Page 179 of Theirs to Tempt: The Marriage Claim

Heat lingers beneath my skin.

I hate them for that too.

I hate Lucian for teaching my body to respond to the slightest change in his voice, and Caleb for discovering every place tension gathers inside me before I recognize it myself.

I hate them for making surrender feel like strength, for giving me moments when yielding was not disappearance but the intoxicating certainty that someone powerful enough to carry everything had chosen to carry me.

Most of all, I hate that the dream belonged entirely to me.

They did not arrange it.

No one planted the words in my mouth or constructed the moment when I reached for both of them.

My sleeping mind created Lucian’s hand at my throat, Caleb’s mouth against my skin, and the promise that they would not leave because some treacherous part of me wanted to believe it.

I stand too quickly, and the room shifts around me. The sensation passes, leaving nausea and a restless ache I refuse to acknowledge.

The apartment floor is cool beneath my bare feet as I cross to the bathroom and turn on the shower as hot as the plumbing allows.

Steam clouds the mirror before I step beneath the spray, the water striking my shoulders hard enough that I tell myself it will wash away the lingering impressions of hands and mouths that were never there.

It doesn’t.

I flatten my palms against the tile as tears slip down my face in silence, mingling with the spray so completely that I could pretend they are not happening if my chest did not hurt with every breath.

How many mornings am I going to feel the relief that I’m free, followed by the shameful realization that freedom feels less like open air than standing alone in a room after everyone else has gone home?

How long until I get over them?

Chapter Forty-Eight

Caleb

Sophie steps out of her office building at 6:12 p.m.

I know because I have been staring at the exterior feed for forty-three minutes, waiting for exactly that moment.

The camera is mounted above the entrance where she knows it exists, one of the security measures she argued with us about until we’d finally reached something resembling an agreement. No cameras inside her apartment. No hidden feeds.

And even after she moved out of the penthouse, she didn’t tell Hawkeye to remove them.

I’m relieved, because we would have had a fight. After all, she’s still our wife.

She hasn’t filed for a divorce.

Even if we deserve exactly that.

Her hair is pulled back, though strands have escaped around her face, and even though the image is imperfect, I see exhaustion in the way she pauses before starting toward the curb.

I close my hand around the edge of the desk.

I have watched Sophie sleep. Bathe. Work. Laugh. Come apart with my hands on her body and Lucian’s mouth on hers. I have carried her. Held her. Woken with her soft and warm between us.

Now the sight of her standing beneath a security camera nearly stops my fucking heart.

The office door opens again, and Elena comes hurrying out. Sophie turns back, and whatever her assistant says makes her laugh.

The sound doesn’t reach me.