Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 120475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 482(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 482(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
When I get home, the house is empty. Silent. My body is too tight and my head too full of all the ways this could go sideways.
I pace the living room, rolling my shoulders and cracking my neck. My pulse pounds, my body primed for battle.
My phone rings. “Moira?” I bark into the receiver.
There’s a pause, then a confused voice. It’s a parishioner. Just the phone tree, asking me to arrange a hospital visit later this week.
I clench my teeth so hard my jaw aches. It takes everything in me to shove Father Blackwood into place, forcing my voice into something smooth and reassuring as I make pastoral assurances that yes, I will visit, yes, I’ll be there, yes, my prayers are with them.
I nearly drop the phone when a sleek, overpriced red car glides into the lot outside.
Moira.
I cut off the parishioner with a quick, “My apologies, I have another incoming call,” and hang up before they can respond.
She’s here.
I move to the window, standing just behind the curtain, watching her step out like she hasn’t shattered every piece of my sanity these last couple of days.
Whose fucking car is that?
Not hers.
A man’s? A rich man’s?
The idea slams into my gut like a fist. I shake it off because I know Moira. She’s not like that. But then, what is she like anymore? Because she sure as hell isn’t the woman who whispered confessions into my skin and heard mine in return.
She opens the door and steps inside, her eyes locking onto mine like she expected me to be waiting.
She exhales long and slow, raking her gaze over me, and I do the same. Her hair’s twisted into some messy attempt at a bun, but strands have fallen loose. Her dress is wrinkled, her makeup smeared. She looks… tired.
And fucking gorgeous.
My hands twitch. I want to grab her, pin her, hold her still, and make her explain what the fuck is going on in that head of hers.
“Are you all right?” The words come out rough, edged in something lethal. I step closer.
She lifts a hand, stopping me. “I’m fine.”
Liar.
“I’ve been calling—”
She shrugs. “I lost my phone out clubbing last night.”
“Clubbing?”
Her leg bounces, fingers flipping the key fob like it’s a toy instead of a weapon that’s gutting me.
But she doesn’t look manic, necessarily. Or drunk, or high, or anything else that could easily explain her erratic behavior.
“I was gonna just ghost you,” she says, casual as anything, “but I’m trying to be better now. Figured you deserved more than that, so—”
She inhales, meets my eyes, then drops the fucking hammer.
“Bye, Bane. Thanks for all the tumbles.”
I go still.
She wrestles the ring off her finger, presses it into my palm, and turns like she’s already gone.
I stare at the ring. The same cheap silver ring she giggled about when I slid it onto her finger in Vegas. The same ring she’s refused to take off since we got back.
The same ring she’s trying to pretend meant nothing.
The door’s still open.
This is what she had planned.
To walk in, break my fucking heart, and leave. Just like that.
Not happening.
I reach the door before she can step through it, grab her wrist, and spin her back into my chest. She gasps, glaring up at me, but I don’t let go.
“What the hell do you mean?” My voice is low and dangerous. “You’re my wife.”
She flinches, then tries to steel herself, lifting her chin. “We both know that was just make-believe for your job. So you wouldn’t get fired. It wasn’t real.”
I exhale through my nose, slow and controlled, but inside, a storm is building.
“Not real?” I press her back into the doorframe, my body caging hers. “It felt pretty fucking real when you tied me to the bed after we got married, and we spilled our every secret to each other. It felt real when I had my cock so deep in you I was tickling your cervix, and you massaged my prostate until I came so fucking hard I almost blacked out. It felt real when I ate you out so completely you wept and called me your god.”
She swallows, throat bobbing, and I see it. The flicker of doubt. The crack in the armor she’s trying so damn hard to keep in place.
She’s running. And I need to know why.
“You think you can just walk away?” My voice is softer now, but it’s no less lethal. “After everything?”
Her lips part, but she says nothing.
I lean in, my breath a whisper against her skin. “You belong to me, Moira.”
Her breath shudders, but she still doesn’t move. Doesn’t push me away.
Because she knows it’s true. Still, she’s threatening to go. But I don’t fucking let go of what’s mine.
I yank her all the way inside the house, slamming the door shut so hard the hinges rattle. The house trembles with the force of it, but she’s trembling harder, breathless, chest rising and falling like she already knows what’s coming.