BLOODY WEDDING, PART II
HAVEN
My husband is hiding something from me.
How do I know? Because Connor is terrible at it.
To be fair, most people who have met him in passing or aren’t as close to him as me and the remaining former Heirs are would probably disagree with that.
Connor Heyward has spent his entire life smirking his way through any trouble, looking completely harmless while plotting things that would horrify most ‘sane’ people.
He knows how to lie easily. He can deflect like a pro, and even I’m not immune to his ability to gaslight someone into believing something else entirely.
In my experience, half the reason everyone seems to underestimate him is because he’s always been careful to act like he’s incapable of taking anything seriously. But when he does… his intensity is terrifying, and his thought process even more scary.
Like how I responded to our first kiss by biting his arm.
My future husband decided that meant I marked him, and before he accepted the Order’s brand on his palm, he used his knife to carve an ‘H’ over the spot where my teeth sank into him.
Rather than cut out the flesh, like I once thought he was doing, he made it so that he had a permanent—if crude—reminder from the night he first told me he Claimed me.
That’s the Connor I’ve come to know since he stopped pretending that he hasn’t considered me his for longer than I want to think about at times. And, in the year since he forced me to come live with him, I’ve gotten to know him well enough to suspect when he’s hiding something from me.
Like now. There’s something he’s not telling me, and it’s fucking with my head.
The problem is that Connor isn’t acting obviously guilty. If he were, I’d be able to figure out what was going on easier. Instead, he’s being careful. Too careful. And that? That’s not like my Connor.
It’s the little things I’ve been noticing lately.
Recently, Bas has been coming over more frequently, crashing in the upstairs guest room that we never use.
He’s done that a couple of times since I’ve accepted that I live here, and Connor explained that the room was basically Bas’s for when he needed to get out of his own head—and his empty house—for a while.
Still, whenever I shuffle into a room where the two men are muttering together, the conversation stops.
It starts up again almost immediately, Connor insisting I join it—whether I’m up to talking that day, or I need a notepad to converse with my husband and his friend—but I can’t shake the feeling that I wouldn’t like what they were discussing.
And when Bas is gone and I ask Connor what they were talking about?
He kisses me. I once thought that he used my inability to stop myself from kissing him as a punishment; if I ‘disobeyed’, he kissed me, and while I could pretend I hated that sort of intimacy, we both know that I craved it.
Nowadays, it’s easy to distract me by gripping my jaw and taking my mouth until I forget what I was saying.
The first few times, it was easy to let him get away with it. But once I clued in to the fact that he was doing it on purpose, I decided to take matters into my own hands—and that’s how I end up straddling my husband on our bed with a knife pressed against his throat.
It’s not his precious pocketknife; even after all this time, I haven’t tried stealing that from him again.
I grabbed a sharpened paring knife from the drawer in the kitchen instead, small enough that I could hide it in my palm before I told Connor to meet me upstairs and lie down on the bed when he gets up there.
I joined him, refusing to let his charming grin sway me from getting answers, and put the edge of the knife right up against the tiny scar I gave him the night I tried to escape through the woods before he had any idea what I was going to do.
Connor’s deep blue eyes turn almost black as he realizes that I have him at my mercy. Proving that he’s just as unhinged as always, he lets out a husky chuckle, then says, “Well, well, well… this looks promising.”
Then, completely disregarding the fact that I have a knife to his throat, he rolls his hips, showing off his erection as he bumps me with it. We’re both still dressed, and I feel the rough denim of his jeans with the force of the bulge behind it as he perfectly aims to hit my clit.
I grit my teeth, glaring down at him. I’m careful not to cut him. The knife… I don’t want to hurt him. It’s more a prop than anything. A statement piece. A way to show him that I mean business.
To my twisted husband—who thinks a little bloodshed is foreplay—he believes I’m initiating sex with him.
I’m not surprised that he’s already hard. After all, this is Connor Heyward. He’s always hard when he’s around me, though there’s a chance he might explode in his pants before I get him out of them if I keep threatening him with my knife.
He leans back, propping himself up on the pillows behind him. His hands are folded behind his head, his pose leisurely and relaxed even as he arches his neck to give me better access to it.
He grins. “Been fantasizing about this for a while, huh, sweetheart? You know better. You can always have your way with me, Haven. No sharps necessary.”
In answer, I press the knife slightly harder against his skin.
His grin widens. Yeah. He likes that, doesn’t he?
Rolling my eyes, I withdraw the blade from his skin long enough to reach over him.
In our home, there are pens and notepads, markers and scraps of paper, pencils and old receipts every-fucking-where.
For the times I can’t find my voice, Connor wants to make sure I can always communicate—like now.
I grab the notepad and pen on my nightstand and hurriedly scribble one word before showing it to him:
Talk
Connor reads the word, amusement crinkling the corner of his eyes. "I can think of better uses for my mouth if you want to take those leggings and panties off."
Leaning forward, I smack the pad against his chest.
He laughs. “Maybe later then.”
Maybe. I tap the page again with my nail.
“I don’t want to talk right now,” my husband purrs. “I want to do something else with my wife.”
I know exactly what he wants to do. I gesture with my hand, indicating that that could be ‘later’, too, but I’m not about to let him put me off from this.
“Talk, Connor,” I grate out. “You never shut up. So talk. Now.”
Ugh. When it’s a while between speaking and going into a spell of quiet, I always sound rough when I use my voice again. I swallow, hoping that’ll help, and wait for Connor to respond.
He doesn’t. Not right away, at least. Instead, a fleeting expression dances across his handsome face, one of pure pride mingled with something else.
And I get it. I do. Talking still feels so strange sometimes.
Considering how vulnerable and exposed I feel when I do, I know I’ve pleased him whenever I speak out loud.
“Talk. Sure. Hi, Haven, my darling. Love you."
There’s no denying that anymore. Even so… I grumble, then snap his name. “Connor.”
You know what? That’s on me. I should’ve known better. When he gets like this, in such a teasing mood, it’s impossible to reason with him. There’s only one way to rip him out of it and get the sort of reaction I need out of him.
Pulling the knife away from his skin, I twist it, pointing it at my own throat.
Connor stills, his easy grin fading from his face. “Sweetheart.”
To be honest, I haven’t thought about killing myself once since Connor rescued me from the warehouse where I was meant to linger forgotten forever.
Instead, I tried to kill him, and while even I have to admit my attempts were half-hearted, he’s safe from my murderous urges these days.
Just like he has to know that I’m not going to slit my own throat… but it’s good to keep him on his toes.
I give him a daring look, saying without words that I’m serious, that there will be consequences if he continues to hide shit from me, and then I cut myself just enough to get his attention.
Connor sits up, lashing out his hand, wrapping his fingers around my wrist. He squeezes, and I drop the fucking knife. He scoops it up, bringing the knife to his mouth before licking the stray droplet of blood that oozed out onto the tip of it.
With my hands empty now, I cross my arms over my chest even as I stay straddling him. And then I wait.
He sighs, and I know I’ve won.
“Talk.” Connor’s sigh turns into a huff. “As if I can deny you anything, sweetheart. Fine. You want me to talk. I’ll talk.” A pause, and then, “What do you want to talk about?”
I give him a pointed stare. He knows. He has to know.
He does.
It takes a moment for him to actually say it. First, he leans up again, grabbing the knife he dropped to the mattress, tossing it to the floor. Only then does he take in another breath, exhaling roughly as he admits, “Desmond is dead.”
Oh.
I’m not the biggest fan of Desmond St. James.
I know he was one of the Heirs when we were in school, and Connor tells me that he came along on the rescue mission when I was in the empty warehouse.
He’s also the prick who all but forced Loni to date him senior year, then dumped her publicly in the cruelest way possible when it came out that she was having an affair with Adrian.
The way I see it, Loni was already seeing Adrian secretly when she started going out with Desmond—because, as an Offering, she couldn’t think of a nice way to refuse him when he asked her on a date—so it was really Desmond who was the side piece.
Of course, he didn’t see it the same, and the way he treated her is partly to blame for Loni disappearing from Harmony Heights a decade ago.