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I’d straddled him, the knife in my hand, wondering if I could just kill him. He was obviously never going to let me go. And maybe he’d given me one night of mercy, but at some point he’d force himself on me. It wasn’t like he was going to take the time to really woo me, and I couldn’t accept a reality in which I would succumb to my stalker. It was me or him. Right?
I hesitated when he moved. He was still asleep but clearly having troubled dreams. Maybe a guilty conscience for forcing me to marry him? Doubtful.
A moment later he was awake, and there was what I like to think of as kidnapper small talk. Then he flipped our positions… and I’m not going to think about that… about how my body responded to him… about how much I suddenly wanted him. One part of me wanted to hold onto the distant past and all the reasons I hated him, and another wanted him to just be “that hot guy from the alley who saved me.” Because it was easier.
It had felt wrong to be attracted to him then, but it hadn’t felt like defeat in the same way this does, knowing Aidan had been stalking me forever and had finally sprung the trap.
“Mrs Stryker!” Cora shouts.
I turn toward her and open my eyes.
“Finally! Waking you is like waking the dead. I’ve got clothes laid out for you.” She points, indicating the spot where Aidan slept. “You’ve got to get up, get dressed, and have breakfast.”
“Why?” I say through a yawn. It’s Sunday. What I need is to sleep until noon and binge watch trash TV and try to avoid Aidan as much as possible for the rest of my life.
“You’ve got to be at Mass with Mr. Stryker in one hour.”
“Why?” I’m not trying to be an asshole or make Cora’s job more difficult. I just really can’t understand why Aidan would be going to church. Yes, he’s Catholic—on paper. But obviously he has to be a lapsed Catholic with all the mortal sins he’s probably committing on a near daily basis. I mean, I don’t know the details of his underworld dealings, but he’s obviously some sort of crime boss. He can’t seriously be devout.
She looks at me as though horrified that Aidan has brought a heretic into his home. Right, because I’m the bad guy here. I don’t say anything else about it. I just get up. She stands there as though she’s going to personally dress me, and that’s a big no for me.
“I’ve got it,” I say.
“You’ll need someone to fix your hair and makeup.” She says this as though I just woke up with hair and skin for the very first time today. As though I haven’t done my own hair and makeup a thousand times.
“No, I won’t,” I say more churlishly than I intend.
“Well, breakfast is ready, so hurry up.”
I don’t like the way she’s speaking to me. I take a deep breath and make a snap decision. I may be a captive, but apparently I am now legally Mrs. Aidan Stryker, and I’m pretty sure that comes with a certain kind of power, so I’m not going to be dragged around like a child by the staff. I may be to some degree under Aidan’s power, but I won’t be under his household manager in the hierarchy.
“Cora,” I say, gathering the remaining patience I have left. “I am the lady of this house, and you will not speak to me as a child or order me around. I will be down for breakfast soon. If Mr. Stryker wanted to be on time, he should have woken me sooner. And he should have woken me himself. Please deliver that message to him so we don’t have further miscommunication.”
She seems to realize how she’s spoken to me and thinks better of it, a touch of color coming to her cheeks at her lack of professionalism. “Of course, Mrs. Stryker. I apologize. It won’t happen again.” She excuses herself from the room.
I get dressed in the flowered dress Cora brought and cross back to my suite of rooms. My guards stand outside my door as though there were anything in there to guard all night. Once inside my bathroom, I wash my face and put on the most minimalist makeup possible—a small amount of dewy sheer foundation, a shimmery sand-colored eye shadow, mascara, and lipgloss. Then I comb and put my hair in a loose updo so I don’t have to mess with it.
I change out of the dress. Except for getting married and maybe a very nice date, I don’t do dresses. I don’t even know where she found this thing. It was probably something that had been in the far back of my closet and forgotten about back at my old house.
I wore cute skirts occasionally, but dresses, absolutely not. If Aidan thinks he’s going to dress me up like a doll, he’s got a rude awakening. I will fight him on every hill for every inch of self-sovereignty I can claim for myself, so he’d better pick his battles wisely.
I will not be his princess in a tower. I may still be technically a virgin, but let’s not get it twisted. I’m not some clueless Red Riding Hood. I was the homecoming queen, the captain of the cheerleading squad, and the vice president of my college sorority. Having a rough year or two hasn’t altered my entire personality, and if Aidan wanted a wife who would obey his every command, he probably should have picked someone else to stalk because I’m not that bitch.
I pull out a beige pant suit and a lighter cream-colored silk camisole top to go under it. I put on a delicate gold necklace with a small bee charm, and three equally delicate gold beaded bracelets. I slip into a pair of nude heels and go downstairs to the kitchen. Guards stand outside the door, but the kitchen itself is empty except for Aidan.
His intoxicating scent mixes with the smell of coffee and breakfast foods. He’s wearing another black suit very close to what he wore yesterday for our wedding, but I know somehow that it’s not the same one. He probably has twenty suits exactly like this one, or close.
“You can’t go to Mass in a power suit,” Aidan says. He makes a good show of being dismissive because of course we’re both going to completely ignore the fact that I held a knife to his throat in the middle of the night last night and then he chose to get me off with the handle instead of deciding I’m too much trouble to deal with and slitting my throat. No, we are clearly not going to talk about that.
Some psychotic part of me thinks maybe I dreamed the whole thing. It was all so hazy and dreamlike after all.
There’s a whole breakfast spread laid out. Coffee, juice, croissants, bagels, cream cheese, eggs, fruit, sausage. I distract myself from the overwhelming energy that is Aidan by pouring a cup of coffee and putting a croissant and sausage on my plate.
“I shouldn’t have to go to Mass at all,” I say, finally responding to his comment about my outfit. “I’m not Catholic.”
“Not yet.”
“Not. Ever,” I say as I put my plate and cup down on the table in the breakfast nook just a bit too hard.