I'm alone.
Alone on bloodstained sheets, wearing white silk that was supposed to make my husband want me, feeling more worthless and broken than I've ever felt in my life. I hadn’t known it was possible to fall further than I had, but here I am, and I have no idea where we go from here.
He couldn't do it. Couldn't consummate our marriage. Couldn't stand to touch me long enough to get through it.
What's wrong with me? What did I do to make him hate me so much?
I pull my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around them, making myself as small as possible. This all feels like somehorrendous joke. They said Sean was going to protect me, but he can't even stand to be in the same room with me.
The city lights shine through the floor-to-ceiling windows, illuminating this mockery of a wedding suite. Somewhere out there, Sean is walking or drinking or doing whatever he needs to do to avoid being near me. And I'm here, alone on my wedding night, wondering how I'm going to survive a lifetime of this.
Wondering if I even want to try.
8
SEAN
Iclose the door of Maeve’s room behind me and briefly lean against it, my arm throbbing where I cut it. The towel wrapped around my forearm is already soaked through with blood, dark red seeping into the white terrycloth.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I push off the door and stride down the hallway toward my old room—the one I'd been staying in before the wedding, before I was expected to share a bed with my eighteen-year-old bride. The word tastes bitter in my mouth.Bride.As if this marriage means anything other than a jailer for her and a punishment for me.
The door to my room clicks shut behind me, and I finally let myself breathe. I unwind the towel from my forearm as I walk into the bathroom and wince at the sight of it. It's deeper than I intended, blood still welling up from the clean slice. I've had worse. Much worse. But this one feels somehow worse, considering that I did it to avoid touching my wife.
Fuck. A stream of curses runs through my head as I find a first-aid kit from under the sink and lean against the counter as Ibegin to methodically clean the wound. The sting of antiseptic is nothing compared to the ache in my cock, the frustrated arousal that's been building all night and has nowhere to go. I grit my teeth and focus on the task at hand, pulling the edges of the cut together with butterfly bandages before wrapping it properly.
My hands are steadier now, my muscle memory taking over. I've patched myself up more times than I can count. But I've never felt like this afterward. Never felt this churning mess of guilt and anger and desire all tangled up together until I can't tell where one ends and another begins. I close my eyes, my teeth gritted, but all I see is her.
What was she thinking, putting on that fucking lingerie? She looked like every man’s fantasy come to life when she stepped out of that bathroom in the white silk nightgown, the curve of her small breasts peeking out from under that lace, her nipples hard against the thin fabric. The hem riding high on her pale thighs. Her ginger hair falling in waves around her shoulders, making her look even more innocent.
Even more untouchable.
Christ, when I saw her like that, I wanted to devour her. Wanted to push her back on that bed and make her mine in every way possible. Wanted to hear her cry out my name, feel her come apart under my hands, my mouth, my cock. She looked fucking beautiful, and I could, by right, do whatever I wanted to her. I could make her mine.
And I hated myself for wanting any of that.
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes, trying to block out the image, but it's burned into my brain. The way she looked at me with those light blue eyes, terrified and trying so hard to be brave. Trying to please me, as if any of this is her fault.
She bought that nightgown for me. Took off her underwear for me. Stood there trembling and vulnerable and offeringherself to me because she thought that's what she was supposed to do.
And God help me, I did want it. Want her. More than I've wanted anything in my entire fucking life.
That's the problem.
The memory of sliding my hand under her nightgown and finding nothing but bare flesh has my cock throbbing, desire coiling low in my gut, and heating my blood. And of course, I fucked all that up, too. Accusing her of not being a virgin, treating her like she was an idiot. ButChrist, I didn’t know there was a girl left in the world that goddamn innocent. I saw the way she was looking at my cock; I’d bet money that she’d never seen one before, not so much as a picture. She’s innocent in a way that’s archaic, as if no one ever took a goddamn second to explain any of this to her.
No wonder she was so fucking scared.
Scared and innocent and not even a little bit deserving of what I was ordered to do to her. I've fucked plenty of women. Women who knew the score, who wanted a night or two of rough pleasure and nothing more. Women who could handle what I am—what I do. Women who didn't look at me with hope in their eyes, as if I might be something other than a killer.
But Maeve…
Maeve is eighteen years old. A virgin who lost her entire family in the span of months and has no one left in the world. Who was forced to marry a man twice her age because the Irish Council decided she needed to be controlled.
Because I fucked up.
