Page 19 of Possession

“Señorita?” Father presses.

My arm tightens around her. Besides our bloody clothes, our bodies are one—in every sense but the fucking kind.

She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and bites down.

Hard.

* * *

Landyn

Freely and wholeheartedly?

Is the priest shitting me?

And who learns their future husband’s real name at the moment of sayingI do?

Brian Torres’ arm is a vise around me. I feel every plane and muscle of his body pressed into mine, proving my earlier thoughts from today—this man is capable of backing up every imposing threat with real muscle.

I’m no challenge for him. In any way.

So when he growls my name as everyone waits for me to consent to this farce of a marriage as if I’m not here as payment in exchange for keeping my family alive, I feel it everywhere. “Landyn.”

A single tear matches my unstable tone. “I have.”

“Brian, repeat after me…”

Boz’s eyes are dark and hard as his empty promises hit me like a boulder. “…faithful…good times and bad…sickness and health…love and honor…”

It’s everything I can do to repeat the same terms, knowing they mean nothing except for the last ill-fated ones. “… all the days of my life.”

The priest keeps talking, but I block it all out.

This is it.

As horrible as the day has progressed, I still can’t believe I’m here.

I snap out of it when Boz shifts me into his other arm long enough to grab the rings off the Bible.

“Hand,” he demands. I slowly hold out my left one as he slides the most ostentatious ring on the finger that’s supposed to have a vein connecting straight to my racing heart. But that’s just some ancient belief that’s a crock of shit.

Just like this marriage.

I look down at the ring. The diamond is huge and is surrounded with baguettes lining the band. Nothing has ever been so ugly. I instantly hate it and everything it stands for.

Boz slides a gold ring on his finger—one that was meant for another man.

“Let us humbly invoke God’s blessing on this bride and groom as he bestows the Sacrament of Marriage.”

The room around us rumbles with mutters of “Thanks be to God.”

“I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

Holy shit.

I’m fucking married.

“Brian, you may kiss your bride.”

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