Page 27 of Dragon Rivals of New York

I hold my breath, wondering if she’ll tell me.

“He was cheating.”

The pat answer. The safe answer.

I pour some conditioner into my palm and work it through her hair.

She dips her head under the water, rinsing out the conditioner. I wait for her to go on, hoping she will.

“I didn’t catch him—I should have." She pops a few bubbles with the tip of her finger. "I should have suspectedsomething. But I didn’t. I was naïve and too trusting.” She scoops up a pile of bubbles and closes her fist around them. “He told me. Came to me, confessing, told me he was sorry and it would never happen again. And I believed him. I told him it was okay. We would go to counseling and work through it. But then…” She shudders. “I should have just left as soon as I found out. But I thought… when my parents talked about marriage, they always said,‘divorce isn’t an option.’That was why they were married. They’d laugh about it, but there was a darkness under the laugh. My father wasn’t kind to my mother. She wasn’t much better to him. He’d had an affair, and she’d forgiven him. Or said she did. But she never stopped making him pay for it. I thought it was normal.”

“It’s not normal.” I pull her against me and kiss her neck. “What happened, lovely?”

“He tried to kiss me, and I told him I needed more time. The next few days were tense. I kept asking when we could schedule an appointment with a therapist, and he kept telling me he was too busy at work. I asked if he’d really broken off the affair, and he got angry. He broke my phone. He told me he took it somewhere to get fixed, but I never got it back. I think he got scared I was going to leave. It would have ruined his reputation in our community, and that was more important to him than anything, so he locked me out of our bank accounts. I tried talking to my parents, but… you can imagine how that went. He was my husband, the head of the household. If he wanted to control our finances, he could.”

“That’s horrible.” I wrap my arms around her and squeeze.

“I would have stayed if it was just that. I planned to.”

For a long beat, multiple minutes of silence, she doesn’t continue or elaborate.

“It’s okay, lovely. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

She twists around in my lap and hides her face against my chest. I wrap my arms around her, just holding her.

“By the end of the third week, he was… upset that I wasn’t over it yet. He…” She pauses and looks up at me. Her cheeks are damp, and I don’t think it’s just from the bath. “I’ve only ever told my therapist this. Not even Finley knows.”

I nod, acknowledging the weight of what she’s about to say. She turns her face away again, cheek resting on my sternum.

“He wanted to have sex.” Her words come out so fast they nearly run together. “I told him I wasn’t ready. That I needed more time. But he…he…”

“Breathe, lovely.” I smooth a hand over her head, stroking her hair.

She inhales slowly, then presses on. “He said it was my dutyas his wife. That I washis. He…”

My world tilts, and I see red. “He raped you.”

“It felt like it.”

“It didn’t feel like it. It was it.” My voice is too harsh. She flinches. “Sorry.” I blow out a breath.

“I know. And you’re right. It’s just… my whole life I was told that my virginity was a gift I gave my husband. It was his after that. I was told I was responsible for keeping him sexually happy. When couples got divorced in my community, people whispered about how the wife wasn’t meeting the husband’s sexual needs, and it was her own fault that he strayed. My own parents said as much to my face when they found out about Manny’s cheating. I thought… I thought it was my fault. So, I didn’t fight it. But the whole time, all I could think about was how he’d been inside someone else. I felt sick. Used. Afterward, I went into the bathroom and threw up. He could hear me. He knew it was happening. But he just got dressed, got a beer, then stood in the doorway and asked what I was making for dinner.”

My teeth grind. I’ve never wanted to kill someone so much in my life. I’m not the killing type. The few times I’ve done it have been to protect my horde, but this… even though she’s already divorced and safe now, I want to burn him to a crisp where he stands. If Kyro was here, I know he’d already have left to do just that.

“Once he was asleep, I left. I wasn’t even sure I was leaving for good until I got to a friend’s house and used her phone to call Finley. She convinced me fill for divorce, hopped on the first flight back to New York, and got me in to see a therapist the next day. I owe her everything.”

Kill Manny. Buy flowers for Finley. Tomorrow’s to-do list. But right now, I just want to take care of my girl.

I tilt her face and study her eyes. “None of that was your fault. And you didn’t owe him anything.”

The shadow that crosses her beautiful features is fleeting, but it’s there. Despite how badly I want to kiss her, comfort her, tell her over and over all the truth she never heard, I just hold her gaze, knowing she needs to come to it herself, knowing the best I can do is help her see her worth and give her the autonomy she needs. I won’t try for anything more right now.

It surprises me when she scoots up and kisses me. Holding myself back, I meet her lips with soft tender kisses. But she’s insistent, trailing the seam of my lips with her tongue. When I part for her, she devours me.

I’m trying really hard not to get an erection right now, but the longer we kiss, the more I lose the fight. My beautiful mate is naked, in my arms, in the bath, kissing me like her life depends on her lips touching mine. Like it’s all she wants in the world.How can I not get hard?

Delightfully, deliciously hard.

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