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She was messing up the design. Picking it back up, she shook it out and started over again. Her fingers kept twitching involuntarily, more and more as the silence grew.
Or a herd of swine. She’d keep him as a pet and let him wallow in a mud puddle in her private garden. Feed him scraps.
Even as she dwelled with satisfaction on the image, her radar picked up on a different quality to the quiet. A dangerous shift. She glanced up. His gaze had settled on her throat, the decorative scarf she wore around it, tucked into the neckline of the sleeveless button-down blouse she wore loose over the pleated broomstick skirt. She quickly turned away, but spun around as she heard his chair scrape back. In a flash, she moved to put a table between them. “Stop,” she warned, gesturing with the napkin.
Thinking better of it, she put it down to keep both hands free.
She resisted the urge to put her hand over the scarf, over whatever part of her neck might be exposed. Last night, she’d done it in angry defiance and fear, but now, looking at his face, she thought she’d lost her mind. Proving that even when he wasn’t around, he was making her do insane things. A century or two of advances in women’s rights meant very little to a man like Tyler, who felt it was his job to protect a woman and give her hell when she didn’t follow his orders to do so.
“I told you what would happen if you did that again. ”
“Chloe and Gen are here. ” It was a desperate statement and she cursed herself for making it, for showing him that he’d unnerved her.
“You think that will protect you? You take one step back from me, I’ll throw that table through the wall and haul you up the stairs over my shoulder. Or you can lead me up there now and we’ll have this discussion in your room. Your choice. ”
“I don’t owe you a conver—”
His hand caught the edge of the table and she quickly sat on it. “Gen,” she called out, pulling back her lip in a snarl at him. “I’m going upstairs a moment. Will you watch over things?”
“Sure,” came the reply from the kitchen. “Take as long as you need. ” A chuckle wafted out from Chloe, indicating they’d seen who their first customer of the day was, but Marguerite wasn’t seeing the humor of the situation. Not faced with a man of Tyler’s imposing stature who was obviously, genuinely furious with her. He made a gesture, a clear command for her to precede him up the stairs. She didn’t have to do so.
She could scream her lungs out, even stand in cold defiance and call his bluff…except she knew it wasn’t a bluff. She was trembling at the look in his eyes. And what was more terrifying to her was that all of her reaction was not fear. Any more than all of his was anger.
Chloe peered out, her smile vanishing as she looked between the two of them.
“Everything all right?”
“Fine. ” Marguerite forced the words past her lips. Tyler moved. One step, two, to come around the table and take her arm. He brought her to her feet with a firm lift, drawing her hips off the table. Marguerite nodded to Chloe with a reassurance she did not feel as he guided her up the narrow staircase, down the hallway toward her room, away from the safety of an audience.
“Are you
finished being overbearing and obnoxious?” She said it between gritted teeth because if she loosened her jaw she was sure they would chatter with nerves, the way her arm was vibrating under his touch.
“Is there anything you do that isn’t designed to take you a step closer to the other side?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. ”
“No? The rituals, the ceremonies you surround yourself with. The way you cut yourself off from everything and everyone, only allowing us so close. You’re a ghost.
You act like you died at fourteen and you’ve been conducting the damn funeral for your whole life, figuring out the most likely way to get yourself in the coffin in just the right way. So what is this?” In the privacy of her room, he let her go, gestured at her throat with an accusing finger. “A hope that one day something will go wrong so you can be a corpse stinking up your bedroom with your post-mortem bowel release?” She drew herself up. “I won’t have this discussion. You’ve no right to make demands on this part of my life. ”
She’d always thought great levels of anger were like conflagrations. With Tyler, it was an arctic wasteland that frosted his gaze, living up to his surname and making her realize instantly she’d just said the worst thing possible.
“I’m in all parts of your life. If you’re determined to be in that coffin, you’re going to have to make it a bigger size as part of your ‘preparations’. ”
He closed the bedroom door with a snap. “I made a promise never to strike you with anything other than my hand. I’m going to break that promise, because you broke one to me. ”
“I never told you I wouldn’t do it again. I didn’t promise. ” She backed away. “You don’t own me, Tyler. I’m not a child. ”
“No, you’re not. But you know one of the reasons a child tests her parents, asks for punishment by being bad? Because it tells her that someone loves her enough to keep her safe. I’m not your father or your brother, but I’m your lover. You didn’t protect your neck under the belt so the strap would mark you. So you’d have to wear this. ” He lashed out with a long arm and flicked the edge of the pale blue print scarf she’d worn, making her jump and despise her cowardice more. “You did it to test me in exactly this way. ”
“I didn’t even know you were going to be here. ”
“You knew I’d be here sooner than later. Take it off. Now. ” When she didn’t move, he stepped forward and her heart leaped, though she tried to maintain an indifferent outward appearance. “Marguerite. ” His every syllable was carefully pronounced, underscoring the threat. “You won’t do this anymore because I’m telling you that you won’t. You belong to someone now. Me. And I take care of you, even if your greatest danger comes from yourself. Take the goddamned scarf off. ” She raised her chin defiantly, but her cold fingers rose, unknotted it, let it fall away.
Let him see the red mark of the belt, the light bruising.
His eyes coursed over it. His gaze rose, pinning her with a look she’d never seen before. A look that gave her chest wall jagged edges which stabbed her heart with every painful beat.
