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“Now,” Mr. Midnight says with obvious delight. He clutches his hands in his lap too, but not like he’s doing it to hang onto the last shreds of his sanity. It’s more of a polite gesture. “We’re getting to the best part here. I know this is quite intense, and I apologize, but I had to get this out, and I needed you to listen and make your decision. Since we were promised to each other, the fortune can only be inherited by me if it’s inherited by both of us. Together. Through holy and sacred matrimony. Yup, that’s right. My dear old dad wanted me to find you and make good on his bloody alliance. I’d think it was ridiculous, and I would have had a good laugh over the plotting of two asshole dudes who wanted to ruin their children’s lives to cement theirs because that’s incredibly insecure, but the fact is, I’m not laughing. Since we can definitely use that fortune for good, I’m afraid I’m leaving you with only one option. If you catch my drift.”
After that long, long-winded story, he sits there. The bastard just sits there staring at me, his black eyes boring through me. He’s the epitome of danger, with those night-sky, written-in-the-stars eyes, his wavy hair, his too-square jaw, and his defiantly pink, strawberry-stained lips. And, of course, I’m shivering and getting all affected by him over here. Along with the dank musk of the basement, I can smell him—the manliness of him. His cologne fills up the room. It’s sandalwood, or…or patchouli, or something? Mixed with something else? Leather? Trees? Whatever it is, it’s expensive and classy. Like his suit and the rest of him. I think that smell is him.
My eyes lower to his hands, which are resting on his knees, and my ovaries actually twinge in a fit of female passion. I can feel my underwear getting damp as my lady bits appreciate the sheer manliness of this man-beast-god-statue-mythical being, which tells me there’s something very, very wrong with me. I should not be reacting this way.
If I understand correctly, this man kidnapped me, drugged me, stashed me in his basement, obviously stalked me first to know where to find me, knows a life history that I don’t—or at least he thinks he does—and now he wants to marry me? All because of some will that was delivered seriously posthumously, and he thinks my parents were bad people who had a truce with other bad people, and part of that truce was me as a baby. And him as a baby. Us as babies. A promised in the cradle kind of deal.
Holy falling coconuts. If I’d just been beaned on the head with one, I couldn’t be more shocked. This makes no sense. No freaking sense whatsoever. Maybe I’m actually on vacation right now in some very nice, faraway land.
I throw my head back and laugh. The sound echoes off the stones, bounces through the room, and makes the black-clad goons shuffle their feet uncomfortably. One of them—not Scarbrow—looks at me like I may be completely unhinged, which is a polite way of saying batshit crazy.
“Why are you laughing?” Mr. Midnight seems slightly annoyed now. “I’m very serious about all this. Including forcing you to marry me. You don’t have to stay married to me, but you will go through with the ceremony. And now that you know about all this, I can’t just let you leave.”
Oh, shit sticks. The not-so-thinly veiled threat in those words hits me like a slap on the head with a wet washcloth containing a bar of soap. Blindsided, with a hint of soapy smackdown. That’s how I feel. There’s a very real possibility that my brain could be the one feeling all wet and soggy and smacked down. It’s not doing so well in processing this wild information.
Say something. He’s threatening you. Don’t just sit there and take it. Let him know that you’re going to fight back. Although, really? Marriage? The way it’s going, he’s not going to be averse to a no-touch marriage. But does it have to be a marriage of convenience? Sharing a bed with Mr. Hottie Pants God Body over there might not be such a bad thing.
No. It’s most definitely a bad thing, and this marriage isn’t happening. Dream or—or not a dream. Either way, not happening.
I still vote for it happening.
I silently tell my screaming lady bits to shit the shut up. I mean, shut the shit up. Any marriage would only happen over my dead body. Oh, right. That’s what we might be discussing right now…
“So you’re going to do what? Make me marry you and keep me locked away here? Or in some horrible place at the ends of the earth? Are you going to cut out my tongue and chop off my hands so I literally can’t tell anyone or write anything? Or are you just going to strap me to a table and give me some memory loss serum and turn me loose back into the world as some tragic person who has no past?”
