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Neither of us speaks as he takes care of me. When the water begins to run cool, Aidan drains the tub and helps me out. He dries me off and carries me back to his bedroom, and still I can’t think of anything to say to him.
I held on for so long to the circumstances of our childhood and the heavy-handed way he brought me into his world as an adult. Now I can barely remember why it felt so important. Erica would say I’ve been dickmatized, though she’s practically been writing fanfic about us for weeks now.
But it’s so much more than that. It wasn’t just that the sex, despite the pain, was amazing. It’s the aftermath—the way Aidan is taking care of me.
He puts me in bed.
“Stay,” he says, as though I’m a poodle.
I feel boneless, like I could sleep for a hundred years and thorny vines would grow around my sleeping form while the entire kingdom sleeps along side me. I don’t fight him on this. I can’t even dredge up the energy to argue about him bossing me around. I’m sure I’ll have energy for that later.
He leaves me for a bit and returns with some iced tea from the kitchen and a chicken salad sandwich. Claude made a big container of it yesterday. It has grapes and apples in it. The sandwich also has lettuce, sweet pickles, and a salted tomato. The tea is unsweetened, the way I like it. I just hired him a few weeks ago, and I already want to give him a raise.
Aidan tucks stray damp hair behind my ear, then his hand slides behind my neck as he pulls me forward to press a soft kiss to my forehead.
“Eat something, and then rest. I have some business to attend to.”
I don’t want to think about that. I want to stay wrapped inside the cocoon of this Aidan, the one who not only tends to my pleasure, but makes sure I eat well and rest. I want to exist inside the montage forever and never let it be disrupted by the harsh realities of who he is.
He leaves me, and I eat the sandwich, then snuggle in to take a nap. I only intend to sleep for about an hour, but when I wake, the room is dark, the sun having already set. And I’m no longer alone in the bed. I feel Aidan’s hard length against my back as he holds me, his flesh pressed against mine, naked body against naked body.
“Finally, you’re awake. Ready for round two?”
“Mmmhmmm,” I murmur, still half asleep.
Aidan pulls back the blankets and begins to skim his fingertips lightly over my skin. I shiver under his touch as the goosebumps break out.
He presses soft kisses along the same trail his fingertips just traveled. “You are so beautiful,” he rumbles. “Perfect.”
“You say that now, but some day I’ll be old and wrinkly,” I say. Because there is this fear that lurks that Aidan’s attraction is only surface-level and that as my beauty fades, so will his interest and any mirage of care and safety.
I tell myself he doesn’t really know me. This has only been about conquest and what he can conquer. About claiming the girl who ran from him. About winning and owning and having. About dominating. It’s not anything real. I tell myself all of this to protect my fragile hopes because before this moment I’m not sure he truly had the power to break me. It’s why I held my heart so close. I didn’t trust him to hold it.
“You’ll be cute when you’re old,” he murmurs against my skin. “I can’t wait to be old and gray together.”
Aidan slips his hand between my legs, and I flinch. I didn’t realize how sore I really was after the first time. He pulls away.
“It’s fine,” I say trying to move his hand back to where it was.
“It’s not fine. I should have been more gentle with you for your first time. You need to heal.”
He makes me the little spoon and holds me, stroking the exposed flesh of my thigh where he’s pulled the blanket back. This feels comfortable and oddly safe. Possibly for the first time since the decree that I would marry him, I let out a long slow breath, a full moment of relaxation in Aidan’s embrace. It’s a moment where everything—for the first time ever—feels something close to perfect.
And then that moment is broken.
All at once there are loud explosions as colors burst into the bedroom from the giant balcony window. Aidan has a big estate, but his closest neighbor must be having a Fourth-of-July party. They’re setting off huge expensive fireworks. Aidan’s hand tightens painfully on my leg.
“Ow! You’re hurting me.”
But he doesn’t remove it or loosen his grip.
“Aidan!” I struggle to get out from under him, and he finally releases me and pulls away. I twist around to see him to try to understand what’s happened, but he’s already out of bed and making a beeline for the walk-in closet. He slams the door, and I hear the lock click into place.
I look down to find a harsh red mark in the outline of his hand where he gripped me, and I’m sure I’ll have a bruise by tomorrow.
I get out of the bed and take the sheet, wrapping it around me. I knock on the door. “Aidan…”
“Just go,” he says. It’s an inhuman growl as though some force beyond his control has shifted him from mild-mannered Jekyll to the hideous Hyde, and now he must conceal himself in the shadows for my safety as things inside him bubble and twist and contort into something dark and misshapen.