Page 19 of Iron Bride

“I can’t even choose how tofeel,” I wailed like a child. “I can’t even choose to feel violated. I can’t even hate you, the man who has taken everything from me.”

When had he tucked us beneath the blanket? I wasn’t sure.

I just cried and cried. And when my vision cleared, the lights were out. The blanket was tucked up to my chin, and his arms held me to him. Safe and secure.

“I wouldn’t have harmed you, you know,” he whispered against my hair.

I didn’t know what he was talking about. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t need to feel anything for my husband, but he wouldn’t be dissuaded.

“I didn’t expect you to be a virgin,” he said, as his lips grazed my forehead. “I wouldn’t have been angry, if you weren’t.”

He adjusted us, so that we were on our side, staring at each other.

“I’m not the villain you think I am.”

Chapter seven

Never Take a Green At Their Word

Cillian

It’s like she’d lived her life in a cult and been fed lies. Now she was in the real world—inmyworld—and trying to apply her old schema on current events.

I expected her to have had a lover. Most women did by our age. A first, a second, a third… a great love affair, as well as several meaningless ones. I didn’t expect to be the first. I just knew that I would be the last.

It made sense to grab onto someone when marriage wasn’t your choice. The liberty to give herself to a man she loved… to take a bit of power back? I couldn’t blame her for that.

But she hadn’t.

And that made me… elated. Relieved? Honored.

“I’d never take a Green at their word,” she whispered. Desperate to still see me as a cloaked, evil villain.

“Then don’t, love,” I said against her skin. “But I am not a liar.”

She would learn that soon enough.

“You’ve always been allowed to do what you want. To the victor go the spoils, right? The Greens were the victors. I’m the spoil?” She was somewhat right about that. That was a natural consequence of being on the losing side. “Just because you can have mistresses and—”

“I don’t have mistresses.”

I almostheardher roll her eyes.

I grabbed her chin to force her to look at me.

“I haveneverhad a mistress,” I said with all conviction. “I might not be as pure as you, love. But I have never had a mistress, a girlfriend, or a lover.”

“Please…” she tried to pull her face away and I chuckled.

“Who knew my wife would be so jealous?” What an unexpected pleasure to see a flaw within the frigid ice queen. “I have never lied to you. I will not lie now. I have done things with women, sure.” She tried to pull from me, and I held her tighter. There was no escaping from this reality, from this conversation, orfrom this marriage. “But I have never stuck my cock inside another woman’s cunt. Is that clear?”

I had never admitted my own status before. The assumption that I had mistresses had flown from overblown statements of quick fondles in coat rooms, and gropes in the backseats of town cars. Women who wanted to hitch their wagons on a rising star.

But to seal the deal? To do more always felt wrong when I knew I was promised to another. It was wrong for me, for them... for the bride I despised. The one who was shackled to this fate.

Her brows knit together. Her face scrunched in confusion. “But… why?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Why is the sky blue?”

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