Page 27 of Bad Bishop

Oderint Dum Metuant.

Let them hate as long as they fear.

He leaned down and reached for me. I forced myself not to flinch. I thought he’d hit me, but all he did was pry the gun from between my fingers. “Open your mouth.”

Even though he looked calm, something in his eye told me that if I wouldn’t, he’d put a bullet in my head. And unlike me, he wouldn’t miss.

Slowly, I let my jaw slack. He pushed the pistol’s muzzle between my lips. Slowly, almost sensually. It was still hot, the gunpowder sour against my tongue.

“Wrap those pretty lips around it,” he instructed coolly.

My eyes stung with tears, and I followed the instructions I wasn’t supposed to understand. I acted on pure instinct. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to live, either. But I didn’t want to leave this earth before I killed my rapist and at least plucked this bastard’s other eye out.

My husband looked bored out of his mind. Like shoving guns down people’s throats was a daily occurrence for him.

“Next time you try to shoot me, you better not fucking miss, because this’ll be my cock. It’s thicker than the gun. I’ll watch you choke on my cum as punishment. Understood?”

I didn’t answer. Screw him.

I stared up at him, shaking with rage, and spat the gun out of my mouth.

He shook his head in response. “Get your ass in the bathroom and get ready for bed while I clean myself up.”

I staggered to the bathroom, locking the door behind me. I clutched the edges of the sink, stared into the mirror, and swallowed air to draw in some oxygen. I wished I had a phone. Mama wouldn’t let me have one. She said phones created zombies, and everything I needed from life could be found in our library.

My eyes drifted to a condom in a foil packet on the vanity. I recognized it from an anatomy encyclopedia I read a few years ago.

So he was planning to rape me after all.

Not as long as I have breath in me, stronzo.

Searching my surroundings frantically, I found a glass vase next to the clawed bathtub. I tossed the fresh roses in the trash—couldn’t look at them, anyway—and drained the water down the sink. I rolled the vase inside the skirts of my wedding dress and crouched down to the floor.

The door rattled behind my back. He didn’t trust me. Or maybe he just got tired of waiting to claim what was now his. Either way, I had no time.

I smashed the vase against the floor, hoping the layers of fabric silenced the thud, and picked the sharpest shard of glass from it. I scurried up to my feet, ripping the door open. Tiernan stood on the other side of it.

He arched a brow. “Done with your hissy fit, fetus?”

I launched the shard at him, stabbing him just above the elbow. I was going for his veins, but he was tall, and my vision was blurred by adrenaline. He dodged me quickly, moving like a striking serpent. I tried again, blindly lashing at him, but before I knew what was happening, he wrapped himself around me from behind, yanking the shard from my hand.

“Note to self.” He dragged me to the bed, shoved me against one of its posts, and efficiently tied me to it using his own belt. “She’s not very good with taking orders.”

Not from assholes who cheat on me five minutes into the marriage, I wanted to bite back.

He disposed of all of the broken glass in the bathroom and hid all of the weapons in the room.

When he was finally done cleaning up after me, he untied and sat me down on the edge of the bed and crouched before me.“You have to stop trying to kill me, Lila. It’s giving me a massive hard-on, and I’ve never been good with delayed gratification.”

I glared at him skeptically. I wasn’t even sure what he meant by that.

“I’m not going to fuck you,” he explained plainly. “Not tonight, anyway.”

My eyes darted to the condom on the vanity in the open bathroom, my throat bobbing with a swallow. He followed my line of vision.

“Bold of you to assume you’re worth my time.” A smile tilted the corners of his lips. It was mocking and humorless, but the first I’d seen from him. “The condom isn’t meant for you. I was supposed to fuck someone else. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the mood for a brunette.”

My shaking subsided little by little. Nobody had ever used these words with me. In truth, people hardly spoke to me at all. When they did, they treated me like a small child.