“How could you possibly know that?”
“The same way I can look at you and see a bird who’s had her wings crushed.”
I shrug out of my coat and toss it on the couch. “Maybe. Considering I’m standing here with you, a self-confessed monster and murderer, and feeling perfectly safe, I think it’s clear I’m missing a crucial instinct for self-preservation.”
“Then allow me to kill him!” Damien paces like a caged lion.
“I can’t. Tony being evil is about Tony. Me exchanging my blood for his death is about me. I’m not evil. I can’t do it.”
Damien studies me, suddenly astutely curious. “Tell me this, if you are nothing like him, how did you end up married to him?”
I lower myself onto the green velvet sofa with a groan. “It’s a long story.”
“I have nowhere to be.” He crosses his arms and settles into his stance as if he has no intention of leaving until I tell him my sorry tale. I suppose I owe him an explanation, considering I reneged on our agreement.
“My parents were murdered right after I turned seventeen. They’d gone into Richmond to do some shopping and stopped at a gas station on the way home. A twenty-eight-year-old man chose that moment to rob that gas station. The police think my parents got involved somehow. My dad was a hero. Doesn’t surprise me at all he might have tried to help the attendant. Both my parents were shot and killed, along with the employee. They caught the man who did it. He’s doing life in Virginia State.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Damien says in a way that's disturbingly human.
“Thanks. Anyway, afterward, I couldn’t eat or sleep. Maeve and I were already a little wild, but I went crazy. Crazy enough for even her to worry about me.”
“What counts as insanity to a human like you?” Damien inches closer, as if he’s genuinely interested.
“I drove my mother’s Camry into a light pole on purpose because I wanted to feel the airbags hit my face. I wanted to feel something. I wanted to be reminded I was alive.”
Damienhisses.
“At the time, Tony’s family was renting the farmhouse next door. After the Denardis found out about the death of my parents, they came to check on us and brought food. Every other day, Tony was on our doorstep with something for Grams and me. I’d see him on the grounds sometimes too, just looking out for us. I was seventeen. He was five years older than me. I wasn’t attracted to him. I was too busy juggling knives to be interested in anyone. But then, one day, I was standing on the edge of the cliff at the back of our property, watching the river. I had the strongest urge to jump. I didn’t want to die so much as I wanted to know what it felt like to fall. I don’t know if I would have done it or not, but suddenly his arms were around me, and then he was kissing me.”
“And you liked that. Him kissing you?”
I meet the monster’s diamond-colored gaze. “I liked the distraction of it. I liked that he was older. I liked how rough he was, I mean before the abuse, when he kissed, he kissed hard. When he held me, it was tight, almost painful. It shocked me out of my reality.” I can’t believe I just admitted that. I’ve never told anyone, not even Maeve, but the truths just keep gurgling to the surface like raw sewage. “We started dating, and he snapped me out of the self-destructive spiral I was in. Talked me into going to college when I graduated high school that May. Looked out for my grandmother while I was away. And then he asked me to marry him four years later when I finished my degree.”
“Sounds like a real hero,” he drawls.
Damien doesn’t shift on his feet or seem like he needs to sit, even though my story has grown long. He stands like a statue, still as marble, his full attention on me. I might’ve found that kind of attentiveness flattering once. Might still if I thought it had anything to do with attraction and nothunger for what is pulsing through my veins. Absently, I rub my bruised wrist. “I married Tony because I thought he was what I needed. But as soon as we were married, he changed.”
“What a surprise.”
I frown at the judgmental snark. “Actually, first he fixed this house, and then he changed.”
“He fixed the house?”
“Sinkhole under the property. Grams found a huge crack in the foundation, and Tony paid for and managed the extensive repairs. That’s why he has a claim to it now. But afterward, it was like he thought he owned me. He treated me like a pet, including hitting me when I did something that made him angry. A black eye and a broken rib later, I left him.”
“Is that when you filed for divorce?”
Averting my gaze, I take interest in my tangled fingers. “Actually,hefiled for divorce once I moved out. No effort at reconciliation. He was happy to see me go. Tonight, I learned he was sleeping with his secretary the entire time we were married.” I rub my temples. “Honestly, that shouldn’t have been a surprise. He rarely touched me, even in the beginning. He was the only man I’d ever been with. God, tonight he suggested he wanted us both. Her for her body and me to control as his little robot wife. Sick, right?”
Damien rubs his chin, expression dark like he’s late for an appointment to kick kittens. The grandfather clock’s incessant ticking fills the wordless space between us. “Am I to gather from this pitiful story of yours that you refuse to allow me to kill Tony because he provided you with a few casseroles and told you what to do with your life?”
I snort. “Fettucine and the patriarchy. I was helpless toresist.”
Damien ignores my failed attempt at humor. “Very well, little bird, if you wish to call off our arrangement, so be it. But undoing one bargain requires another to take its place. I will agree not to kill Tony… in exchange for more of your blood.”
Finally. “Deal.”
His icy gaze rakes down my body. “Then, stand up and take off your clothes.”
