting me glimpse what’s inside his head.
“You have no idea,” he says, his voice lower now, like it’s dragging something heavy. “The things I’ve done for you.”
“Then tell me, Hayden,” I say, heart pounding.
He shakes his head, jaw tight.
“Please,” I whisper, wrapping my legs around his waist. He’s already hard, and I grind against him, shameless and desperate. The heat of him against me makes my head spin. We can’t get anything else right, but this? Him inside me? It’s the one thing that doesn’t fail.
“No.”
“Why not?”
His eyes flash, his energy shifts. I can see the wall slap back into place. The impenetrable fortress I seem only to break through when I’m on my knees for him.
“I don’t need to explain myself to you,” he growls. “I’ve done things you couldn’t stomach. Things that would make you question everything.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” I whisper.
“Then you haven’t been paying attention,” his eyes flick to mine, something sharp passing through them. “It wouldn’t matter either way, because I’d sooner kill you myself than let you go.”
“There’s nowhere I want to go!” I try to shout out, against the gasp in my throat from his fingers still pulling at my hair.
I open my mouth to answer, to argue again, but I don’t get the chance.
His other hand that isn’t tangled in my hair is at my throat, his thumb pressed just below my jaw, and his lips are on mine, hard, consuming, like he’s trying to erase the conversation altogether.
It’s not tenderness, it’s control. But maybe, for Hayden, they’re the same thing. It’s everything he can’t say, poured into the press of his mouth, the rough drag of his fingers, the way he breaks the silence without ever offering the truth.
And I let him. I let him force me to take any little fucked feeling he’ll give me, desperate and wanting for more.
He pulls back just enough to speak, his hand still at my throat, his breath hot against my cheek. Looking a little less wild, a bit more in control.
“Don’t push me like that again.”
His voice is quiet and full of a calm that means something’s about to snap.
“You have no idea what I can do to you.”
His thumb presses under my jaw, not enough to hurt, just enough to hold me still.
“You keep digging, keep testing me like this…” he leans in, his mouth brushing my ear. “I’ll break something in you you’ll never be able to repair.”
He says it like he’s already considered it. Like part of him wants to.
“Then break me, please, I’m begging you,” I huff out against his palm, trying to create some friction between where we’re joined. I’m bare underneath the t-shirt, and the feeling of rubbing myself along his black belted slacks is intoxicating.
I could cry at how he watches me. There’s no softness, just possession, just truth.
“I don’t owe you anything,” his grip stays there as a reminder. “Why else do you think I fuck you like the bratty whore you are?”
“You’re a liar,” I say, eyes locked on him. “You say you don’t owe me anything, but that’s not why you won’t tell me things. It’s because you’re afraid.”
His jaw ticks, but he doesn’t move. I can’t believe I’ve accused him of fear. I know I'm pushing too hard. Too far.
But I don’t look away. I won’t.
“You act like you hate what this is,” I whisper. “But you need it. You need me. And that scares you more than anything you’ve done.”
Still, he says nothing. He just stares, like he’s trying to decide whether to kiss me again or crush me completely.
And maybe, deep down, he doesn’t know the difference.
“You’re being mouthy,” he mutters, gaze dark, unreadable. “You think it’s going to earn you a fucking you’d enjoy?”
His thumb drags along my jaw, slow, calculating.
I nod a little too eagerly.
“It won’t, and I’m losing my patience with you, Darling.”
I open my mouth to answer, but he cuts me off, fingers tightening around my throat, stealing my breath from me.
“I didn't say you could speak.”
His tone is low and dangerous in its calm.
“I let you talk because I like hearing you unravel,” he says. “But don’t mistake that for permission to run your mouth like you know what punishment you’ll receive for it, you little brat.”
He leans in, breath hot at my ear. The Hayden I thought I was learning about earlier is gone, and my controlling husband is back in his place.
“You want to test how far that mouth of yours can go before I put it to better use?”
Then he pulls back just enough to look me in the eye. I nod slowly, wanting to please him.
“You can push me away all you want,” I whisper. “I’ll just crawl back to you.”
That’s when it happens, the crack in his shell.
Barely there, but I see it. The cold, impenetrable stare falters, just for a breath. His jaw tenses, but something raw and real shines through. Something he doesn’t know how to live with, and definitely doesn’t want me to see.
Then he grabs my chin, fingers firm, tilting my face up to his.
“Open your mouth, tongue out.”
I obey immediately.
“You don’t even know what you’re asking for,” he mutters.