The Villain: A Billionaire Romance: Chapter 15

Devon: We need to buy time. Sit down with Arrowsmith and compromise.

Me: Wrong number.

Devon: You pay me to give you solid advice. My advice is to sign a backroom sweetheart deal and figure out your long-term plan after you dismantle this ticking bomb.

Me: The only backroom thing Arrowsmith will be getting from me is going to send him into anal reconstructive surgery.

He broke me once. This time, I’d be doing the breaking.

Devon: I respect that you loathe him, Kill, but we were young lads. Throw him a fat donation, make him feel pretty, and move on with your life. You could lose your CEO title, millions of dollars, and face jail time if you tamper with this trial.

Me: He was a monster who shaped me into becoming a better monster. Now we are both carnivorous beasts. It is time to see who can shed more blood.

I tossed my phone onto the leather seat, frowning out the Escalade’s window.

Andrew Arrowsmith wasn’t going to rest until he saw me filing for bankruptcy.

It wasn’t about the money. Never was for me.

It was becoming better than my father at being a CEO because he was better than his father.

Back when my great-great-great-great-grandfather incorporated Royal Pipelines, you could shoot a bullet in the ground and oil would spill. By the time my father inherited the company, he had to do some serious fracking and squeeze the natural resources available to him to continue the monstrous growth of our company.

Me? I didn’t want to simply increase our capital. I wanted to triple it. To go down in history as the best CEO the company had ever known.

I had Sam digging up dirt on Andrew as I decided which angle I wanted to attack him from. In the meantime, I made sure Green Living threw a lot of money into the lawsuit, losing their pants and their funds quickly.

For all I cared, by the time I was finished, Andrew wouldn’t have a job, a company, or a roof over his head.

The Escalade came to a halt in front of my wife’s apartment building. I fired her a text to come downstairs, scrolling over the unanswered message from earlier, supplemented with a picture of the sky.

Flower Girl: Look outside. Auntie Tilda came out to say hello this morning. ☺

Auntie Tilda was a pain in the ass and was responsible for my wife’s unfortunate name. Persephone was only marginally better than Tree and Tinder.

I continued ignoring my wife’s daily texts. It was bad enough I’d spent the last week haunted by the memory of the poker night on my ranch. The game was a bore, punctuated by mind-numbing commentary from Sailor and Emmabelle, who became two of my least favorite things about Boston. My wife, however, was another story. No matter how much I tried to deny it, she pleased me.

In the way she looked at me.

In the way she smiled at me.

In the way she called me hubs as though this was real and not a life sentence born from the crappy cards she’d been dealt by her previous husband.

She’d already gotten her debt paid, her divorce granted, and the means to live like a Kardashian. She didn’t have to pretend to tolerate me but still had the courtesy to do so.

My eyelids dropped as I tried to bleach out the memory of her clinging to my hand under the table, riding my fist, her thighs clutched around my knuckles in a vise grip. She burned like a blood-red rose, her petals curling and twisting around the flame, and I was glad I couldn’t watch her openly while we were in company because I had no doubt I’d have come in my pants.

I wanted to purge my wife out of my system. To relocate her somewhere far away—maybe to her parents’ new house in the suburbs. To pluck her from obscurity only when the mood struck me on special occasions.

She was dazzling, kinetic. Too loud, too much. Marrying her was the worst and best decision I’d ever made.

“Power-napping, huh?” Persephone’s throaty voice filled the Escalade. “I read somewhere that catnaps are more effective than eight hours of sleep. Did you know that?”

She scooted next to me, wrapped in a gown that clung to her curves like I would if I wasn’t a hundred and one shades of messed up.

I produced a cigar from a box next to me, lighting it up. “Nice number.”

“Is that a compliment I’m hearing?” She pressed the back of her hand to my forehead, teasingly checking my temperature. “Nope. No fever.”

“Your beauty was never in question,” I puffed.

“What is, then?”

“Its ability to disarm me.”

She shot me a look that said she wasn’t happy with me. A look that, for reasons unbeknownst to me, I couldn’t stand. She produced something from her Valentino clutch. A piece of paper. She unfolded it. A ten-dollar note rolled out of it. Also a pen. She handed me all three.

“This is for you, by the way.”

“What am I looking at?” I scanned the paper in her hand without taking it.

“I saw this on a TV show. Billions. It’s a contract in which you sell your soul to me.”

I really should’ve made her take a drug test before I put a ring on her finger.

The amount of nonsense spewing out of that pretty mouth could keep the entire Senate busy for a century.

Then again, deep down, I knew even if the results came back saying she was hooked on meth, cocaine, heroin, and every homeless dick downtown, I still would have married her, and that was a problem.

A huge problem.

“Sign it.” She released the ten-dollar bill in my lap like I was a B-grade pole dancer. I didn’t make a move to pick it up.

“What’s the problem?” She frowned. “You already told me I can never have your heart and mentioned you don’t believe in souls. That means selling yours to me shouldn’t be too hard, right?”

The fact she was trying to philosophically challenge me made her cute enough to eat. Then again, I didn’t need much incentive to want to eat her out. Wondering how my wife’s pussy tasted was something I did often.

I’d licked my fingers after the card game on the ranch. Her scent hitting my system alone had made me painfully hard.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to take any chances.” She withdrew the contract, about to tuck it back into her purse.

“There’s no such thing as a soul,” I repeated dully.

“In that case, I’d like to buy yours.”

“How’d it end on that TV show?” I sat back, twirling the cigar between my fingers.

“Billions?” She frowned. “The girl—who has a similar set of beliefs and views on the world as you—signed the contract, proving she truly didn’t believe in her soul’s existence.”

“Amateur mistake.” I clutched my cigar between my teeth to free my hands, adjusting the necklace on my wife’s neck so the clasp wouldn’t show. “First rule in business is supply and demand. You put a price on something in accordance to how other people value it. My set of beliefs is irrelevant. You think souls exist, and therefore I will sign mine over to you for the highest price.”

“What would that price be?”

“Your full submission to our arrangement.” I plucked the pen and paper from her hand, tucking them into my breast pocket. “More on that when I figure out what that exactly entails. Subject closed.”

The need to own, conquer, banish, and discard her made me lose sleep.

It didn’t even make sense, and sense was the compass I could always count on.

Persephone made me swear, and nothing made me swear. Yet when we were on that trail, I said the word fuck. Not because I cracked two ribs—which, by the way, happened—or because I was bloodied and wounded, but because she looked scared, and I never wanted to see that emotion on her face again.

She smoothed her dress, examining me under a thick curtain of lashes.

“I’m glad we’re going to this charity event. We haven’t gone out as a couple since we got married. Paxton and I used to have date nights all the time. I miss that.”

“Where did Paxton take you?” The question slipped out before I could shove it back into my throat and choke on it. Which was what I deserved for even thinking about it.

She blew a lock of sunflower hair that flopped over her eye.

“We had an annual Disney pass. I love a good fairy tale. We used to go to restaurants, dance clubs, football games. Oh, and have picnics, sometimes. Our dream honeymoon was to go to Namibia, but we were too broke to do it.”

“Why Namibia?”

Why ask her more questions?

“I once saw a picture of the Namibian desert in a journal. The yellow dunes looked like velvet. I became obsessed with lying on one of those perfect dunes and looking up at the sun. It looked like the height of being alive. So poignant. So pure.”

So stupid.

She had the good sense to blush.

I turned back to the view zipping through the window, having heard enough about her previous relationship.

“We had a good run.”

An unfamiliar needle pricked my chest. Maybe I was having a heart attack. Spending a night in the ER would still beat Arrowsmith drooling over my wife like a horny tenth grader publicly.

“A man named Andrew Arrowsmith is going to be at the charity ball. He’s the one filing a lawsuit against Royal Pipelines.” I changed the subject.

“I know him from TV. He does morning shows and environmental panels.”

“I expect you to be on your best behavior. He’ll examine us closely, look for cracks in the façade.”

She flashed me a curious look. “Why do I get the feeling there’s more to this story than a lawsuit?”

“We go back. We grew up together, went to the same schools for a while. His late father worked for mine.”

“I’m guessing his departure didn’t include any employee of the year awards.”

“Athair made him do the walk of shame and blacklisted him from working at any reputable company on the East Coast. Arrowsmith Senior had a knack for embezzling.”

Persephone crossed her legs. “So this lawsuit is personal?”

I offered her a curt nod. “Arrowsmith Senior died recently.”

“Which opened the old wound, making Andrew take the job at Green Living.”

She caught up quickly. Flower Girl had been a lot smarter than I gave her credit for before I asked her to marry me.

“How come the media hasn’t picked up on it?” She readjusted my tie. This time, I didn’t move her hand away. “His hidden agenda, I mean. He’s a highly public figure.”

“I haven’t leaked it yet.”

“Why?”

“Arrowsmith’s got something on me, too. We’re hanging our sins over each other’s head, waiting to see who blinks first.”

“Let’s make him flinch then, hubs.”

“There isn’t a we in this operation. You worry about giving me heirs, and I’ll worry about Arrowsmith.”

She studied me; her blue eyes tranquil. I could tell she was no longer fearful of me, but I wasn’t sure if that satisfied or annoyed me.

“I mean it, Flower Girl. Don’t butt into my business.”

She was still smiling.

“What are you looking at?” I glowered.

“You held my hand in yours the entire length of the drive. Since you took the contract from me.”

Dropping my gaze, I immediately withdrew from her.

“Haven’t noticed.”

“You’re handsome when flustered.”

“I swear, Persephone, I’m going to relocate you to your precious Namibia if you don’t stop grating on my nerves.”

“So now I annoy you constantly.” Her blue eyes shone. “That’s one, steady emotion. Twenty-six more to go!”

There were twenty-seven emotions? That seemed completely unmanageable. No wonder most humans were categorically useless.

The driver opened the back door. I slid out first, taking my wife’s delicate hand in mine as the cameras clicked, devouring us, wanting more from the woman who had decided to lock her fate with The Villain.

I tucked my wife behind me and marched past them, blocking the blinding flashes with my body so she wouldn’t trip and embarrass me.

It was showtime.

The charity ball reminded me why I didn’t do people.

Out of the bedroom, anyway.

A rancid cloud of perfume hung over carefully sprayed hairdos. The checked marble floor of the nineteenth century hotel twinkled, and the aristocrats immortalized on the paintings framing the ballroom glared at the guests disapprovingly.

Everything about the event was fake, from the conversation, to the veneer teeth and crocodile tears over what we were raising money for—clowns for kittens? Ant sanctuary? Whatever it was, I knew I stood out like a sober guy at a frat party.

I led Persephone inside, ignoring the few people who were dumb enough to approach me.

That was the beauty in being Boston’s most hated businessman. I didn’t need to pretend I gave a damn. I wanted a private word with the man who was suing my company, so I came here with a check the organizers couldn’t refuse. But my willingness to socialize or play the game was below zero.

I snatched a flute of champagne from a waitress’s tray for Persephone and a cognac for myself, snubbing a hedge fund manager who came to introduce himself with a boring-looking woman I assumed was his wife.

Something fast and hard bumped into my leg. It stumbled backward, landing at my wife’s feet in a tangle of pudgy limbs.

Persephone lost her grip on the champagne, spilling her drink all over her dress. She let out a breath while I grabbed the stupid thing and scooped it in the air. It was kicking and screaming.

“What in the—”

“Let him go!” my wife cried out, swatting my hand away. She crouched down, giving everyone in the room a front-seat view to her cleavage, and righted the thing—fine, child—who’d crashed into us, helping him to his feet.

“Are you okay, sweets?” She rubbed his arms.

The child looked vaguely familiar, but since I wasn’t acquainted with any kids, I figured they all looked the same. Like squirrels or Oreo cookies.

The little boy screwed his nose, shaking his head. His right eye ticked twice…no, six times.

Tick. Tick. Tick, tick, tick, tick.

My gut twisted. I stepped back, popping my fingers one after the other.

“Are you lost?” My wife put a palm on the snotty thing’s cheek.

Yes.

The boy cast his eyes down, twitching and buzzing.

“Y-y-yes.”

“Let’s go find your parents.”

She offered him her hand. He took it, when another identical-looking kid sailed on his sneakers in our direction, bumping into the twitchy kid. They both knocked Persephone down. Instead of pushing them out of the way, she laughed her throaty laughter that seemed to have a direct speed-dial connection to my groin and collected them in her arms as if they were eager puppies. They stuck their sticky fingers into her blond curls and fingered her diamond necklace.

“Easy there, little ones.” She laughed.

“I’m not little. I’m a big boy. Tinder!” the second boy cried. “Mommy and Daddy are looking for you.”

“T-Tree. Look what I found. A real princess.” He motioned to my wife.

Tinder?

Tree?

Oh, for fu…

“Fitzpatrick. Fancy seeing you here. What are you doing raising funds for For the Love of Cow?” Andrew Arrowsmith strolled behind his children, leading his wife by the small of her back.

I glanced at one of the posters in the room, certain he was testing me. Sure enough, the words For the Love of Cow were plainly there. Apparently, I’d slid a fifty-thousand-dollar check at the door to support research on how to decrease methane’s effect on depleting the ozone.

Cow’s shit just got a whole new literal meaning.

I stole another glance at Tinder. He was jerking around in my wife’s arms, his throat producing feral sounds I doubted he controlled.

“Don’t tell me you grew a conscience.” Andrew smirked. I had to admit, he wore his newly earned aristocracy well.

“What conscience?” I asked nonchalantly. “I heard the word cow and figured there’d be steak.”

“That sounds more like you.” Andrew’s eyes drifted to Persephone, who was still on the floor, ahh-ing and aww-ing over something his children said.

“She is lovely.”

“I have eyes.”

“Aren’t you going to introduce us to her?”

“No,” I deadpanned.

Unfortunately, part of why I was mildly obsessed with Persephone was due to her impeccable manners. She rose to her feet, extending her hand to my nemesis with a warm smile, introducing herself anyway.

“Persephone Fitzpatrick. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Andrew Arrowsmith, and this is my wife, Joelle. I believe you’ve already met my sons, Tinder and Tree.”

“Oh, they made a grand entrance.” Persephone brushed brown locks from Tinder’s pasty forehead, laughing.

Do not touch his kid.

“I-I-I-I’m b-b-bored. C-Can you play with me, princess?” Tinder tugged at my wife’s dress, still damp from the champagne he made her drop.

I was not jealous of a five-year-old.

I simply wasn’t.

Even if the awe in which my wife regarded him grated on my nerves.

“This place is boring, huh?” She winked at him conspiratorially. “Let’s see what trouble we can find around here.”

“No, thank you. We still have a few people to greet.” Joelle pulled her kids back to her side, struggling to control them. She looked pitifully average, especially next to my wife. Her features boring, her hair too stiff.

Flower Girl gave her a pointed look.

“I think Tinder needs the fresh air. We’ll stay on the balcony, where you can see us. You’re welcome to join us.”

“Sweetheart.” I put a hand on my wife’s arm. “You’re off-duty. Let his parents deal with him.”

She shook away from my touch. “Not everything is a chore.”

I pinned her with a look but kept my opinions to myself. What could I say? That the kid was broken, and hopeless, and any kindness she was going to show him was going to give him cruel and unjustified hope he could one day be normal? Accepted? Loved?

“Please, Mommy.” Tinder fell on his knees. “Please, we really want to have fun for a change.”

“Fiiiiine.” Joelle laughed nervously. “Tree and I will tag along.”

“You never let us play during stuff like this.” Tree looked up at his mother suspiciously. “Why now?”

Joelle snorted, waving her hand around.

“Of course I do, honey.”

The women left with the children. Andrew and I stayed behind, leaning against the bar, watching them. A couple of people who passed us shook his hand and waved at him, ignoring me.

“She really is something.” He scrubbed his chin, following my wife’s elegant movements, undressing her with his eyes.

“Something you better avert your eyes from,” I hissed. “Unless you don’t mind my scooping them out with a dessert spoon.”

“Don’t pretend you are capable of forming an attachment to anyone or anything other than money, including this delectable little creature.”

He turned to smile at me, satisfied. “Does she know?”

There was no point in pretending I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Yes,” I lied.

He chuckled. “Nice try. She doesn’t, but she will. And once she does, she’ll dump you.”

“Tinder’s an interesting kid,” I poked back.

“Yeah.” Andrew propped his elbows on the bar, still watching our families. Persephone wrapped her lean arm around a column on the balcony, spinning and laughing. Tinder followed suit, and Tree joined them. Joelle looked on, a grim smile on her face. “I give him all the support and help he needs.”

“Your love and support can’t fix his nervous system.” I tilted my head back, downing my cognac.

“I’m having a real good time fucking up your business, putting billboards next to your office, arranging demonstrations, suing your company for all it’s worth. What do you have to say about that?” He grabbed a drink from the bar and took a sip. “Oh. That’s right. You never curse. How is that working for you?”

I turned to him. I could count on one hand the things that managed to pierce through my armor these days.

Andrew Arrowsmith was one of the few.

So was my wife.

“Let’s cut to the chase, Andrew. Drop the lawsuit, or I will make you lose your job, then your home, then your reputation, exactly in that order. The Arrowsmith fingerprints are all over Royal Pipelines from decades ago. All it takes is one dig inside the company’s records”—I snapped my fingers—“and everything you’ve built will crumble like a stale cookie. The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree,” I assured him. “My father left you penniless and forced you to scale back on your dream and potential, and if you push me to it, I will make sure your kids won’t be able to afford the clothes on their backs and the bread in their stomachs.”

Andrew took a step forward, getting in my face.

“Don’t forget I have something on you, too, buddy-boy.”

“A condition, not a scandal,” I cemented.

“Condition or not, I bet your father still doesn’t know his golden boy is anything but precious metal. Doesn’t know the extent of embarrassment you’ve caused the Fitzpatrick name. You touch Green Living, and I will make sure everyone in the world knows your story. Your history. The ugly lies and uncomfortable truths. It’s either economic carnage or a private bloodbath, Fitzy. Your pick. But I’ve a feeling you already came to terms with the fact I’m going to destroy Royal Pipelines.”

The women appeared in our periphery before I delivered a comeback. Andrew took a step back, bowing in Persephone’s direction.

“Mrs. Fitzpatrick. May I have a dance?”

If she was uncomfortable, she didn’t let it show. She placed her hand in his. I used every ounce of my self-control not to pounce on him and rip her from his hands.

It was just a dance. Besides, it was great practice for seeing her in someone else’s arms. Which was something I was destined to go through in a few years, after she gave me heirs and officially threw in the towel on my sociopathic ass.

We would turn into my parents.

Civilized strangers, linked by commitments, common interests, and social ties.

I was left alone with horsey Joelle and her unbearable twins.

It was Joelle’s turn to drape herself against the bar, a cunning smile smeared on her ill-fitted lipstick.

“She’s a darling.”

“She will do.”

I should peel my eyes away from Persephone in Andrew’s arms, but I was fascinated by what it did to me. To my insides. My head throbbed.

Mrs. Arrowsmith’s eyes ignited with curiosity.

“That’s not a glowing review for a wife you can’t seem to stop staring at. How’s being a newlywed treating you?”

My gaze glided down her face. No wonder Andrew couldn’t take his eyes off my wife. His looked inbred.

“I thought shotgun marriages were a thing of the past,” Joelle continued, tapping her lips, ignoring her children, who were off running between the legs of the couples on the dance floor. “Everyone is wondering if you two have a little bun in the oven.”

I wish.

Jackson Hayfield, an oil baron from Texas, caught my eye from the other side of the room and saluted me. I saluted back, treating Mrs. Arrowsmith as if she were air. For all I cared, that was exactly what she was.

“It is my understanding that this is Persephone’s second marriage.”

“Do you enjoy talking to yourself?” I wondered, checking my phone for emails. “You seem to be holding this one-sided conversation well. A telltale of your marriage dynamic?” I knitted my eyebrows together.

Her smile faltered, but she didn’t back down.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to come off as forward. I just think it’s so brave, what you’re doing. My husband told me about your condition, and well…” She trailed off, playing with the necklace on her neck.

“And what?” I turned, finally taking the bait.

“And it is clear she is still with her ex-husband. I mean, why else would she be visiting her grandmother-in-law at a retirement home every weekend?”

Joelle flipped her dyed, straw-like hair to one shoulder, going in for the kill.

“I mean, it makes sense. She was penniless with no prospects. And it was high time you got married. The pressure was on, I’m sure. If you ask me, arranged marriages have their merits. So how does it work, exactly? Are there three of you in this marriage, or does Mr. Veitch pop in every few weeks for a visit…?”

The look on my face must’ve told Joelle she needed to rewind. I had no idea how she knew about Persephone’s ex-husband. He wasn’t a society man. Sam told me Paxton was a D-list errand boy for Byrne.

Joelle read the question on my face, waving a hand around.

“Please, Cillian, people talk. The minute the country club folks in Back Bay heard about your nuptials, tongues started wagging. Paxton Veitch was my tennis mate’s student in high school, so she volunteered the information. Apparently, she still visits his grandmother, too. Poor thing has no other relatives in Boston, and she’s in quite a state. I’m told your wife hasn’t missed a visit in three years, not long after she started dating him. Familia primum, huh?”

Family first in Latin.

So Joelle was one of those women.

Fluent in Latin, mingling, and designer brands.

Gently bred to become the wife of men like me.

“Here’s the thing.” I inclined my head toward her, bulldozing into her personal space as she did into my business. “My marriage may be a sham, but at least my wife and I are upfront about it. Your marriage is a farce, and I bet you’re dumb enough to believe it’s the real deal. Let me guess—you come from money, don’t you, Joelle? Never worked a day in your life. You have a nice, albeit useless bachelor’s degree from an Ivy League university, a prestigious lineage, and trust funds coming out of every hole in your body?” I arched an eyebrow. By the way she flinched, I’d hit a nerve. I plowed through it, gutting it with a pitchfork. “Everything Andrew Arrowsmith has done from the moment he was born was to try to make up for the fact he wasn’t born into the Fitzpatrick family. He ate from our plates, played in our backyard, and attended the same extracurricular classes I took part in. His family went as far as to send him to the same schools as me. But make no mistakes—the Arrowsmiths never sliced through the airtight seal of Boston’s upper crust. He is our hang-on, and you, my dear, are his meal ticket. While it is true that I, too, stand in your position of feeding an ambitious, good-looking go-getter of the world, at least I married a woman I’d like to take to bed every night. You married a social climber who wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole given the chance. When was the last time he ate you out?” I leaned down, my lips brushing her ear. Her body responded with an excited shiver. “Ravaged you like you were a precious prize and not a check he needed to deposit? Your husband is cheating on you, isn’t he, Mrs. Arrowsmith?”

She paled under her makeup, staggering backward. I shot out a hand to clasp her arm and help her to her feet, a polite smirk on my lips.

“That’s what I thought. Tell anyone about my wife visiting her former grandmother-in-law, and I will make sure everyone in America knows your husband has side pieces. Enjoy the rest of your evening, Mrs. Arrowsmith.”

“Mrs. Fitzpatrick will be spending the night at my place. There’s no need to stop at her apartment,” I announced to my driver when we slid into the back seat of the Escalade.

Persephone took off her heels with a joyous sigh, dropping her head to the cool leather, too exhausted to discuss this new development.

She’d danced with every man worth knowing in the ballroom tonight. Was handed from one pair of arms to the next. A dazzling, shiny toy that belonged to the most closed-off man in New England. Everyone wanted to see who had managed to tame The Villain, and since most people had long given up on approaching me directly, Flower Girl was the next best thing.

“I see I’m growing on you.” She rubbed her swollen, red foot, propping it on my knee in hopes I’d give her a massage.

“You might be needing glasses.” I patted her wiggling toes, ignoring her pleas.

“How can you be so unhappy when everything went smoothly tonight?” She blinked at me. “Are you programmed to be miserable or something?”

I paid my dues in this marriage and with a healthy interest rate. Not only keeping my wife alive—which turned out more challenging than I’d expected—but also showering her with everything a twenty-first century woman could dream of.

If Persephone thought she was going to run around, visiting her ex-husband’s family, and keeping in touch with the Veitch clan—maybe even with Paxton himself—she was sorely mistaken. She was mine now, and if I had to close the deal by impregnating her this week, I was up for the job.

Once we arrived at my house, Petar dashed from his room to see if I needed anything.

A loyal wife would be nice.

“Out of my way.” I waved him off. Persephone and I headed to my study on the second floor, ascending the Tuscan staircase.

I closed the door behind us, strolled over to my desk, retrieved the stupid contract from my breast pocket, and slapped it on the table. Producing my own pen from a nearby drawer—one without a goddamn plumbing company’s name—I signed the contract, handing my soul over to my wife, then held the paper between my index and middle fingers in the air.

She lifted her arm to snatch it. I tilted my arm up, shaking my head slowly.

“I found a price for my soul.”

“Let’s hear it.” She folded her arms over her chest.

“Stop visiting your ex-husband’s grandmother. It is inappropriate, ungrateful, and sends the wrong message.”

There was a beat of silence in which she tried to digest how I’d known about this to begin with.

“No,” she said, point-blank. “She has no one. She is senile, and lonely, and in desperate need of companionship. She doesn’t have much longer to live. I’m not going to turn my back on her.”

It surprised me she didn’t deny visiting her ex-relative.

Although it shouldn’t have. I was always under the impression Persephone was easier to handle than her friends and sister—aka the PMS Brigade. In practice, my wife simply had an unconventional approach to things. Instead of standing her ground, she perched on it cutely with a sweet smile on her face.

But she was still, technically, on her ground, not moving an inch.

“She’s not your responsibility anymore.” Bracing my knuckles over my desk to stop myself from popping them, I leaned forward, feeling the threads of my cool unraveling.

“I’m not buying your soul for the price of tarnishing mine.” She erected her spine. “Sorry, hubs, you’ll have to think of something else.”

“I’ll hire a nurse for her.”

Was I really negotiating with this woman? Again?

“No,” she said flatly.

“Two nurses,” I gritted out.

She shook her head.

“The woman is senile.” I bared my teeth. “She is not going to know the difference between you and a professional.”

“But I will.” She unfastened her hair clip, her golden locks spilling like waterfalls on her shoulders. “And I’ll know I turned my back on someone helpless just because of my husband’s whim.”

I wanted to…wanted to…what the fuck did I want to do to this woman?

And why the fuck did I think the word fuck in my head just now?

I did it again.

God-fucking-dammit.

She ambled toward me, putting her hand on mine from across the desk.

“Cillian,” she whispered. “Listen to me. The two most important decisions in our lives are not ours to make. Our creation and our death. We don’t choose to be born, and we don’t choose when or how we die. But everything in-between? That’s our jurisdiction. We can fill in the blanks as we please. And I choose to fill mine by doing the right thing. By being a good friend—a good human—according to my standards.”

Calmly, I retrieved the contract between us and shoved it into my office drawer. I locked it, disposing the key in my front pocket. I wasn’t going to get my way—not tonight, anyway—but negotiations were my playground, and the small print was where I thrived.

She was going to stop seeing the old hag, if I had to work full-time at making it happen.

I rounded the desk, leaning against it and crossing my ankles.

“Come here.”

She closed the space between us without hesitation, willing and responsive. Perfect. I’d never met someone so agreeable yet so stubborn.

We were flush against each other, her flowery scent invading my nostrils.

“Seen your Aunt Tilda recently?” My hand slid to her cheek, palming it. She took a ragged breath, her entire body trembling to my briefest touch.

I wondered how receptive she was to her ex-husband.

How hard she quivered when pressed against someone she’d actually chosen.

Someone whose arms I sent her directly to.

“Yeah, I did, in fact, the other day…” She stammered, letting me tug her into position. Her thighs straddled my right leg. I angled her so her clit pressed against my muscled quads. “Uhm, which, I guess, was Tuesday?”

She wasn’t thinking straight.

Unfortunately, neither was I.

I dipped my head down at the same time she tilted hers up, her lips parting for me. I took her mouth in mine, pressing my knee between her thighs, feeling her muscles sealing against me. A moan fell from her mouth. She pushed her breasts to my chest, rubbing against me everywhere, craving friction. My tongue danced with hers, and I gathered her face in my hands, deepening the kiss, trailing my mouth down her chin, then her neck, stopping to draw a lazy circle around her racing pulse with the tip of my tongue when I reached the sensitive part of her throat.

Her fingernails dug into my shoulders. She was close to climaxing from kissing alone. We were electric together, and I wondered when she was going to draw the line. To realize the things I wanted from her weren’t things she was willing to offer.

“Oh my God, Kill,” she yelped.

Rather than pointing out God didn’t exist, my mouth continued its journey south, to her collarbone, then to her tits, which I cupped, my tongue sliding like an arrow between them. She grabbed my head and pushed it to one nipple. I suppressed a chuckle, peeling off the side of her dress, slipping her pink, erect nipple into my mouth and sucking it. She sighed into my hair, her little talons grazing my shoulders as she dragged her hands down my back, claiming my ass cheeks like she was trying to squeeze water out of them.

“Give me everything.” She lolled her head back and forth, her lips against my hair, mumbling, “Every inch of you. I want everything you give them and more.”

Them.

The women I’d paid.

The women I was going to continue paying because Persephone wasn’t born, prepped, and meant to fulfill my dark fantasies. That was out of the question.

She was too good.

Too innocent.

Too precious.

And besides, I had to be the dumbest man on planet Earth to deliberately tangle my life with hers any more than it already was.

I moved to her other nipple, lapping, pulling, and biting. Teasing her with my mouth, I brought her to the brink of an orgasm, to a point she was humping my leg shamelessly. I knew she was close. The tremors in her thighs told me so.

I chose that moment to rip my mouth from hers and step away.

She nearly fell on the desk. I clutched her waist and tugged her back to me, tilting her chin up. “Do I still kiss like a hungry Rottweiler?”

I was pleased to find my voice was the same dry, bored rumble.

She cleared her throat, boneless against me.

“You’re improving. This one was better.”

“Better, but not perfect?” I arched an eyebrow, amused.

She shook her head, grinning mischievously while working my zipper. “Sadly, we still have to practice. Often.”

I couldn’t help it.

I laughed into our kiss.

It was the first time I’d laughed in years.

Maybe decades.

And it felt…new. Good.

“Now show me why you put a continent between you and your mistresses. What could you do to them that is so kinky?”

She didn’t give me time to answer. With my zipper undone, she tugged at my hand and dragged me to the hallway, glancing around, waiting for me to lead the way to my bedroom. I did even though I knew she knew.

Knew she took a tour of my house when I wasn’t home. I saw her in the cameras when Petar showed it to her.

I shut the door behind us, locking it for good measure, and she stepped in front of me. Wiggling out of her dress, she let it pool on the floor around her like a frosted lake.

She snatched my hand, wrapping it around the front of her snowy neck.

“Is this your jam?” Her chest rose and fell to the rhythm of her frantic heartbeats, her eyes zinging with exhilaration. “You did it the day…that time…”

I kicked her out screaming.

“Or…” She trailed off, sliding my hand down her body, all the way to the curve of her ass until I reached the crack. “Maybe this? I don’t mind doing things to you, either. I don’t mind anything, Cillian. As long as it’s with me.”

My resolve was dissolving faster than edible thongs in a seedy bachelor’s party in Vegas.

The devil on my shoulder told me it wasn’t my job to warn her off sleeping with me.

The angel on my shoulder was…well, currently duct-taped and gagged in the devil’s trunk.

“I don’t fuck fair,” I warned.

My hand was still in her palm. She moved my fingers into the folds between her legs, spreading her thighs for me. I dipped my index finger inside her. She took my finger and sucked it clean.

I died. The end.

Fine. I did not die. But I was getting close to it, and all the reasons I shouldn’t sleep with her—my control, my condition, how she was entirely too good for me—were starting to sound like more of the same BS.

“Show me your true colors,” she croaked, her voice breaking with emotions.

“They’re ugly,” I said flatly.

She shook her head. “Not to me. You’ll never be ugly to me.”

That was all it took to melt my determination into a puddle of nothing. Grabbing her hair from behind, I brought her lips to mine in a punishing kiss.

“Do I need a safe word?” She sucked in a breath.

“Your mouth will be too occupied for talking. Tap any surface twice, and I’ll stop.”

I thrust her against the window overlooking my garden, butt naked, tits and pussy smashed against the glass, shoving my dress pants down my hips and freeing my cock. She whimpered, wiggling her ass in my direction, arching, begging, pleading. She was so wet her juices made her thighs stick together. I kicked her legs open and kneaded her ass so rough, I left pink marks all over it. I watched down on my wife’s angelic face from behind as reality sank its claws into her.

She was pressed against a window overlooking my yard—but also someone else’s private garden. She was naked as the day she was born, about to get fucked so hard women in neighboring zip codes were about to get secondhand orgasms. Persephone gulped but didn’t stop me when I leaned down, picked up her drenched panties, rolled them into a ball, and stuffed them into her mouth.

Flower Girl gagged on her sensible cotton underwear, her eyes watering. I stayed still, waiting to see her fist rising in the air, tapping it out. Sensing I was testing the water, she splayed her fingers over the window, giving me a nod.

Bring it on.

I plowed into her in one go.

She cried out, her panties muffling her moan. My neighbor came trotting out to his patio holding a beer, wearing a wifebeater and smart dress pants as I knew he would. Every night at ten sharp, Armie Guzman, a Wells Fargo banker, came out to water his rosebushes.

Persephone’s eyes widened as I began to move inside her. He was standing directly in front of us with a full view of her being hammered against a window.

She whimpered when I drove into her again, smacking her ass, leaving an imprint.

“Tap twice.” My teeth sank into her neck, reminding her she had a way out. The way she responded to my thrusts with her back arching told me she wasn’t the innocent little thing I’d made her out to be in my head.

I wanted her to tell me it was too much. Too soon. Too perverted. To prove to me we didn’t fit in all the ways I suspected we did. If she were cold and unresponsive, walking away from her once she was pregnant would be easy.

Fine. Not easy. Doable.

She shook her head, meeting me halfway, grabbing my hand from behind and putting it on her ass again.

I spanked her again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

She turned her head to stare at me, eyes half-lidded, drunk on what we were doing. To make matters worse, each time I drove inside her, I left a small part of myself I wasn’t prepared to let go of.

A shard of self-control.

I grabbed her jaw and redirected her face to the neighbor’s backyard.

“Play with your tits for him,” I ordered. “Make it worth his while.”

I was trying to push her as far as she could go, in hopes she’d tap out, turn around, agree to the IVF, and leave me the fuck alone.

She did as she was told, playing with herself for him, pinching, tugging, caressing the shape of her heavy breasts. The middle-aged man looked up from his rosebushes and halted, his face tilted up to my window.

Persephone Penrose was good.

Proper.

Sweet.

…and fucking depraved, just like me.

That made her a very powerful drug.

“That’s it,” I growled into her ear, pumping harder as gooseflesh prickled on every inch of her skin. “Open your thighs and smear your juices on my window to show your new neighbor what your husband does to you, my sweet, beautiful slut.”

Surely, she was going to throw in the towel.

She couldn’t…

Wouldn’t…

She did.

Obeying, she parted her thighs and played as I slammed into her from behind.

The man was still glaring, his face carefully expressionless as my wife rubbed her pussy against the window while I was fucking her from behind, the friction on her clit wreaking havoc through her body. Her inner muscles clenched around me, so I knew she was close. I bent her over, L-shaped, in a position that allowed for deeper penetration. Then I grabbed both her ass cheeks and pounded her mercilessly. Her palms raked the window, leaving sweaty handprints.

We were both soaking wet. I glanced down at her jiggly, bruised ass, hating how much I loved the view.

The power she had over me disgusted me. She would never know how much I craved her. How much I preferred her above all others.

How it felt like her glorious yellow hair wound and looped around my wrists and feet, like a creature out of a Greek mythology, chaining us together.

She spat her underwear out. “Holy shit, I’m coming.”

Her legs shook, and she fell on her hands and knees to the carpeted floor, spent and thoroughly screwed.

I wrapped an arm around her lower stomach, massaging her clit to milk another climax out of her. Still driving into her, I chased my own release, doggy-style.

A minute later, my balls tightened, and I felt the euphoric release of a carnal fuck emptying inside my wife just as she found her second climax.

The moment I was done, I pulled out, wiping my still-hard dick on her ass cheek. I stood, a little woozy from the orgasm, quickly dressing and regaining my control.

“God. I can’t believe he saw us.” Persephone collapsed, burying her face in the carpet, her red and pink ass staring back at me. “I’m never leaving this house.”

“Yes, you are, and soon,” I quipped.

I wasn’t done parading her like a winning horse.

“I’m mortified.”

“Don’t be.”

“Why?” She moaned into my carpet. I supposed it was a bad time to comment it cost more than her sister’s entire studio apartment and ask her not to stain it.

“The window is tinted from the outside,” I said dryly, buckling myself up, hoping to hell she was going to fall pregnant tonight. Not only would it help me get rid of my nagging fixation with her, but it would kill any potential ex-husband drama. Something I sincerely didn’t want to deal with. I didn’t envy the bastard if he came back for what was now mine. I was never in a sharing mood.

She whipped her head, her eyes flaring.

“Are you kidding me?”

“I don’t have a sense of humor, remember?” I buttoned my shirt, which was halfway undone, though I didn’t recall taking it off.

“What was he looking at, then?” She sat up, turning around to face me, still buck naked.

“The flowerbeds on my balcony. My landscaper grows superior roses. Drives him mad.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“Watching you squirm turned me on.” I leaned down to pat her messy blond hair like she was a pet before walking over to my recliner and opening my cigar box next to it.

“Excuse me?”

“Gladly. You are excused. Have been for the six minutes since we finished.” I waved her off.

Her tits were fantastic, especially when she stood suddenly, in a jerky movement. Full and pear-shaped, with pink nipples like two small diamond studs. My wife grabbed her dress from the floor, sliding back into it with a shake of her head.

“Petar’ll call the driver for you.” I tucked the cigar to the side of my mouth, texting my estate manager while she jammed her feet into the nasty pair of Manolo Blahniks that gave her blisters.

“Screw you, Kill.”

“Sounds like a plan. How about tomorrow? I have an opening at lunch. If that doesn’t work, you’ll have to wait until I’m back from work at around nine thirty.”

She turned around without a word, stomping to the door. She stopped at the threshold, her hand touching the wall as she peered at me from behind her slender shoulder.

“I’m the same as you, you know.”

“Highly doubt it.” I didn’t look up from my phone, already answering an email from my legal department. Not my finest show of gentlemanly character, but I knew if I looked at her, I’d ask her to stay.

“I like to see you squirm, too.”

A smirk touched my lips.

“That’s adorable. Aim high, Flower Girl.”

“That’s why, when I danced with Andrew Arrowsmith tonight, I agreed to his proposal,” she explained calmly.

My eyes flew up from the phone in an instant.

“What proposal?”

“Oh, lookie here.” She smiled sweetly. “Now I have your attention.”

“What proposal?” I repeated, my tone lower.

“To tutor his children.”

I saw what Arrowsmith was doing there.

Putting my wife close to my secret. To my shame. To the loaded gun in the room. Making her realize what I was, what it meant, how inferior I was to her blatant perfection.

I darted from my seat, about to give her a piece of my mind.

She lifted a hand.

“Save it, hubs. You have your conditions, and I have mine. One of them was I wanted to keep working.”

“As a pre-K teacher, not my archenemy’s au pair. This goes against the non-compete contract, which, by the way, you signed.”

“You can’t tell me what to do with my career.”

Her voice was peaceful, like the sailing clouds she loved so much.

Red-hot anger slithered in my veins. My pulse quickened.

Not good.

“I just did.” I flashed my teeth, smoke seeping from my mouth. “And I’m saying it again, for the brain cells in the back: you’re not working for Andrew Arrowsmith. See? Easy.”

She clasped her hands together, all sugar and honey. “In that case, you’re not drilling in the Arctic.”

And just like that, I was no longer in danger of asking her to stick around.

“Sorry, sweetheart, your job is riding my cock, not giving me business advice.”

She nodded. “Then yours is knocking me up, not telling me who I can visit during my weekends and who to work with.”

“This is a violation of our contract,” I warned.

She pretended to think about it, then hitched a shoulder up.

“Leave me then.”

“You know divorce is not an option,” I gritted out.

She winced. “It does take the sting out of the contract, doesn’t it?”

The little sh…

She had a point.

“I’m going to make your life very miserable if you defy me, Persephone.”

My wife waved her hand around as she slipped through my door.

“Been there, done that. Night, hubs!”