AllFreeNovel
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It’spitch black when I wake with a start. I turn, and frown when I reach over to realize the bed next to me is empty.
Again.
Because this is the other part of our new routine. Several times a week, some weeks almost every night, I’ll wake up to find him gone. Not just from the bed, I meangonefrom the apartment entirely, only to slip—usually freshly showered—back into bed at some ungodly hour of the morning.
I asked him about it once, and he just said it was a business thing. But I’m not the only one with a “tell”. Whenever Cillian lies, his hand makes a quick motion for his cigarette case before he stops himself. He’s been slowing down alotwith the nicotine. So it’s probably a new tic of his that he doesn’t even know about—his inner psyche reaching for the crutch of a cigarette. But now that I’ve seen that move, I never miss it.
I know he’s lying.
* * *
“So,how often do you go to the club?”
It’s morning, and Cillian and I are sitting on the couch drinking coffee and looking at furniture magazines.
We seriously need some more stuff in here.
He looks up from his Lillian August catalog, one brow cocked up at me above his glasses. Which is so…ugh. Completely unfair. Because I’m trying to pry and possibly accuse him of something, and he’s got the fucking nerve to wear those goddamn black-rimmed glasses. Which somehow have the power, unbelievably, to make him evenmoremouthwateringly attractive.
“Take those off.”
“What?”
“The glasses. Take them off.”
He gives me a curious look before he slips them off. “What club?”
“Venom.”
Cillian eyes me, not saying anything as the seconds tick by and I squirm under his gaze.
“What are you asking me?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
I go back to leafing through my Restoration Hardware catalog. Then I gasp as he plucks it from my hands and tosses it aside.
“What are you asking me, Una?”
“Nothing! I’m just…asking.”
He still goes there. Oh my fucking God he totally still goes there.
Part of me wants to rage and scream at him. The other part of me remembers…this isn’t a real marriage.
We may be sharing a bed and fucking—and oh myGodare we fucking—and technically and legally speaking, we are married. But we’ve never had any sort of discussion about what that means for “us”.
Like, “Are we a couple?” or “Are we exclusive?”
It’s that second one that has me…snarlinginside, with a vicious fury that honestly scares me a little.
What are you, jealous?
“Look, seriously, just forget—”
I shiver as he grabs my legs, twisting me on the couch so that I’m facing him.
“There’s a darkness in me, Una,” he growls. “Something…” his eyes flicker with malevolent green fire. “Something monstrous.”
