Page 67 of Devil Mine

I glare at him, venom shining in my eyes. “You can force me to marry you, but you can’t force me toeversubmit to you.”

“We’ll see about that,” he promises.

An uncomfortable throat clearing comes from the opposite seats. “Wonderful,” the priest says. “Now to make it official.”

Thiago snatches a paper from his hands and places it on my lap. A pen is foisted into my fingers next.

‘Certificate of Marriage’ is stamped at the top, my name engraved below a blank line at the bottom.

I stare at it uncomprehendingly. It feels surrealistic to be looking down at my marriage certificate. To know this one flimsy sheet of paper is all that’s needed to tie us together. Did he have it drawn up the day I ran away?

“Sign,” he orders.

A storm of emotion rolls through me. I’m trapped. Trapped in a loveless, likely abusive marriage just like my mother is. I was so desperate to escape her fate. For a second, I thought I had.

Tears sting at the corners of my eyes.

“Sign it or I’m going back out there and properly introducing myself to your brother.”

I throw him a scathing look that would level anyone else down to dust. Thiago simply grins, seeming to enjoy my anger as much as he does my capitulation.

My hand shakes as the pen makes contact with the page. And then it’s done, over in less than a second, almost underwhelming in its lack of pomp and circumstance.

Thiago rips the paper from beneath my palm and stares at my signature for a long moment, a sinisterly satisfied smile pulling at his lips. He signs above his own name, takes a picture, and then hands it back to the priest.

“The witnesses are outside. Have them sign, then get it registered.”

“Of course.”

“First thing tomorrow.”

The priest visibly swallows at the stern command, understanding the not-so-subtle subtext of what’ll happen to him if he doesn’t deliver.

The last ten minutes feel like a complete blur. I just signed my life away to this man who wants everything from me.

This man who wants everything while not being able to give me anything remotely close to the same in return. Bitterness chokes me, as does the unfairness of my circumstances.

I’m married.

Married.

Thiago removes his black suit jacket, his shoulder planes moving erotically beneath his dress shirt as he does so. Even though I can’t see his skin, I can imagine the way his muscles move lithely to shuck off the offending garment.

He folds it, then tosses it on the other seats. His eyes flip glacially back up to meet the priest’s.

“Get out,” he snaps.

“Wait–”

The priest does as ordered without even sparing me a glance, happy to save his own skin. Then the door slams shut. My disbelief over my marital status evaporates in an instant as I suddenly realize that I’m stuck in a cage with an angry predator hellbent on eating his prey.

But Thiago doesn’t look at me. He bends his arm at the elbow and unbuttons the wrist cuff of his dress shirt before he starts to slowly — so slowly, it’s torturous to watch — roll his sleeve up his arm.

My throat dries, my eyes glued to the skin he reveals inch by inch. His forearm is covered in tattoos and made up of corded muscles and pronounced, masculine veins traveling up the length of his arm and disappearing into his shirt.

He repeats the same process on his other sleeve, his movements as unhurried as with the first because he knows he has me trapped with nowhere to go. When he’s done, he grabs the knot of his tie and yanks it down. He rips it off like it suffocates him and stuffs it inside the pocket of his trousers, his action in complete opposition to the care he showed his sleeves. His fingers dance at his collar next, opening first one button, then another, exposing more tattooed skin.

Then, and only then, does he finally look at me.

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