Page 3 of A Merciless Husband
Yeah, clearly my daddy issues are worse than I thought.
He runs his hand through his hair,again, before he tries to open a bottle of white wine. His hands are shaking, and I can’t help but stare at them for a moment, still in shock that he feels so strongly about this that it’d cause his hands totremble.I’m really not sure what I did to inspire this kind of feeling in someone, much less a man like him.
He finally gets the bottle open and pours me a glass, getting a whiskey for himself. The amber liquid of his drink sloshes overthe side of his glass, splashing on the table. I’m not sure if it’s from his shaking hands or from how distracted he seems. He sighs, ignoring the mess and setting the bottle down harder than necessary.
“What’s next? We get married.” His voice is quieter than I’ve ever heard it before. But there’s a rawness there, a crack to his voice that makes me think he wasn’t asking buttelling.
I take a deep breath, uncertainty swirling inside of me. “I’m not sure?—”
He turns to look at me slowly, embers of intense emotion flickering in his eyes. “Well, I am, leannán. I've never been more sure of anything in my life. And I can prove it to you.”
He sets the crystal glass of whiskey down with a clink, the liquid sloshing at the sides angrily. I’ve seen him angry plenty of times, but he’s never directed it towards me. But this isn’t anger. It’s something more. The glowing heat of desire, of hunger, ofobsession.Something tells me that I’d make it out more intact if it was anger than whateverthisis. There’s no room for distraction in his eyes, justme.There’s no room for me to escape it.He isn’t going to stop until he has me devoured, until his hunger is satiated.
But the magnitude of the starvation in his eyes makes me wonder just what it’ll take for him to be satisfied. How long will it take before he’s had his fill of me?
Everything in his gaze makes me think that it’ll be alongtime. And, somehow, that brings relief. He’s not going to leave. He’s not going to get tired of me a few days in, a few weeks, a few months…
He grabs my hips and draws me in. “You’re right, you know. To doubt. To wonder.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Most men would be offended at being questioned.”
His eyes narrow. “You’re smart enough to know better than to compare me toother men,leannán. Those men aren’t husband material.” He crowds me, and my mind runs wild, feeling more hunted than after my grandfather called the marriage off.
I stumble back, but he pursues, his muscles coiled tight like a panther on the prowl. The back of my knees hits the couch, cornered, trapped. My chest feels tight, like my breath can barely make it in and out of me. “I didn’t mean it as an insult?—”
“No, leannán, when you insult me, I suspect I’ll fully know it.”
I raise my eyebrows. “When?Notif?”
A dark chuckle rumbles through his chest. “I am a wicked man, leannán. A royal dick. It’s inevitable that I’ll push you too far, take too much, and when that happens, I expect you to tell me off, understood? You get angry, you throw a glass at my head. I’ll know to behave then,andI’ll be turned on. A win for us both, I think.”
I swallow thickly. “Seems toxic to me.”
He smirks and shrugs. “Ah, but alcohol is poison, too, love. It’s fun to imbibe every now and then regardless. I think it’s the same here. We love each other, we live in peace, and then every now and then you put me back into my place and the sex is good after.”
“You already have an idea of what our relationship will be. That’s not good. You’ve been fantasizing so long that you’ve invented a new version of me that’s never actually existed.” My brows are knit so tightly together that my entire face feels tight.
Kerry chuckles again and shakes his head. “No, leannán. This is anewidea, born from seeing your fierceness in person, once you were finally able to show her to me.”
Everything within me feels tight, my chest, my throat, every muscle in my body. My thoughts are just spinning around incircles, unable to go anywhere that’s actuallyhelpfulto calm this obsession of his down.
But maybe that’s because you don’t actually want that to happen.A voice whispers to me from deep within me. It’s different from the voices that usually yell over my own thoughts, ones that usually sound like my mother, my grandmother, my father, teachers…all demanding that I behave, to cave to their wants. To do the ‘right’ thing, which somehow always lines up with their agendas.
But this?Thisvoice sounds likeme.
Kerry closes in, drawing near, but this time I have nowhere to go. “I want to marry you, leannán.”
“So you’ve said.” I lift my chin, trying to hold my own against him, no matter how difficult it is. No matter how much my brain is starting to wander, wondering what it’d be like to give in to him.
He tilts his head, a smirk still playing on his lips, that fire still sparking in his eyes. But as much as he’s playing it off like he’s amused, I can tell there’s more than that. He’s not at ease. He’s coiled in tightly, like a snake ready to strike. There’s a raw, animalisticdesperationthat he’s used to hiding, but it’s come out in full force now. “You’re not convinced.” He lifts his hand, rubbing the back of it against my cheek with a softness that defies all of the hunger he’s clearly holding back. “That’s fine. I told you, I’m not like other men.”
I know he has a plan now. I can see it smoldering in his eyes. “Yes, you already said that.”
He chuckles and leans in more until I have to fall back onto the couch just so he doesn’t kiss me again. I’m not even sure why I’m evading something that I very much enjoyed earlier. I can still feel the burn of his lips against mine, hungry and wanting. I liked it. I know I did, and there’s a level of shame I’m trying to push through about just how much I did.
Nice girls don’t kiss mafia lords who are out to kill their grandfather. But I did. And I liked it. Enough to be desperate to do it again.
But as Kerry draws back and falls to his kneels before me again, I realize why I did it. Becausethat’s what he wanted.He’s orchestrating this whole thing, maneuvering me just how he wants. He wasn’t intending to kiss me. He was getting me on the couch without having to say a single thing.
