Page 59 of Until Retribution Burns (Beauty in Lies 3)

27

Rafael

“Idon’t regret the fertility shot,” I said, rubbing a washcloth over the healing wounds on Isa’s neck and shoulder in the shower the next morning.

She flinched, leveling me with a glare that was so unlike the languidness of her body following the emotional overload of the few days she’d had, and what I suspected was the very beginning of pregnancy tiredness. “Next time?” she hissed.

“I can’t promise there won’t be a next time. I can’t promise that I won’t do anything and everything to keep you mine.” I slid my hand down to her stomach, stroking the skin there as water ran over my skin. “I can tell you that I love knowing you’re pregnant. That I can’t wait for your stomach to swell and for us to get to see the baby for the first time. I don’t think that will go away after the first baby.”

She swallowed, biting her bottom lip as I softened my face away from the harshness that I felt. The need to punish her for her distance, to show her how it enraged me to know she didn’t feel the same joy I did, threatened to consume me in ways that I didn’t think I’d ever be able to control.

I needed her to want me. To love me, and be as consumed by our love as I was.

Not wanting my child was a step past my limits.

“I don’tnotwant children,” she said, her voice quiet as she looked down at my hand on her stomach. “I’d even started to accept that it would happen sooner than I was ready, but what you did—”

“Changed nothing in the end. You’d have been pregnant regardless.”

“It wasn’t thewhat. It’s thehow.You kept it a secret. I don’t agree with the choices you make for me a lot of the time, but I thought I could at least say you were honest. Unapologetic and unremorseful, but honest. Now I have to question everything, because I don’t feel like I can trust anything you say ordon’tsay. What else are you keeping from me just because it’s more convenient for you?” she asked, covering my hand on her stomach with hers.

I dropped the cloth to the shower shelf, tracing my fingers over her forearm and to the skin above her elbow. “Trackers. Here,” I said, touching the small lump that Isa never would have noticed on her own. I moved my hand to the space between her shoulder blades, touching the area where the other one was implanted inside her. “And here.”

“Trackers? Like,inside me?” she whispered, her brow furrowing as she grasped her elbow and felt the lump beneath her skin. “In case I escaped,” she breathed, nodding as if she understood even as it pained her.

“And for your protection. In case it ever came to a point where you were in danger, I could find you quickly and efficiently. I wasn’t willing to wait for you to be with me in a way that you’d allow it. So we did it while you were unconscious,” I explained, watching her face for sign of the anger that had come from the fertility shot.

It never followed, her face remaining relatively peaceful and understanding. The lines we drew in the sand weren’t always consistent, and there was no logical explanation to what bothered her more than the other things I’d done.

It was all part of what made her,her, but I still didn’t care for the detached look on her face as she considered it. I had a feeling it would take time for Isa to get over what she saw as a violation of her trust.

The time before taking her toEl Infiernodidn’t count. She’d forgiven those transgressions and accepted that there had been a shift in our relationship after she’d learned the truth of them. Knowing that I would continue to keep secrets to protect her and to guide us where we needed to go, I didn’t bother to lie and tell her there were no other secrets.

Isa didn’t ask, as if she could sense that what loomed on the horizon was bigger. That she was somehow not ready to deal with the knowledge that would come from it.

“Did you do anything else to me while I was unconscious?” she asked instead, narrowing her eyes on my face and studying me for something. As if she’d be able to feel the lie in my words if I wasn’t honest.

I chuckled, picking up the cloth and placing it in her hands and guiding her to the wounds on my chest. Whereas hers were healing quickly, the deeper marks in my skin would take far longer to close until they scarred permanently.

My love for Isa would never die, consuming every part of me until my body burned in the pyre. Her mark on my skin lasting that long only seemed fitting.

“I licked my pussy to make sure you had sweet dreams of me,” I said when she pressed the cloth into my wounds. I welcomed the subtle hint of pain and the reminder of what I’d done to her, even knowing that hers were shallower.

I’d just have to do it all over again when they began to fade.

“I already knew that,” she said, giving me her eyes briefly before turning her attention back to my self-inflicted wounds.

“I waited until you woke up to fuck you,” I offered, my voice laced with the smile that claimed my face.

“How restrained of you,” she said, rolling her eyes to dismiss the kindness it had been. I didn’t tell her how much I’d contemplated sinking inside her while she dreamed.

Once the soap rinsed off my skin, she leaned forward and touched her lips to her name. The kiss was hesitant, as if she couldn’t quite wrap her head around the fact that she liked seeing it there.

As much as she might want to condemn me for what I’d done, she liked seeing it on me. Her fingers drifted up to touch her own healing wounds, my name stark against her fawn skin. “How am I supposed to explain this to my family? I can’t keep it hidden forever.”

“So don’t.” I shrugged. “I don’t particularly care what you tell them to explain it,” I said, bending over her to run my tongue over my name. She shuddered as the pain ran through her, and I hoped that every time I touched it she would remember the way it felt when I’d dragged my tongue through her bloodied flesh as I fucked her.

“There is no way they don’t look at this and see it as abuse. Itisabuse,” she said, heaving out a sigh. “How am I supposed to convince them that I’m with you by choice? When I can’t even make sense of it myself, given the things you’ve done.”

“Don’t convince them. You tried and that didn’t work. I think it’s time they see the truth of our marriage for what it is. Maybe, if nothing else, that will make them understand how futile it is to try to appeal to you and make you see that you should leave me. I’d much rather they hate me than hate you, because I don’t give the first fuck what they think of me,” I explained. “Let them think you’re a victim of my obsession. It isn’t untrue.”

“I don’t want them to hate you,” she murmured, and something inside me warmed that she cared what her family thought of me. Even after everything I’d put her through and what I would undoubtedly keep putting her through in the interest of keeping her safe and keeping her mine, she still cared.

“They’re going to hate me no matter what you do,” I said, kissing the nape of her neck behind my name. “Just let them, mi reina. You can’t control what other people do. Only how much energy you put into fighting it.”

She nodded, accepting the truth to my words. We’d both seen just how furious her mother was for the change in Isa’s personality and for the involvement that she had with me at all.

Once they knew about the baby and the truth of the kind of man I was, there would be no point in fighting my claim on their daughter.

---