Chapter 30
As I wrapped myself in a pastel-blue scarf, my thumb stroked over my favorite photo of us on my phone.
It was from our weekend trip to Cape Cod a week ago.
My big brute snapped the picture mid-peck to my cheek, his midnight eyes scintillating from the sunset’s glow and a secret tilt to his lips reserved just for me.
It was the best two days of my life. My husband held my hand as we walked down Commercial Street, peeking into art galleries and little shops while snacking on fried clams and lobster rolls.
That night after dinner, we lay around a private fire on Race Point Beach and shared stories from our childhood.
Then he made love to me to the sound of lapping waves and crackling wood, brine spray breezing over us.
It was the perfect date I’d always hoped for.
“We can go back there soon, if you wish.”
I startled at Cillian’s sudden nearness. He leaned over the backrest of the couch, and the bristles of his beard grazed my cheek. Any annoyance from his conversation with his brothers was smoothed away, all his aggression seemingly purged from his system. Only softness remained.
“Anything to make you happy.” He kissed the corner of my mouth, and a knot twisted in my stomach. “Come on. Get your shoes on. Arthur said you wanted to go out for a walk by the harbor. Then we can settle on where to eat for dinner.”
None of that sounded like someone controlling my ins and outs, and it was screwing with my head.
“Wait.” I caught his arm. “We need to talk.”
“Ah, the famous words men don’t like to hear,” he teased. His lighthearted attitude didn’t help.
“Would you”—my hand fluttered over the cushion beside me—“sit down?”
A divot shaped between his brows, and he circled around to the couch.
“I have to confess something to you.”
His hand crept up my bare calf. “Oh?”
His touch wormed up higher and higher, past my knee, then halfway up my thigh. Each scratch of his callouses zinged a pulse of warmth to my core. I clamped his teasing hand down.
Chewing the inside of my bottom lip, I drew a circle on the couch with the tip of my finger. The leather curved and creased with my movements, never quite smoothing out again until I forced it to, just like our marriage or would-be relationship.
I’d never been the type to hold in what I had to say. Honesty was the best policy, that was my motto. Yet with my mouth gaped wide open, the truth just refused to spill out. I’m your wife. I’m Alizé De Villier.
I felt like a fish gulping water. Maeve’s question spun at the forefront of everything else.
What if he abandons you again? That meant losing everything from the last two months.
Every lustful gaze, every teasing word, every delicious pounding of his cock, every tender touch.
I wasn’t sure I could take it if his affections switched back to indifference.
“So?”
“I know…” I blew out a hefty breath, crossing my arms, then sweeping my hands up and down them. “I’ve always known that you’re married.”
There, I said it, sort of. A weight lifted off my chest.
Well, it did, until Cillian tossed his head back and guffawed.
“That it?” he asked.
“What do you mean, that it?”
His laughter calmed to shoulder-shaking snickers, whereas tension now clenched my jaw, crisped my guts, and stewed in the pit of my stomach.
“With how you’re panicking, I expected worse.”
“How is the fact that you are married and with me a laughing matter?”
“Look, sweetheart.” He cupped my face. “You’re the apple of my eye. You and only you. No one else.”
I shoved him away and leaped off the couch. I didn’t know what I expected of him, but it certainly wasn’t for him to treat this like a joke.
“That is not as reassuring as you think it is. Am I supposed to be thrilled at being the other woman?”
“Funny how that bothers you now, if you’ve always known. Didn’t stop you from coming on my cock, now did it?”
I cringed. “You’re an asshole.”
He shrugged. “You knew that before you stalked me.”
I groaned and buried my face in my hands. The couch rustled, and his arms circled me in what should have been a supportive hug, but only made me feel dirty.
“It’s not cheating,” he said, calm as ever, prying my fingers off my face one by one, “if you have a clear, open-marriage written agreement. There’s zero exclusivity, zero contact, and zero affection.
It’s nothing more than a contract between business partners.
A signed paper the government declared was worth more than it should be. ”
Coldness prickled down my spine.
“And if I tell you I know your wife?”
“I don’t have a wife.” He kissed my fingertips.
“You’re married.”
“Yes.” He kissed my jaw.
“Then you have a wife.”
“No. That word implies ownership. Possession. Obsession. Care. Trust. None of which I have for that woman.”
I barely felt his kiss on the other side of my jaw.
“That woman?” I whispered, disbelief coating the word. My ears rang with the crack rippling through my chest. He spoke of her—me—like I was nothing more than an afterthought.
“Alizé De Villier.”
For the first time in front of me, he said my name. Not with adoration. Not with respect. He uttered it with barely restrained disdain and contempt. It burned, and I wished he’d never said it at all.
Icy shards slithered between my ribs and twisted.
I rubbed over the gut-wrenching ache hunching me forward, too focused on keeping the pain from contorting my face.
I knew this wasn’t about us as we were now, but it was still me, and I couldn’t help wondering what would happen between us when he finally realized Alice and Alizé were one and the same.
“Do you know what she looks like?” I whispered.
“No. Never cared to.” He cupped my face. “But you, Jaysus, you’re beautiful.”
I turned my head to avoid another touch of his lips.
“So, if you passed her on the street, you wouldn’t know?”
His brows furrowed, eyes bouncing over mine.
“Aye, that’s right.”
“She could be somebody close to you, in your entourage, and you would never know.”
He snorted.
“Why is that funny?” I asked.
“You’ve seen the company I keep.” Pretty much only men, granted. “She’d have to work for me, and that elitist French doll would never stoop that low, not when she can lounge about, spending her millions in inheritance.”
Wow, was that how he saw me?
“But what if she was? What if she’d gotten close to you? What if she was someone you knew?”
He swept a strand of hair out from over my eyes. “Impossible.”
I barely restrained my growl. I was going to strangle him if he kept this up.
“Why?”
“You’re asking a lot of questions about another woman.”
“Just answer it, Cillian.”
His fingers tightened around my jaw, and he rolled his hips against my stomach. “Your fight is getting me hard.”
I ignored the digging pressure of his dick against my belly-button ring. “Tell me why it’s impossible.”
He groaned and crowded me against every hard edge of his chest, his thighs casing mine in. “You want to know how I’d know?”
His words fanned against my skin, spreading goosebumps up and down my neck.
“Yes,” I murmured.
“Because…” His lips brushed up my neck to my temple. “The woman is incapable of anonymity. That woman loves attention. God knows, she tried hard enough to get mine over the years.”
He just kept laying it on, hit after hit. He wasn’t wrong, but the bruises piled on all the same.
“But let’s say she did.”
“She wouldn’t.”
“If she did. If you knew her. If you liked her company.” Another snort came out of him and mocked me. “And after all that, she finally told you who she was, what would you do?”
He shrugged. “Simple. Cut ties and toss her out. Make my message clear, if I have to.”
“That easy?”
“If she hid who she was to get close, aye, absolutely. I won’t care for people I can’t trust.”
A crack splintered through my rib cage, and I tried to breathe through the ache. “Is-is…is it because she’s French? Or a De Villier? Or because she’s rich? Or-or—”
“Alice, calm down. Why so much about her?” He tilted my face back and took in the hurt etched into my features that I couldn’t hide. “You know her. How?”
This was my opening. I could have told him exactly who I was, but everything in this conversation fit in with Maeve’s doubts.
It meant denying myself these moments with him for the rest of my life.
It meant finally admitting I was giving up on what I’d come here for.
And for what? To risk him turning his back on me, like he’d just admitted he’d do, or risk not getting that divorce and having a shot at the love life I craved.
Because I did—I craved it down to my cellular composition.
I wasn’t ready to give this up, not when I finally got to jump into the fairy tale myself.
“I’ve always known her. Ever since I can remember, it has been her and me. Me and her.” That much truth I could give him.
He grunted, slowly sliding in behind me, arm curved around my waist, the other hand stroking down my jaw. “Did she tell you to come here? After me?”
“Tell me? No. I was curious.”
“About?”
He clasped my neck and inched his palm up, forcing my head back a little to nose my chin. It was such a soft touch in contradiction to the pressure of his fingers.
“I wanted to know why you stayed married to her when she’s practically begging you for a divorce.”
His huff against my chin practically burned with the way my nerves flared. Each puff of breath shocked its way down in a flood of wetness to my pussy. When did this conversation slip away from me?
“You jealous, síbhean? You want what she has?”
He trailed his tongue up my jawline and nibbled my earlobe. I hissed and pulled away.
“Not if that’s all I get. I would never be satisfied with that. Ever.”
He chuckled. “I know. You’re my Alice. You’d never compromise like that.” I winced, because that was exactly what I’d done seven years ago. “I promise you’ll never have to.”
“Difficult to do as the other woman.”
His teeth nicked my jaw. “Not for long.”
I jerked in his hold and twisted around to face him. “What does that mean?”