BLOODY WEDDING, PART II
HAVEN
My husband is hiding something from me.
How do I know? Because Connor isterribleat it.
To be fair, most people who have met him in passing or aren’t as close to him as me and the remaining former Heirs are would probably disagree with that. Connor Heyward has spent his entire life smirking his way through any trouble, looking completely harmless while plotting things that would horrify most ‘sane’ people. He knows how to lie easily. He can deflect like a pro, and even I’m not immune to his ability to gaslight someone into believing something else entirely.
In my experience, half the reason everyone seems to underestimate him is because he’s always been careful to act like he’s incapable of taking anything seriously. But when he does… his intensity is terrifying, and his thought process even more scary.
Like how I responded to our first kiss by biting his arm. My future husband decided that meant I marked him, and before he accepted the Order’s brand on his palm, he used his knife to carve an ‘H’ over the spot where my teeth sank into him. Ratherthan cut out the flesh, like I once thought he was doing, he made it so that he had a permanent—if crude—reminder from the night he first told meheClaimedme.
That’s the Connor I’ve come to know since he stopped pretending that he hasn’t considered me his for longer than I want to think about at times. And, in the year since he forced me to come live with him, I’ve gotten to know him well enough to suspect when he’s hiding something from me.
Like now. There’s something he’s not telling me, and it’s fucking with my head.
The problem is that Connor isn’t acting obviously guilty. If he were, I’d be able to figure out what was going on easier. Instead, he’s being careful.Toocareful. And that? That’s not like my Connor.
It’s the little things I’ve been noticing lately. Recently, Bas has been coming over more frequently, crashing in the upstairs guest room that we never use. He’s done that a couple of times since I’ve accepted that I live here, and Connor explained that the room was basically Bas’s for when he needed to get out of his own head—and his empty house—for a while. Still, whenever I shuffle into a room where the two men are muttering together, the conversation stops. It starts up again almost immediately, Connor insisting I join it—whether I’m up to talking that day, or I need a notepad to converse with my husband and his friend—but I can’t shake the feeling that I wouldn’t like what they were discussing.
And when Bas is gone and I ask Connor what they were talking about? He kisses me. I once thought that he used my inability to stop myself from kissing him as a punishment; if I ‘disobeyed’, he kissed me, and while I could pretend I hated that sort of intimacy, we both know that I craved it. Nowadays, it’s easy to distract me by gripping my jaw and taking my mouth until I forget what I was saying.
The first few times, it was easy to let him get away with it. But once I clued in to the fact that he was doing it on purpose, I decided to take matters into my own hands—and that’s how I end up straddling my husband on our bed with a knife pressed against his throat.
It’s not his precious pocketknife; even after all this time, I haven’t tried stealing that from him again. I grabbed a sharpened paring knife from the drawer in the kitchen instead, small enough that I could hide it in my palm before I told Connor to meet me upstairs and lie down on the bed when he gets up there. I joined him, refusing to let his charming grin sway me from getting answers, and put the edge of the knife right up against the tiny scar I gave him the night I tried to escape through the woods before he had any idea what I was going to do.
Connor’s deep blue eyes turn almost black as he realizes that I have him at my mercy. Proving that he’s just as unhinged as always, he lets out a husky chuckle, then says, “Well, well, well…thislooks promising.”
Then, completely disregarding the fact that I have a knife to his throat, he rolls his hips, showing off his erection as he bumps me with it. We’re both still dressed, and I feel the rough denim of his jeans with the force of the bulge behind it as he perfectly aims to hit my clit.
I grit my teeth, glaring down at him. I’m careful not to cut him. The knife… I don’t want to hurt him. It’s more a prop than anything. A statement piece. A way to show him that I mean business.
To my twisted husband—who thinks a little bloodshed is foreplay—he believes I’m initiating sex with him.
I’m not surprised that he’s already hard. After all, this is Connor Heyward. He’salwayshard when he’s around me,though there’s a chance he might explode in his pants before I get him out of them if I keep threatening him with my knife.
He leans back, propping himself up on the pillows behind him. His hands are folded behind his head, his pose leisurely and relaxed even as he arches his neck to give me better access to it.
He grins. “Been fantasizing about this for a while, huh, sweetheart? You know better. You can always have your way with me, Haven. No sharps necessary.”
In answer, I press the knife slightly harder against his skin.
His grin widens. Yeah. He likes that, doesn’t he?
Rolling my eyes, I withdraw the blade from his skin long enough to reach over him. In our home, there are pens and notepads, markers and scraps of paper, pencils and old receipts every-fucking-where. For the times I can’t find my voice, Connor wants to make sure I can always communicate—like now. I grab the notepad and pen on my nightstand and hurriedly scribble one word before showing it to him:
Talk
Connor reads the word, amusement crinkling the corner of his eyes. "I can think of better uses for my mouth if you want to take those leggings and panties off."
Leaning forward, I smack the pad against his chest.
He laughs. “Maybe later then.”
Maybe. I tap the page again with my nail.
“I don’t want to talk right now,” my husband purrs. “I want to do something else with my wife.”
