Page 27 of Of Murder and Matrimony

I closed my eyes, refusing to look at his face. He was so serene. I couldn’t think like that, couldn’t let the warmth filling my chest penetrate my heart. Dante was using me, purposely impregnating me. It didn’t matter that he knew damn well, based on my cycle, that I wasn’t even fertile for our wedding night.

No doubt the nurse who stopped by the house the week before the wedding and sheepishly told me she needed urine and blood samples, then asked me countless questions about my sexual history and menstrual cycle, told my husband every damn word I’d said. So much for the afterglow.

Realizing I still gripped his back, I pulled my hands away, clasping them over my chest as Dante leaned back on his knees. I looked down as his cock slipped free, seeing my fingertips coated in red.

Blood.

I’d hurt him. That wasn’t how I wanted him to suffer for his transgressions.

“Shit, Dante.” I rolled out of bed to his questioning glance.

“What’s wrong?” He sounded dazed as he braced his hands on his thighs. His cock still dripped semen onto my covers, but I ignored that and pushed his shoulder to see his back.

“Shit.” Long red and white lines crisscrossed the expanse of skin from top to bottom. The white stripes were scars, but some were fresh and angry, still sutured. My nails must have reopened some wounds.

I sprung out of bed and rushed to the bathroom, grabbing a hand towel to apply pressure. When I returned, Dante was buttoning his pants.

“What are you doing?” I asked, slightly frantic. “You’re injured!”

“It’s nothing,” he snapped, pulling his shirt on but leaving it unbuttoned. He winced when he reached for his belt, no doubt feeling the fabric against his open wounds. “Leave it be, Olesya.”

“But—”

“Stop, wife,” he snarled, his hand slicing through the air. “You’re here for my revenge. For me to fuck and fill with my come until you give me sons.”

I sucked in a breath that scraped down my throat like glass, shocked by his callous words.

“Don’t make it more than it is.”

He stormed out of my room, slamming the door behind him and leaving me standing there, naked, with his come still warm and dripping down my thighs. I blinked, reeling from the entire situation. What had caused marks that looked like torture?

However Dante had come by his wounds, he didn’t want me to know. I forced my feet to move, finding myself in the bathroom, where I turned the shower on as hot as I could handle. When it steamed up the bathroom, I stepped under the scalding stream, trying to wash the sex and my husband’s lemon and sage scent from my body.

I sobbed, tears mingling with the shower spray as I scrubbed the makeup from my face. When I finished, I sat, slumping against the cold tile wall and drawing my knees up to my chest, burying my face as the water pounded my head. I’d allow myself this breakdown. Tomorrow, I’d rebuild my walls.

Dante Neretti didn’t get to break my heart again.

Chapter Nine

Sunday. The day of rest.

Not for wicked men like me.

I paced my room after leaving Olesya, running a hand through my hair and feeling regret that locked a vise around my lungs. Everything had gone to shit after we had sex. She’d been everything I remembered from the first time we’d slept together. All of her bluster disappeared once her body was underneath mine. She’d been warm, pliant, and responsive.

And the way she screamed my name.

Fuck.

I’d hear echoes of her pleasure in my head for the rest of my life.

There was no sleeping after my wedding night. Only regrets. When pacing didn’t relieve my tension, I stripped out of my clothes and stepped into the shower, punishing myself with the frigid spray. The temporary calm from the cold in exchange for washing Olesya’s soft jasmine scent from my body was bittersweet.

Part of me wanted to return to her room and make her allow me back in bed, wrap her up in my arms and hold her tight enough that all the other shit in my life faded away. But I’d fucked all that up with my outburst.

I hadn’t considered that my wife might notice the marks on my back or that she’d freak out about them. Of course, she had. If I were a smarter man, I’d tap on her door and ask her to re-suture my wounds. I’d married a doctor, for fuck’s sake.

Instead, I let the water pound into the torn flesh, curling my hands into fists and bracing against the shower wall as I dwelled on the pain. I deserved it.

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