Page 64 of The Devious Husband

It’s a hopeless task, and all the while, she stares at me without a single ounce of love in her cold eyes, resignation written all of her face. “You let them take me,” she says, her voice filled with blame. “This is all your fault, Xavier. You’re the reason I’m dying, and I will never forgive you for stealing the life I should’ve had.”

“You’re not dying,” I tell her, my words a desperate plea. “You’re fine, baby. You’re going to be fine.”

“You should’ve protected me,” she says as I’ve just about managed to remove enough rubble to carry her out, chair and all, only for a new batch to fall. “I trusted you, Xavier.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeat, over and over again. Sierra smiles humorlessly and looks me in the eye as a metal shard drops from the ceiling and pierces her heart, and I scream, my own heart breaking. She coughs up blood as the life drains out of her while I desperately shout her name, cutting my hands on the sharp metal in an attempt to take it out, to undo what happened. “You did this to me,” she says, coughing up more blood. “This is on you.”

“Xavier! Wake up!”

I gasp and sit up in bed, on the verge of a panic attack, until I see my wife kneeling next to me, wearing one of my black t-shirts instead of the red dress she was wearing in my dream. “You’re alive,” I whisper, reaching for her.

She instantly moves closer and straddles me. “I’m very much alive and well,” she says, cupping my face. “Look at me, Xavier.” I do as I’m told, unable to regulate my breathing, my nightmare still holding me in its clutches. “I’m alive, I’m unharmed, and I’m here with you.”

I nod and run my hands over her body, needing to determine for myself that she’s really here with me, and she isn’t bleeding. “You’re okay,” I say, my voice breaking.

She nods, her forehead dropping to mine. “I’m more than okay,” she repeats, her own breathing shallow. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” I admit, scooting back to lean against our headboard. She moves with me, and I bury a hand in her hair, holding onto her tightly. “It felt so fucking real, baby. I watched you die.” I’ve had different variations of the same nightmare for over a week now, but most nights I don’t wake her up, my screams rarely leaving my dream world. Tonight was a particularly bad one, and I’m still struggling to distinguish what’s real and what isn’t. My memories of that day are becoming distorted, parts of it now replaced by the things that keep happening in my nightmares, and it’s fucking with me more than I care to admit.

“I’m right here,” Sierra says, pulling back a little to look at me. “You saved me, Xavier.”

I slide my hands under the t-shirt she’s wearing and grab her waist, the feel of her soft, warm skin reassuring. There are no scars on her, no blood, just endless concern she shouldn’t have to deal with. “I love you,” I whisper, the words leaving my lips like a compulsion, my need to say it unmanageable.

Sierra wraps her hand around the back of my neck, her eyes on mine. “I love you more,” she says, before leaning in and brushing her lips against mine.

My breath hitches, my eyes falling closed as I ball my fist in her hair and kiss her, needing her with a new kind of desperation. It’s never felt this way. I’ve never felt so desperate to feel alive. Sierra groans when I part her lips, my tongue caressing hers slowly, seductively, until she begins to move her hips, her hands running down my bare chest. “Xavier,” she breathes, pushing her hand into my hair as she tilts my neck and grazes my skin with her teeth.

I moan and let my head fall back against the headboard, my broken ribs protesting against my movements painfully. My wife sucks down on my skin, marking me, and my cock begins to throb. “I need you,” I admit, feeling oddly vulnerable in a way I never have before.

“You have me,” she says, reaching between us to free my cock. “You will always have me, Xavier. Forever and always.”

I groan when she roughly pushes her panties aside, not even bothering to take them off as she lines me up, her hips rocking back and forth gently, until the tip slips in. Her head falls back when I reach for her and begin to circle her clit, needing to touch her as much as I need to see her. She lowers her hips slowly, taking me inch by inch, until she drops her weight fully, and I bottom out inside her, a needy moan escaping my throat.

Sierra’s eyes never leave mine as she begins to ride me, one of her hands in my hair, the other on my chest, almost like she needs to feel my heartbeat. “I love you,” she says, and I lean in to kiss her, losing myself in her.

“I love you too,” I whisper against her lips as I reach for her hips and lift her nearly all the way off me, before lowering her hard, fast, taking control. She moans fucking beautifully, and I smile for the first time in days, before I do it all over again.

Fifty-Six

Sierra

I pace back and forth in our library, my eyes on the clock instead of the book in my hands. Every day for the last two weeks, Xavier has been coming home just a little later, his behavior slowly becoming more like it used to be, before he started to communicate with me, and it’s worrying.

My eyes light up when a soft chime sounds through the speakers we have all over the house, notifying me he’s finally home. I put my book down on our armchair before rushing over, expecting him to meet me halfway like he usually does, only to find him in our dressing room, his hands on his tie. “You’re home,” I murmur, walking up to him.

He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I’m home,” he says, his voice soft. I grin up at him and rise to my tiptoes to kiss him, but for the first time in as long as I can remember, he doesn’t instantly grab me to kiss me back.

“Is everything okay?” I ask, reaching for his tie to take it off for him.

“Just tired,” he says, not quite looking me in the eye. For several weeks now, he’s had nightmares every single night, and I can’t imagine the effect it’s had on him.

“I think you should consider speaking to a psychologist about what happened. I did, and it really helped.” It was one of the first things that Celeste insisted on when I’d recovered, and she drove me there every single day for a week straight, accompanied by armed bodyguards that my mother-in-law won’t let me leave the house without anymore. Xavier’s mom has done all she can to make sure I feel safe, and I haven’t had the heart to tell her that it’s overkill, and that I’m truly fine. As a Windsor, I was trained to survive an attempted or successful kidnapping, and as far as I’m concerned, I walked away unscathed. I know Xavier doesn’t see it that way, though.

“It’s not something I can risk,” he admits. “I can’t admit to crimes I’ve committed. Not even in therapy.”

“Then talk to me,” I tell him, my voice soft, my hands pressed against his chest. “I feel like you’re slowly distancing yourself from me, Xave. I’m terrified that I’m losing you, that you’ll let that man undo all the hard work we put into our marriage. I can’t tell what you’re thinking, because you’ve stopped talking to me, and now you’re coming home later than usual too…”

He sighs as I push off his suit jacket before moving my fingers to the buttons on his shirt next. Xavier gently cups my face, his thumb brushing over my lips. “I guess reality just caught up with me,” he says, and I look up as his shirt falls open. “I thought that because I’d changed, my past didn’t matter anymore. I fooled myself into believing that the blood on my hands didn’t count, because everyone whose blood I’ve ever spilled deserved it. If hell exists, that’s where I’ve sent them to, and the world is a better place for it. That’s what I told myself, Sierra, day after day, until I believed it.”

---