Page 43 of Blind Devotion (Letters of Ruin #1)

I was in heaven. Again. Several times a day.

Adrien pounded into me from behind this time, my chest flattened against his office display cabinet.

The panels smacked against the magnets holding them shut in time with his thrusts.

He reached so deep that a wave of euphoria crested.

Right there. I angled my hips further out.

Oh god, that let him hit a spot that felt so good.

Two more thrusts, and my body burst from the inside.

With a muffled bellow, he followed me right after.

We panted in place, his bare chest glued to my back. My legs wobbled when I tried to stand up straight, threatening to give out. I giggled.

Over three weeks since our first time, and it was even better now than before.

“You’re dangerous.”

“You love it.” He kissed my shoulder.

I did. I really did. I swept my hands through his hair, relishing the smell of him. “I love you.”

He was out of me and twisting me around before I realized what was happening.

Next thing I knew, I was in his arms, my legs wrapped around him, with him inside me again, still half-hard.

He sat us down on his office couch, me straddling him.

Compared to our previous fucking, this was lovemaking at its most romantic—slow, soft, and delicious.

This closeness didn’t come often compared to how frequently we went at it, but that made these moments all the more precious.

“I love you, Tessa. So fucking much.”

I kissed him just as lovingly and sweetly as his rocking movements. That fluttering in my stomach spread to my chest and neck.

“Marry me.”

Everything in me froze. I tried not to tense.

I really tried not to let my feelings on this ruin the moment, but he felt it.

He stopped moving. I kept undulating my hips, trying to ignore the storm brewing in the room.

Let it go , I begged him quietly. He shoved my hips down and held me in place.

My shoulders slumped, that beautiful mood thoroughly destroyed.

“Tessa. Marry me,” he repeated, this time a command.

“Don’t take that tone with me.”

“Don’t make me ask again.”

“Then don’t.” I swatted his hands off me and rose, immediately aware of how his cum trickled down my thigh.

“Just say yes. Why is this so hard for you?”

Every day, he asked me to marry him. Every day, I let him down gently.

His frustration was building with each rejection.

I could feel it, but I wasn’t going to say yes just because he wanted it.

Until he decided to discuss our past and stopped forbidding contact with my family, I refused to say yes.

“You know why.”

He huffed a growl. I sifted my hands through his hair and tightened my fists in it to turn his head up to face me.

My right eye was still a blank sheet. I got nothing from it.

At least I no longer wore the eye shields.

With my left, though, shapes were clearer and colors more defined.

Everything remained blurred and unclear, speckled with spots of gray.

However, I learned over the last few weeks to identify what the blurred shapes meant to me.

For Adrien’s face, my brain filled in what I currently saw with what I remembered of him from years past. Blue eyes that were harder now, high cheekbones, sharp jaw, a jagged scar down the side of his face, a narrow nose.

Without words and actions, it was impossible for me to read his emotions, but I didn’t need any of that to understand him. His umbrage was equal to my own.

“Stop keeping secrets from me. Stop keeping me from my family. Stop trying to place us in a bubble.”

Despite his anger, he gently wrapped his thick fingers around my wrists and pulled them away from him. He got up and wrestled with his clothing. A quick zip of his pants, and he was sidling around me.

“I have work to do.”

Like every other time I brought this up, he didn’t even try to discuss the issue. He closed himself off, and I was sick of it. This had gone on for far too long.

I followed him to his desk, grappling along the furniture to avoid missteps.

“Why won’t you talk to me? Why are you keeping me out?”

“Don’t.” He spun on me, only to catch me as I lost my balance from the sudden change in movement. “You good?”

I nodded, and his hold fell away.

“Don’t act like I keep you in the dark. I’ve told you more than anyone else.”

“About yourself, yes. About what I already remember. About your recent businesses and life, sure. But what about why it took this”—I swept a hand over my body—“for us to get to this point? What happened to us ? Why are you holding that information hostage?”

I remembered so much of our past now, but the last few years remained fuzzy.

We’d been so good together, such great friends, so few fights between us.

I’d been madly in love with him, looking forward to the day I turned eighteen so that our engagement could be announced, with the wedding planned for the month after.

So how was it that I had just celebrated my twentieth birthday three days ago and we weren’t married already?

When we were younger, I lived for the idea of him and me together. Never would I have given that up for anything. My babbo could have forbidden it, and I still would have found a way.

Every single time I tried to bring it up, Adrien changed the topic or brain-addled me with so much sex and orgasms that I was too tired to push the subject further. I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Why weren’t we together? Why didn’t you even recognize me from the start? Why does your mother hate me?” Of course he ignored me, striding to his desk chair with sure steps while I felt myself crumbling. Something terrible must have happened. “Stop avoiding this and talk to me.”

I stalked forward, my hand testing the space in front of me in case I missed something.

“Is this why you don’t want me contacting my family? You think they’ll tell me whatever you’re so desperate to hide? Did it ever occur to you that maybe I need them? That maybe they need me?”

“Tessa, I have a business meeting to prepare for. I can’t deal with this right now.”

“Like hell you do.” I reached his desk and leaned over it. “If you had time enough to stick your dick in me, you have time enough to talk to me.”

He sighed loudly as if I was inconveniencing him. “Listen. Once I finish, we’ll have this conversation.”

“Will we? Or are you going to find another runaround? This isn’t love, Adrien. This is control. I’m not one of your men. I’m not one of the gang members you oversee or one of your employees. I’m the woman you asked to marry. I’m the woman you say you love.”

“I do.”

“Then stop trying to decide what I get to know and what I don’t. You have to trust me. Talk to me. Let me contact my family.”

“We need more time.”

“For what?” Silence, of course. If he didn’t want to approach a topic, I got radio silence.

If there was something I wished to avoid, he bulldozed me.

The hypocrite. “Don’t do that. Don’t go quiet.

I’ve respected your wishes up until now.

Don’t make me go behind your back to get in touch with them. ”

“You can try. I guarantee you’ll not find a single phone available to you.”

“I’m sorry, what?” The pressure was rising in my head. My heart pounded in my ears. “Run that by me again? I’m not your prisoner, Adrien. You lost that claim the instant you kissed me, then offered me freedom.”

“You chose to stay.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m trapped. If I want to walk out that door right now, I will.”

“No, you won’t.”

“You want to bet? Try and lock me in here. I dare you. See what it does to us.”

He seemed to mull over my words. “I’m asking for your patience.”

“I’ve given it. For weeks. But you keep drawing this out. Just give me something. Anything at this point.”

“Marry me first. I’ll postpone my meetings and arrange an appointment at the town hall tomorrow. Then whatever you want to know is yours.”

I shook my head. “Not good enough. I’m not getting married with these secrets between us.”

“But you will marry me.”

“I’m not giving an answer on that either.”

“That wasn’t a question.”

I grunted a cry of exasperation.

“Why are you doing this?” My hands razed everything off his desk. Papers swished into the air, crackling as they fell. “Why?” I knocked a metal sphere off its stand. It clanked as it rolled to the edge, then thudded to the ground. Pens clattered out of their holder. “Why? Why? Why!”

My chest heaved, and my eyes watered with frustration.

“You going to pick that up?”

My jaw clenched, and my limbs were shook.

“You’re un-fucking-believable.” I couldn’t take much more of this.

A lump was growing in my throat, so heavy it was getting hard to breathe, hard to think.

A tear rolled down my face. “Please, Adrien, just give me something. I can’t keep wondering what happened. It’s tearing me up.”

As upset as I was, I didn’t hear him move until he was right beside me. His thumb brushed away the tear on my cheek. Then he held me close, my cheek against his chest, his chin on my head.

“When you speak to your brother,” he said carefully, “he’ll try to take you from me, or you’ll go willingly. I can’t allow that.”

I didn’t miss how he avoided speaking about my mother. My father, sure. Adrien always knew how much I hated him. I just wasn’t ready to address that, not when this was my first hint at whatever insecurity Adrien was hiding.

“If they need me, I’d go, but I’d come back.”

His fingers drummed against my spine, not adding another word.

“You don’t think I’d come back.”

“No.”

“Because of what happened between us?” More silence. I pulled off him. Holy fuck on a cracker, I was this close to blowing a second gasket.

“You’ll leave me.” The confession ripped out of him with a rasp.

I closed my eyes, focusing on his shallow, ragged breaths. On how rigid he felt. He really believed that. It scared me. What could have been this bad? What had he done?