Page 53 of Brutal Husband

“And you had a Negroni,” I whisper.

“Answer the question. Why were you drinking so much?” He jostles my body as he shifts on his hands, and the plush thickness of his cock rolls against my clit.

I try not to cry out, but I do. I moan, and my bound hands press against his chest. “Ah—I was unhappy. My husband had been cold to me every single day of our marriage, even when we were trying for a baby, and I’d given up hope he’d ever change. I wanted a divorce.”

“A baby?” he says sharply. “You were trying for a baby with him?”

A second later he’s up and off the bed, ripping at the knots that bind us together as his eyes flash.

He looks as good standing up as he did lying down. I’m a married woman who’s not used to the sight of a man in all his glory, and this man’s body is glorious. All lean muscle and tattoos, though I think he’s leaner than my husband used to be. The man who took my virginity wasn’t this lean either. Still, his physique is so very touchable, and I have to clench my hands as soon as they’re untied so I don’t reach for and stroke the dark patch of hair in the middle of his chest.

“Don’t try to run,” he warns me. “I will find you wherever you go. That tracker is still securely in the back of your neck.”

I scowl at him. That’s right, the tracker. I have no confusion about which man forced it into my flesh. His hand strokes my nape, feeling for the small lump beneath my skin.

“You don’t have to worry. There’s no one I can run to for protection.”

His deep brown eyes stare down into mine. For a moment, his gaze flickers to my mouth. “Your sister and her husband promised to protect you. I heard them with my own ears.”

“You threatened them. I’m not going to put my niece Mirabella in danger to save myself. The mess that I’m in right now is my fault, so I’ll either fix it myself or die.”

“How noble of you. Get dressed, we’re going out.” He drops his hand and yanks a pair of gray sweats out of the wardrobe. Once he’s pulled them on, he slams out of the bedroom.

His footsteps thunder down the hallway, pause, and then come back.

“How do you take your coffee?” he calls through the door.

My eyebrows shoot up in surprise. He’s going to make me coffee after keeping me lashed to him all night? “Same as always.”

There’s a beat of silence, and I remember how this man put a white, sugarless coffee into my hands the morning after he turned up again after being absent so many months. I didn’t realize it was strange at the time, but I should have. My husband treated me with disdain, but he did make me the occasional cup of coffee, and he always remembered how I took it.

“Black, two sugars,” I tell the stranger.

His footsteps march off down the hall and disappear downstairs.

I wash my face and brush my teeth, twist up my hair and pin it, and then dress in jeans and a white tank top. Cautiously, I head downstairs to the kitchen. The stranger is moving around in there, and when I peek around the doorway, there he is. Shirtless and making coffee, his dark hair falling into his eyes. The gray sweats hug his firm ass and thighs and provocatively outline his still thickened cock.

He looks like my husband. Sounds like my husband. But the way my body is reacting to him, this is not my husband. Looking at this man makes me feel completely different to the way my husband made me feel.

The stranger notices me staring at him. “What?” he rubs the stubble on his jaw as if worried he has something on his face.

“I’m trying to tell the two of you apart.”

“Don’t bother. We don’t have any distinguishing moles, and Luca’s tattoos are identical to mine. We had a tattoo artist copy them onto his body exactly.”

So they’re the stranger’s tattoos, not Luca’s. I remember seeing Luca studying his tattoos like he didn’t recognize them after our wedding, and now I know why. It feels strange referring to the man I knew as my husband as Luca, and I just can’t deal with calling this man Nero.

He passes me a mug of coffee, and I stare at his forearm.

“They’re not all identical,” I say, reaching out to touch the daisy. “He didn’t have this one.”

He jerks his arm back as if I’ve given him an electric shock. “So what?”

“Why a daisy?”

“It’s just a tattoo. Don’t read anything into it.”

I study his face in silence. “Where are we going today?”

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