Logan gives Barron’s hair a quick tussle. “Burger Hut is giving out prizes with every kid’s meal.”
The boys dance and shout with unmitigated joy at the thought of finding a prize with their burger, and I would give anything to be heading out with them.
Chloe scoffs. “I’ll save cake for you. But just a piece.” She leans in toward Skyla. “I’m all about watching their sugar intake. Emily is helping me work out a meal plan so that when they’re with me their diets will be similar to that which they’re accustomed to. And, of course, it’s all up to your approval, Skyla. I’m not about usurping you in the mothering department. I know my place when it comes to the boys.” She sheds a toothy smile as her arm slinks around my waist and she pulls me in.
Skyla’s eyes follow that move, so I conform to Chloe, making it look as if her lunacy is reciprocated.
Skyla looks to me, her sweet eyes settled over mine, but there’s a deadness inside of her. “Make no mistake about it. Chloe is in this room because I allow her to be.”
“We’ve covered this,” Chloe snips as she turns my way. “Skyla is doing that whole if-you-love-someone-set-them-free crap.” She gives my cheek a quick peck and it felt like a slash of jagged glass against my skin. “Isn’t she above us all? I for one am thankful. But I guess you could say all those years I witnessed the two of you together I was doing the same.” She winks over at Skyla. “So congrats to you for taking a page from my playbook. And now that you and Logan are a couple, we need to get together more often. Family dinners, double date nights. Skyla, I think you and I can work on forming a genuine friendship now that we’ve sorted out who we really belong to. I’ll admit, it stung a bit to know you liked my brother more than you liked me.”
Skyla offers a bleak smile that dissipates as fast as it came. “I still like your brother more than I like you. You’re a beast, Chloe. I hate that my boys have to spend a microsecond with you, eating your cake. I hate that you feel like you won on some sick level. A small part of me feels sorry for you, but that part is shrinking every day.”
Chloe clutches her stomach. “You’re upsetting the baby, Skyla. Positive thoughts only, please.”
“Chloe.” Skyla shakes her head just barely. “I meant what I said. I’m going to have to kill you. And I’m still ambivalent if it will be while you host life in your belly. You have skipped so far outside of our covenant that it’s unreasonable for you to think otherwise. I own you far more than your new husband does. And if my mother decides that death is not for you, well, then I will sure have a hell of a time trying. I think I’ll try to strangle you with your own intestines. A slippery endeavor, but, my, the fun I will have trying to make it work.”
Chloe recoils in my arms. I can feel her holding her breath and every muscle in her body freezes. “Gage would never let that happen to me.”
Skyla leans in with a dark laugh percolating in her chest. “Gage doesn’t have a say in it. And not a force in the universe can stop me.”
Chloe’s dark eyes glitter with fear as she shoots a brief glance my way. “Skyla”—she calls out as Logan scoops up the boys—“I’m still for our people.”
Skyla pauses as a breath escapes her. “You’re for nobody but yourself, Chloe. Go home and get yourself off with your new husband. But don’t think this travesty won’t come with a price.” She looks to me, her icy eyes painfully piercing mine. “You will both pay for sinking me in this misery.”
They take off and I watch the exit long after they’re gone. Paragon is weeping, crying rivers, letting out every emotion that I cannot, and I’m cheering it on.
Late in the evening, after successfully evading all of Chloe’s aggressive advances, I head to the butterfly room, the one I built in the Walsh house for Skyla while my new wife, Chloe, cries herself to sleep, unwanted and unloved on this, her second wedding night. Sorry, Chloe. Wes isn’t here to impale you with all of his affection, and I am not feeling up to the deed. Not now, not ever. Chloe’s ego is too big to admit that we have a chaste marriage, and I haven’t figured out how to get Wes to do the deed again. Hell, I know he won’t. So Chloe’s frothing vagina will have to find another way to satiate itself.
I sit in the dimly lit dungeon I’ve created. It was built to bring Skyla joy, and now it only brings her pain, much like everything else I touch. I am Midas in reverse. Everything I look at turns to stone. Useless and lifeless.
A butterfly begins to flutter as its cobalt wings illuminate the dark, and the sight of it mildly alarms me.
A spark of light ignites, a slow ember building until a form takes shape, familiar golden hair, eyes that shine like stars, that face—that body I know it well, but I don’t know her.
“It’s you again,” I grunt, morbidly disappointed to see my wife’s sister stealing her every nuance. “I have no doubt Candace sent you here to torment me.” A smile tugs on my lips without my permission as Rory stalks forward, and it’s not until she steps out of the shadows do I see she’s naked.
“Now, now, my mother has nothing to say about how I choose to spend my time.” Her cool fingers run through my hair, over my scalp, and fall against my forehead as if checking for a fever. “What’s a handsome groom like you sitting in a dark room like this?”
An explosion of electric blue butterflies burst to life as they begin fluttering around the room like spastic bats—as if they were afraid—worried for me.
“What do you want?” I say it lower than a whisper.
Her hips sway just shy of my face, rounding out, grinding like a stripper who knows her way around a pole, her smooth ass landing inches from my mouth.
“I want to make you feel better. Let me heal you, Gage. Let me do the things to you that my sister isn’t allowed to do anymore. Think of how much better you’ll feel. You’re depriving her of your love, starving her out of your affection. Your heart has proven to be hard as stone, your false anger toward her palpable. But when I see you like this, sullen and morose, your new bride cuddled with a pillow soaked with grief, I know you still feel for Skyla.”
“You want to know my motives.” A dull laugh thumps through my chest. A spy, a very nude, very convincing spy. A part of me wonders if Skyla herself sent her.
“I couldn’t care less about your motives.” Her shoulders pump and her tits bounce, mouthwateringly large and so very much like Skyla’s.
Skyla, who I will never again touch—that body I will never again get to worship in the way that I want. Rory is testing me, wearing me down.
“Now what would you do if Skyla was here? What part of her body would you kiss first?” She tilts her head to mine, her knee settling in my lap. “Would you have the nerve to kiss her on the mouth?”
I stare up at this clone of my wife, this beast who is in theory everything I want and need. An opportunity has arrived. Here it is, a meager attempt to have my cake and eat it, too. Just an hour or so of fun. An hour or so of believing that I am with the real deal. An hour or so of aggression, of affection to pour out on this innocent, scratch that, most likely not-so innocent girl.
“No.” My voice gravels out like a threat in the darkness as the butterflies dance, casting their spell, convincing me that I’m in another butterfly room entirely, with another girl, the only girl for me. “I would kiss her here.” I spin her around and land my lips where they should only ever be, on my wife’s ripe bare bottom, and then I take a bite.
