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"Arms, Manon."

She shoves her arms into the sleeves like a furious child, and I do the buttons up for her. She's asleep before I get to the third one.

I carry her up the stairs. She weighs nothing, and I worry. This woman is my life. She dies, I die.

I put her in the bed upstairs after taking her shoes off, deciding I'm not taking her home tonight. Then I check the door, the window, and watch her breathe. Tomorrow, we’ll see what to do. First order of business when we get home: change the locks and tighten security, make sure the bedroom is sorted.

Right now, I have things to do. I go back down and clean the room again, getting every single spot I missed on the floor, then the table, three times over. I'm still at it when dawn breaks, in the ruined shirt. I already know I'm never going to throw the bloody thing away.

CHAPTER 30

Manon

I have been married for going on nine months, and if someone had told me last year that I'd be hosting a dinner party like a proper trad wife, I'd have flipped them off. Sure, I’ve been in similar cozy events because of my family, but I’ve never been the damn host.

I'm braising lamb, and I don't even know why because Laszlo offered to bring in a professional chef or he’d take care of it himself. He’s also given Dolores a day off. Then I decided I'd surprise him and do it myself, so there's that. Honestly, I don’t even have to do all this because it’s not going to be a lot of us. But I was in the mood.

The kitchen is a fucking mess. Fact is, I haven't cooked for anyone in a very long time, and it shows. This is his kitchen—his knives, his ridiculous system, and I've turned it upside down in twenty minutes. I'm drinking rosé and arranging the seared meat into the braising pot when Laszlo walks in.

He comes around the island, wraps his arms around my waist, and buries his mouth in my neck. I giggle like a schoolgirl. Damn it, when did we get this cozy with each other? It's so strange, these days I don't want to kill him at all.

"Can we skip the main course so I can get to the dessert and eat your pussy on this table, ma macabre?" he murmurs, dragging his nose down over my shoulder.

"Oh, stop that,” I say, not very convincingly. “I’d say yes, but I don't want to disappoint Daphne. She's been having a hard time lately." He rolls my nipple through my top and makes it very difficult to care about the lamb. Laszlo has turned me into a sex-starved whore.

A moan escapes me while I try to concentrate, which is impossible with him poking me from behind with his enormous hardon. It’s not like I’m deprived; we do this all the time.

And things have changed.

I’m not ashamed to admit to myself anymore that I’m in love with Laszlo Novak. God, I’m in love with him. I am.

I have not said those little words to him yet, and I’m not sure when or if I’ll be able to get them out. I’m still processing all of this in my head because it’s a big deal. How could I possibly love a man who stalked me for years, then practically forced me to marry him? Some might say it’s a textbook example of trauma bonding, but it’s been months and each day I’ve felt his devotion so strongly, I can no longer ignore how it makes me feel. For every infuriating act that drives me up the wall, he’d do something that makes up for it ten times over. That’s my Laszlo.

My Laszlo.

I just cannot imagine life without him anymore. I cannot imagine living apart from this complicated, loving, caring, frustrating man...

"But your pussy is thirsting for it," he says. "I can hear it weeping for cock." His hand slides under my skirt and up my thigh. Right then, his phone goes off on the counter.

He lets out a curse and steps back, while I feel I could throw that damn phone in the pan.

"Constantine," he says. Whatever his brother is telling him, he doesn't like it much. "When? Fine, send him, but I want him to behave. I've got bodies downstairs. I don't want him bringing work into my home." He hangs up.

"Everything all right?"

"Constantine can't make it. Something's come up." He slides the phone into his pocket and comes back for my hips, his touch setting me on fire just like that, from zero to one hundred. "He's sending someone in his place so you're not a chair short."

"Sending who? It was supposed to be him, you, me and Daphne. Cozy."

"You'll see." He kisses my shoulder. "Finish the lamb. They should be on time."

“They?”

Lazlo smiles, then leaves without a word. Asshole.

While the meat cooks, I take a quick shower, change into a flowy but elegant dress, and go back downstairs to check on things. Daphne arrives a bit early like I asked her to, a relief because I want another woman in this house before it fills up with men. She comes in already talking, a bottle of gin in one hand, and hugs me hard enough to bruise.

She looks, as usual, like she took a wrong turn on the way to a magazine shoot—tall, red haired, perfect and fully natural. She told me her family were in the cleaning business, the legitimate sort of cleaning, not the type someone like my husband would ask for.