She was so angry that she could barely think straight, and though she fought futilely to be released, he refused to relinquish his hold of her wrist, forcing her to keep pace with his incredibly long, determined strides. It took her making a sound of distress before he deigned to stop, and Eden took the opportunity to wrench her wrist from his grasp. In a fit of absolute white hot rage, she swung her hand and it cracked satisfyingly with his cheek. Thunder rumbled in the distance, echoing Eden’s emotions. The late night crowd turned curious eyes to them but all Eden was aware of was the blood rushing between her ears and the intense burn radiating from the palm of her hand, throbbing from the sheer impact of the slap. But good God that had felt good! She’d never been one for violence and even as she saw the blistering red imprint of her hand on the side of his face she was instantly overcome with guilt, but that guilt turned into quiet triumphant as he looked at her in stunned disbelief. That one expression to Eden was worth her impromptu act of violence.

“You hit me.”

“It’s not less than what you deserved,” she rebutted, fire burning in her veins.

He said nothing for a time, but looked at her with an intensity that made her squirm; Eden however held her head high, refusing to be browbeaten. When he moved, it was with a fluidity that had her taking a step back, afraid that he would grab her again. But he didn’t, instead he marched the few steps that led to his car and smoothly held the door open for her.

“Get in the car.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she returned, stubborn pride had her in a chokehold. “I have a shift to finish, and I have my own ride so you can just—”

“Please.” That one beseeching word, uttered so quietly it disappeared on the warm summer wind, sent Eden’s world skittering to a startling halt. She raised her lush lashes to gape at him, her golden gaze searching for a hint of the raw emotion she’d heard in that one singular word. And there, just beyond the scope of his too green eyes, amid the darkness that seemed so inherent in him, Eden saw his vulnerability. It was only for an eternal second, but it was there, hidden within the haunting shadows that barred anyone from breaking through the impenetrable walls that surrounded him. In all the years she’d known him, Dominic had shown Eden only one side to his personality: indomitable, overbearing and controlling on a constant cycle, wash, lather, rinse, repeat. So for her to catch this glimpse of this atypical emotion was startling.

His mother took everything away from him, including his humanity…

Lucas’s words played like scratched vinyl in Eden’s mind further adding to the difficulty of maintaining her resolve to deny him. It was with a long, deep sigh that she ultimately found herself ensconced in the luxuriant, deep burgundy leather of his sports car. Eden waited for him to say something, anything to break the suppressing silence that vibrated in the space between them, but he remained silent. As she tossed a perfunctory glance his way, she took in his hardened profile, and while tension tautened his entire body, she saw the effect in his bloodless knuckles as his grip around the steering wheel tightened considerably.

“You had no right to do what you did back there,” she finally forced to say, needing to break the silence. “I agreed to remain your wife, but I’ll be damned if I let you continue to treat me like your property. I am done enabling your sickening need to demean me at every turn.”

“That place is not somewhere you should be working. You demean yourself by working there,” he quietly countered. “It is beneath you.”

“It’s the only choice you’ve left me.”

“Because your place is at home with our son. Why work when there is no need for it?”

“I like working. In fact, before you came in and ruined what I had, I was happy working at the brokerage firm. But then again my happiness has never mattered to you, so why should it now?”

“Your happiness…” he trailed off, voice weighed with emotion that he would not convey. He said nothing after that until the car drove past the wrought iron gates and slid quietly into the circular driveway. Eden barely gave him time to stop the car before she jumped out, her shapely legs carrying her as fast and as far away from him as physically possible. But he quickly closed in on her, long legs eating up the head start she’d gained on him. When he caught her, it was to draw her into his inescapable hold, his arms spanned her waist, and  wrapped tightly around her with his unyielding strength. And before she could protest, he took possession of her lips, covering her mouth with a desperation that thundered in his chest. The whimper she made, from deep in the back of her throat, was a protest that thawed to helplessness; the deep, gnawing need to have him close, to have him possess her this way, was all that mattered. He tasted of whiskey and apples and something distinctively Dominic, a taste that she feared she was now addicted to. While she clung to him, Eden followed his lead, where his tongue brushed up languorously along her own she reciprocated, the sensual feel of their tongues melding elicited a groan from him and she sucked in a breath as he practically picked her up so that only her sneakered toes skimmed the waxed floor.

He dove in deep, kissing her with savage hunger, the luscious strokes of his tongue and lips were unimaginably provocative. In a move driven purely by passion, Eden reached between them to grasp at the erection that stabbed at her abdomen, and he sucked in a breath, breathing her lust into him. His hand came over hers, wrapped around her hand and held it there, over his hard, thick, straining erection that pulsed between them. The air between them was like it fuel, and with only a spark, it would detonate, blowing them both to smithereens. Doing something that shocked them both, he shoved away from her with enough strength that he stumbled back a few steps. “If I am to respect the terms of the contract, you cannot do that again, Eden,” he warned jaggedly, his breath coming out sharp and fast. He looked every bit as ruffled as she felt, if not more so. “There is only so much provocation a man can take before he is driven to devour his temptation,” he pronounced, his voice returning to normal, but the color that remained high on his cheeks was telling of his current state. To see him so affected, so undeniably unraveled was entirely refreshing for Eden.

“I…thank you…”

He tossed her a disparaging look; the sneer that tugged his full mouth upwards was not pleasant. “For not devouring you like the big, bad monster you’ve made me out to be?”

“I didn’t make you out to be anything that you weren’t already, Dominic,” she snapped, not understanding him at all. How could he kiss her so thoroughly one second and be this condescending jerk the next? He mystified her in the same way that he frustrated her and made her wish for a blunt object with which to knock him out with when he behaved like the proverbial asshole, like now for instance. Deciding that she’d had her fill, Eden turned on her heel to leave.

“It matters,” he called after her and stupidly she turned to find him standing right in front of her.

“What?”

“Your happiness,” he began roughly, “it matters.”

Eden regarded in him silence, unsure of how to take the admission, but knowing by the expression on his face that it hadn’t been easy to admit. She didn’t trust that he wasn’t playing her, but what more could he possibly want from her when he had exactly where he wanted her? With the many chances he’d had to proceed in taking her treacherous body to bed, he’d shown astonishing restraint, the likes of which Eden would’ve thought impossible a year ago. “Why now? When it never had before?”

“You had my wealth. You were happy with what I gave you.”

Eden stiffened. “You can’t possibly be that clueless, Dominic.”

“You married me for my money,” he imparted with biting scorn, the sardonic angling of his dark brow daring her to refute the claim.

“I married you because I was desperate, yes, and I needed your money to get me out of debt. But do you honestly believe money, jewelry, even this mansion was what I needed to make me happy? Do you honestly believe that this is what I wanted my marriage to be like? This cold, unfeeling, back and forth that has left nothing but resentment and hate? A husband is supposed to love, cherish and protect his wife, not parade her around like arm candy to prove his manhood. Do you have any idea how what it felt like when you made perform in front of your friends?”

She was so furious that she was shaking from it. Years of pent up resentment burbled up like vomit, burning her throat, impatient to find its mark. She hated the tears of frustration that stung her eyes and made her look weak in front of him, but she persevered, needing to get her point across, needing him to understand an ounce of the animosity that thrashed through her veins. “Not once in the five years that I’ve known you have you made me feel anything but degraded and worthless, and trust me, I don’t blame you completely for it, because I stupidly allowed you to treat me that way, to take away my self-worth. Did you even ask yourself, once in the year that I was away, why I left? Why I needed to get away from you? Because it sickened me to be around you. It hurt, in the worse way possible to be around a man who thought of me as nothing more than two convenient holes.” She angrily swiped at her cheeks with trembling fingers and met his shadowed gaze. “You didn’t know me when you married me, Dominic, and you know me even less now.” She spun on her heel and ran up the grand staircase, disappearing around the corner soon after.

Dominic had lost count of how much he’d had to drink, but with every trek made to his liquor cabinet he found himself stumbling a little more each time, until he grabbed the nearly emptied decanter and plopped down into the high back wing chair that served as his final resting place. He’d believed getting drunk to the point of incoherence would’ve tempered the incessant echoes of memories knocking at his temples, but the finely aged whiskey only intensified those emotions, those unwanted memories, and Eden’s condemning words served as the battering ram that shattered the dam, allowing hell itself to run rampant inside Dominic’s core. There was nothing good about him, nothing soft and sweet that he could provide for anyone. Sentimentality, love and anything resembling the gentle side of human emotion had been beaten, burned and scared out of him by the only person in this world who should’ve been the one to protect him. The most harrowing part about it all was that Dominic knew he’d deserved what his mother had done to him. There’d been something inherently wrong with him to provoke such mistreatment.  Dominic was damaged, rotten to the core, and he’d been dealing with that truth for as long as he could remember. He’d shut down everything and abandoned what remained of his heart in the bareness. He hadn’t recognized the emptiness, the desolation, until recently when he’d taken Liam into his hands and held a part of himself. He hadn’t realized how much he’d hungered, how deeply he’d craved that of which he’d never had. His son was the catalyst, but there was only having him here, being able to see and hold him, stirred a change in Dominic that he now wanted but did not know how to grasp it.

In the pin drop silence, with nothing interfering with his self-reflection but the sound of his own breathing, Dominic could barely attempt to contemplate the atrocities he’d committed against the woman who’d entrenched herself into his bloodstream so thoroughly. It had been easy to brand her the coldhearted gold digger because then he would not need to reflect on his own insecurities, on his own failings as a man, a man who still very much had the mentality of the child who’d been locked away in that crawlspace years ago, for days on end. He’d purposely mistreated her, manifested his internal agonies on her so that he wouldn’t need to face the issues at hand. She’d been his own personal whipping girl, the more he’d demeaned her, the more he’d demoralized her, the easier it had been to hide from his own demons.

His cowardice sickened him. He’d defiled her in his this room, had allowed other men to lay eyes on her while he’d forced her to pleasure him, and she’d done it because he’d left her no other choice. The scope of his depravity incurred self-loathing the likes of which Dominic had not felt since childhood. In one swift move, he threw the glass with enough force that it shattered against the adjacent wall. He swiped a frustrated hand across his face, he’d destroyed her…them, a marriage he had not wanted but was now desperately clinging to because, despite the misery he’d imparted, it was the only thing sustaining him. She and the boy were the only things that filled the emptiness.

* * *

“Don’t be mad, but I’m the one who told Dominic about you working at Carver’s,” Jenna admitted shamefacedly to her best friend. With the day proving to be a nice, mild one, Jenna had decided to tag along with Eden while she ran errands around town. They’d done some grocery shopping, buying a few things for Liam and were only now returning from visiting Eden’s mother’s grave. It was later in the afternoon now, and with Liam conked out from his productive day, Eden put him down in his bassinet in the living room. She’d brought the baby monitor with her and set it down on the marble island top in the kitchen. Greeted with silence, Jenna carefully observed the other woman to glean her reaction, and if Eden was at all irritated by the admission, she did not let on as she helped one of the house staff unload the groceries they’d purchased. “Eden, did you hear me? I said I was the one who told Dominic where you worked.”

When Eden finally turned to look at Jenna, her face remained blank. “I heard you. I’m just waiting for you to tell me why you would do that.”

Jenna flushed. “Well, I didn’t realize it was some big secret you were keeping from him,” she said defensively from her position by the counter. “I mean, I know how things are between you guys, and I’m sorry for blabbing. It’s just, I was trying to thank him for the spa day and shopping spree. I assumed he paid for it, and it just fell out of my mouth.”

“I asked you to leave it alone, Jenna. If I had wanted him to know where I was working, I would’ve told him. It wasn’t your secret to tell. I didn’t realize I had to tell you not to interfere in my relationship with him.”

“Okay.” She stretched out the word, not at all accustomed to this caustic side of her friend, who typically wasn’t bothered by much and simply brushed things off with ease. The silence that stretched between them was awkward enough without the weird look the maid was tossing between them. “Alright, I’m sorry. Maybe I overstepped my boundaries a little bit. It was an accident, we were in the pool and I—”

“Wait, you were in the pool? Together?” Eden asked slowly, the incredulous look on her face would’ve been comical if she wasn’t so serious. “What the hell, Jenna?”

Jenna was beginning to regret the conversation. It wasn’t going at all like she’d expected, and the more she revealed, the angrier Eden became. “Excuse us for a minute.” Reaching out to take a hold of Eden’s elbow, she drew her away from the nosy maid. When they were a considerable distance away, Jenna looked at her friend. “Eden—” she began, but was immediately cut off.

“Tell me I’m wrong in what I’m thinking. Tell me you’re not trying to start something with him.”

“I’m not!” she protested sharply, even though the heightened color in her cheeks indicated otherwise. “It was hot, he was in the pool with Liam, and I joined them. Nothing happened. I wasn’t trying anything. My God, you know me—”

Eden pulled her arm away. “Yes, I know you and I know how opportunistic you can be!”

“Why are you so angry? For someone who says she wants a divorce, you’re sure as hell possessive of someone you claim you don’t want,” Jenna fired back accusingly, holding that mirror right up to Eden so that she could see her hypocrisy reflecting back at her. “Look, Eden, I’m sorry for telling him where you worked and for trying to interfere with your life. It was an accident and shouldn’t have happened. And I know you probably think I’m trying to start something with Dominic, but you couldn’t be more wrong about that. I would never betray our friendship like that.” Jenna wasn’t being one-hundred percent honest, and although she could pretty much bullshit a lot of people, convincing herself to swallow the crap she was spewing was a little harder. Okay, so maybe she had attempted to seduce Eden’s husband, and maybe she’d believed, for just one insane moment, that if Eden divorced Dominic she could expertly position herself to take her place in his life when Eden was gone, if as nothing else than someone to warm his bed. But really, those thoughts had been conjured by sheer lunacy, nothing worth entertaining for longer than the moment it had lasted. Aside from the fact that Dominic had clearly seen through her advances in the pool and had immediately shot her down, it had dawned on Jenna that she couldn’t possibly jeopardize her friendship with Eden for a shot at nothing. Eden mattered too much to her.

Eden released a drawn out sigh and threaded her fingers through her layered shoulder length hair. “What Dominic and I have is…it’s complicated. There are things he’s done to me that I’m not sure I can forgive, but I’m still married to him and until he and I sign those divorce papers, he’s still my husband. He can do whatever or whoever he wants after we’re divorced.”

“Do you… care about him?” Jenna asked slowly, knowing the sensitivity of the subject.

Eden didn’t answer immediately, but rather took her time to ponder on that question. Did she care about Dominic? The answer should’ve been a resounding “No”, but it was more complicated than that, more complex than the slight shade of grey in their otherwise black and white world, making it difficult for her to answer so abruptly. How could she care for someone who’d treated her so abominably? Someone who had kept her at arm’s length, rarely ever displaying a side of himself that hadn’t been steeped in cruelty? But then one could argue that he’d been rather cordial as of late, the slight glimpses of gentleness he’d recently displayed towards her could count for something. But wasn’t he quick in turning into the contemptible ape at the drop of a hat?

The truth was that Eden simply had no idea how she felt towards Dominic. Every moment she was in his company, she teetered precariously on that line of contempt for him, but it never shoved her quite over to hatred. She hated, with every fiber of her being, how he’d treated her, but she couldn’t bring herself to hate the man. Wasn’t it said that the ones you care about are the ones capable of hurting you the most? If there wasn’t one minuscule part of her that cared for Dominic then his actions would not have cut her this deeply, where the hurt sank to the marrow.

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly, her hushed tone conveying her confusion and frustration with the matter. “Like I said, it’s complicated. The sad part is we’ve been married for five years, and we don’t even know each other.”

“Do you want to know him? I mean with all that’s happened between you two, do you think there could ever be anything there?”

Eden bit her bottom lip. “I don’t know, Jenna.” She sighed again. “All I know is that Dominic scares me. He scares me because he has this horrible ability to hurt me so badly and I can’t trust myself around him. Opening myself up, even just a little bit, is like inviting him in to break me again. I’m not changing my mind about the divorce; I think it’s the best thing to do for me and for him.”

“Well, whatever you decide to do, I’m here for you. Are we…are we good, Eden?” she asked hesitantly.

Eden smiled slowly. “I overreacted. I’m sorry. And I should’ve told you I was the one who paid for your little day of fun.”

Jenna grinned. “Thank you, by the way. You really shouldn’t have done it, but I appreciate it. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“So should I start looking for apartments for us, since we only have, like, four months left here?”

“Yeah, sure. Something small and affordable for now, I guess.”