“ARE YOU SURE EVERYTHING’S OKAY?” Emily asked.
I adjusted my collar and gave her a tight smile. “It’s just a formality.”
My colleague was young and hungry. Still trying to make a name for herself and change the world, and because of that, she didn’t argue with what I asked of her. “I’m happy to take on his case, should it ever come down to that, as long as the client is willing.”
It was a conversation I’d need to have with Emmanuel, but I didn’t want to jump the gun. For now, I was just getting my ducks in a row.
“I should let you get back to the party,” I told her.
She nodded, and I looked toward the picnic table where I’d left Gypsy. It didn’t surprise me that it was empty, but it did surprise me when I found her talking to Vincent.
“Excuse me.” I nodded to Emily.
We went our separate ways, my sights set straight on the little brat who was currently making every facet of my life more complicated than it needed to be. Gypsy was oblivious to the wolf at her back door, and as I drew closer, I understood why. She wasn’t just talking to Vincent, she was working him.
Her body language was all wrong. Soft, pliable, charming. All the things she never gave freely, yet she was giving to him. Her laughter was vibrant, and her eyes were hungry. If I hadn’t seen her slip into this second layer of skin before, I wouldn’t even recognize her.
Vincent was a colleague, and I respected him, but he was also widely known to be overindulgent in his carnal pleasures, and right now, he wasn’t backing down from my goddamn wife. My hands balled into fists when Gypsy touched his arm. She hadn’t ever touched me that way. Not intentionally. And even if I knew it meant nothing to her—this was simply a game she was playing—it fucking bothered me.
It shouldn’t have. And I shouldn’t have let my temper get the best of me, but that’s exactly what I did.
“Gypsy.” My voice sliced through the space between them, and both of their heads swiveled in my direction.
“Lucian.” Vincent cleared his throat and took a reproachful step back from my wife. “I was just keeping your girl company while—”
I wrapped my fingers around her waist and laid claim to her with a grip she wouldn’t escape. “Did I ask you to keep her company?”
Vincent’s jaw slackened, and he held up both hands in a weak attempt to pacify me. “I’m sorry, Lucian. I meant no offense. Honestly.”
“We’re leaving.”
Vincent mumbled a quick goodbye, and I led Gypsy back to the parking lot. Once we were out of earshot, she tried to pull away, but I didn’t let go.
“What is your problem?” she hissed.
“Don’t play dumb with me, pet. It really isn’t becoming of you.”
Her eyes turned a flinty gray as she turned her nose up at me. “Have I told you today that you’re an asshole?”
I opened the door to the Demon and hoisted her inside, forcing her buckle into place and securing her in her seat.
“I’m not a toddler.” She smacked my hands away. “I can do it myself.”
I leaned down into her face and grabbed her chin. “Then maybe you should stop acting like one.”
“Maybe you should stop acting like a fucking prick!”
I had to take a step back to cool myself off because if I didn’t, I would punish her in anger, and that wasn’t what she needed. I tried to remember that when I got inside the car and started the ignition. But the entire drive home, she kept at it. She called me every name that her defiant mouth could think of and then some. I’d already decided I would need to call Ace to babysit her, but the minute we walked in the door, she was at my throat again.
“There isn’t a single good thing about you,” she shouted. “That’s why nobody likes you.”
“Go to the bedroom,” I ordered. “Stay there until I tell you otherwise.”
She stood her ground, forcing me to acknowledge every spiteful word she threw my way. “How about no. How about I hate you, and I don’t want to be married to you.”
I took a deep breath and tried to remember why she was doing this. Gypsy didn’t know how to deal with her emotions in a healthy way. She only knew how to lash out, and once we both calmed down, we could discuss this rationally.
“What’s the matter, Lucian?” she taunted. “Are you so weak that you can’t even fight with me?”
She could have said anything, but she chose to say that, not knowing it would be the thing to push me over the edge. I struck out like a snake and wrapped my hands around both of her arms, dragging her against me before I forced her chin up to meet my gaze. “Is that what you think?”
“Yes,” she spat. “You aren’t half the man Vincent is. You should have left me there with him.”
I wasn’t proud to admit that I knew exactly what I was doing when I dragged her down the hall and into the bedroom, forcing her onto her knees. “Undress.”
She glared up at me but didn’t dare try to move. “Fuck you.”
“Have it your way.”
I hauled her up onto the bed and pinned her there with my body while I secured her wrists and ankles to the bed posts with the ties I’d picked out for that week. She fought me every step of the way, and I enjoyed it.
I enjoyed it so much that my cock felt like cement in my trousers as I cut her clothing from her body and tossed it to the floor. When it was done, I stepped back to look at the beautiful mess I created. She was at my mercy now. Naked and spread wide for me, her chest heaving, her beautiful features tainted with fear. I’d finally unleashed the monster I tried so hard to hide from her.
“Lucian.” All the fight had gone out of her voice when she looked up at me with kitten eyes. “What are you doing?”
I didn’t answer. In truth, I couldn’t move at all because my eyes were on her pussy. The scent of her fear and the moisture I saw on her delicate pink lips inflamed a craving I didn’t know how to suffocate anymore. I wanted to fuck her mercilessly. I wanted to plunge my dick inside her tight little hole over and over again until I stuffed her full of my come.
Her breasts were heaving, and her body was shaking, and I wanted her more in that moment than I could ever remember wanting anything else in my life. I longed to torment her. To punish her and teach her exactly how weak I wasn’t. I wanted to taste the tears she cried for me while I fucked her so hard she wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week.
She sensed the change in me. Gypsy knew how to spot a predator, and right now, that was me. She yanked against the restraints, the fabric chafing her wrists. Her panic rose when her eyes locked onto mine. Her breaths became shallow. Her pupils larger. Goose bumps filled the exposed spaces of her skin.
When I tied her up like this, I knew how it would affect her. But in the depths of her panic attack, my vindication slipped away. There was no glory in exposing her vulnerabilities the way she always seemed to expose mine. And when she started hyperventilating and shaking her head back and forth, it all came crashing down on me.
I did this to her.
Because I was still a monster, and I always would be.
I moved to her side, frantically trying to untie her, which was difficult when she was thrashing with all her force. It took me longer than it should have. I’d had years of practice, but suddenly, I felt as unskilled as the day I first experimented with the dark side of my desires.
“Gypsy.”
I tried to get through to her as I pulled her into my arms and cocooned her against my chest, but there was a disconnect I couldn’t breach. She was despondent. Broken. In the span of a few minutes, we had both regressed twenty years. The only thing I could do was rock her back and forth, whispering apologies that weren’t ever going to be enough. Her tears soaked into my skin, a long overdue event, but one that never should have happened this way.
“Talk to me, pet,” I encouraged. “Tell me what I can do to fix it.”
“Nothing,” she sobbed. “I hate you. I hate this situation. The only thing you can do is let me go.”
I held her tighter. “You know I can’t do that.”
“Why?” she pleaded. “I don’t even know why you’re doing this. One minute you act like you want me, and the next you’re with someone else.”
Her words turned every muscle in my body to stone as clarity sank into the pit of my stomach. Emily. She’d seen me with Emily, and that’s what triggered her. I should have known better. I should have realized that behind her wrath, there was something else, and that something else was jealousy.
A warm feeling filled my chest, but it was quickly replaced with sorrow. I couldn’t blame her for being confused. I hadn’t been clear with her, and I kept overstepping my boundaries, but moving forward, I would have no choice but to set the record straight.
I tipped her chin up and met her glassy eyes. My thumb dragged over her cheeks and wiped her tears away, and I ached to kiss her again. To give her assurances that weren’t true or realistic.
“Emily is a colleague, and nothing more,” I told her. “We were discussing a case. But you are right to be confused. I’ve been giving you mixed signals, and for that, I apologize.”
“I don’t understand,” she murmured. “Why are you with me? You act like you want me and then—”
“I do want you.” I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against hers. “I want you so fucking much sometimes it physically hurts. But it wouldn’t be right to take you. And the things I like… I can’t ask them of you. It was never my intention to consummate this marriage.”
She didn’t respond. I could feel the tension in her body, but I wanted to know what she was thinking. I wanted her thoughts, her feelings. It was a selfish desire, and one I couldn’t act on.
“What kind of things do you like?” she breathed.
“Things I couldn’t ask of you.” My grip on her deepened. “Things I wouldn’t ask of you.”
“Tell me,” she begged. “I just want to know.”
I sighed. “I can’t tell you, pet. It’s hard to explain. The only way I could think of… is to show you.”
A storm reeled in the gray landscape of her eyes as determination grew roots in her soul. “Then show me.”