Page 78 of Keep Me

He’s right. That part is not my fault, but him eventually losing this place that brings him comfort, is my fault.

“You know…someday you could open a real place like that, and it wouldn’t have to be your home. I think it sounds wonderful.”

I’m trying to give him hope or solace or something, but his expression isn’t giving me the assurance I want.

Then, finally, he leans down and presses his lips to my forehead as he mutters, “No, I couldn’t.”

I glance up at him with confusion.

With a smirk, he adds, “But maybe…wecould.”

“Killian…” I start to protest his relentless argument that anyof this is real, but the words die on my lips.

Setting his drink on the bar, he comes toward me again, and I feel myself burning from the inside out with that heated look in his eyes. Then he cages me in again, leaning so close, I forget how to breathe.

“I thought we settled this already,” he mutters lowly. “Iamyour husband, Sylvie. You are my wife.”

When he says my name like that—notcow, ordarling, or mo ghràidh—it feels too real.

“I’m not—” I argue, but he quickly cuts me off with a scorching kiss. His tongue invades my mouth, and I forget what I was about to say. I can’t believe I’m letting him disorient me like this. I have to get him out of my head before he costs me everything.

With a hand against his chest, I forcefully shove him away. We’re both left gasping, and he’s wearing a smug grin on his face as he wipes the moisture from his lips with his thumb.

“You can believe whatever you want, Killian Barclay, but just because I let you touch me doesn’t make me yours. I’m nobody’s wife.”

As I suspected, this only makes him laugh. “You can believe whatever you want, Mrs. Barclay,” he replies, accentuating the title to drive home his point. Then he picks up the book in my lap as he adds smugly, “But you are my wife, and it’s only a matter of time before you truly submit.”

I sit up, straightening my spine as I bring my face to his. With a look of steely determination, I snatch the book back and toss it to the floor.

“Never,” I mutter, staring into his eyes.

With a grin, he kisses me again. And when he drops to his knees and begins to tear my clothes off, I let him.

He can have my body for now, but I refuse to let my husband have my heart.

Part Four

Killian

Chapter Twenty-Five

There was a time when I loved being alone in my house. I liked the quiet peace of solitude. No one to harass me or hound me with questions. No one to worry about me or tell me what’s best.

Now, I find myself gravitating towardher.

I hear my wife’s gentle footsteps everywhere I go. I hear her humming to herself down the hallways of my home. She lives here like a ghost, haunting each room with her scent and her delicate presence. The rose and lilac of her hair. The lotion she puts on her face every night. Everything about her has seeped into the crevices of this house, deep into the stones. She’s even stained the upholstery and curtains.

When she came six months ago, I hated it. Now, I love it.

Sylvie is willful and stubborn. For every smile she gives me, she scowls ten times as much. I’ve never met someone so hardheaded and desperate to show her disdain.

I wish I could return that disdain, but somewhere in the last six months, she’s grown on me. And it was long before she started climbing into my bed every night around Christmas.

It was her fire. Her passion. The way I recognized that levelof heat was because I could feel it too. It was as if she spoke a language I understood.

I never intended to fall in love with my wife.

But Sylvie came to my home with a sense of loneliness that I related to. And even if she wants to deny it, somehow, we met in the middle.

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