Page 52 of Brutal Husband

“Would you go the fuck to sleep?” The man beside me snarls in the darkness.

“I’m trying,” I pant. “I wish I hadn’t seen Nero’s face.”

“Luca’s face. And you’re the one who put him in the ground.”

“Seeing him dead was a shock to you, but it was a shock to me as well. We may not have had a happy marriage, but he was still my husband.”

There’s a short silence.

“How was it not happy?” There’s a note of curiosity in his voice.

“I’m not talking about my marriage with a stranger.”

“We’re not strangers.”

A chill goes down my spine. “What are you talking about?”

“Just what I said.”

“I knew you before I was married? Or after?”

There’s a long silence from the stranger. I’ve given up hope of him answering until he finally says, “Yes.”

“What doesthatmean?”

But he doesn’t reply. As I listen to the stranger beside me breathing, exhaustion overwhelms me, and I fall asleep.

I wakein the morning with the sensation of someone looming over me and saying my name.

“I said, wake up, Rieta.”

My eyelashes flutter open. Nero is leaning over me, his arms braced beside my head. Strange, my husband never willingly gets so close to me. He looks handsome with his dark hair falling into his eyes and the shadow of dark stubble on his jaw.

“Did you get your beauty sleep? Good,” he says, without waiting for me to reply. “What’s the last thing you remember before Luca disappeared?”

“Sorry, who—” My foggy brain doesn’t understand what’s happening. I rub my eyes and arch my back. That’s when I feel it between my legs.

I glance down. We both stare at the thick shaft of his cock pressing between my thighs. So high between my thighs that there’s friction against my clit beneath my clothes.

There’s a sharp, needy ache between my legs. This is definitely not my husband. Last night’s memories crash over me—the body, the stranger, almost being strangled to death—but all my body cares about is that I’m close to an aroused man. It’s been a long time since I was pressed up against a genuinely aroused man. Since I lost my virginity, actually. To someone. But who?

I gaze suspiciously at the man braced over me. My husband and this man were twins. Crazily identical twins. I wonder if they ever pretended to be each other, on dates for instance.

My attention wanders down his strong throat, his broad chest with its scattering of dark hair. His muscular stomach, andthe even darker strip of hair from his navel arrowing right down to his…

I swallow. Can you call a cock beautiful? This one’s beautiful. I want to stroke the hard, velvety-looking flesh and the thick vein that meanders along its length.

“My eyes are up here. I asked you a question.”

As hard as this man is, sex seems to be the last thing on his mind. My gaze snaps back to his, and I rummage in my sleepy, aroused brain. A question? Oh, yes. What’s the last thing I remember before Luca disappeared? “Oh—um…Nero and I ate dinner together, but then he left. I followed him to his office after drinking far too much wine.”

“You andLucaate dinner together,” he corrects. “Why did you drink so much wine? You barely used to drink at all. You had a Coke on our first—”

My eyes widen. “Our what?”

The stranger’s jaw grinds in irritation.

Was he going to say,our first date? I did drink a Coke that night. He was so cold and rude to me, at least at first, and then he hypnotized me with desire and pushed a diamond ring onto my finger.

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