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Chapter twenty

Why Aren’t You…?

Kira

I felt his arms around me in my sleep. His hand ghosted over my waist to cup my breast from behind.

“Shh,” he said, quietly. “Sleep, love.”

“Eoghan,” I tried to get up, but he put an arm around my side and held me to him.

When I stopped struggling, he took his arm away, removing another bit of contact that I craved. Why was he pulling away? Why was he distancing himself from me?

It was so unnatural that it left me cold and frightened.

Something was off in the world around us.

My Eoghan always wanted more. He was insatiable in his need for affection, and in his shameless demand for it. So what held him back now?

I turned around and wrapped my arm around his neck, pressing my breasts to his chest, and looking for that usual, lusty darkness to come over his eyes. But there was no change in him.

“Have I done something wrong?” I finally asked when he didn’t hold me or pull me in close.

That was fine. I’d hold him tight enough for the both of us. I wrapped my thighs around his, clinging to him with all of my limbs.

“Everything’s alright, love,” he whispered. “Everything is going to be alright.”

It was a promise. A vow. Something beautiful that he whispered into the night to comfort me.

But there was something hidden in the words.

“Why won't you hold me?” I asked, shamelessly.

“I did not know you wanted me to.”

I always want you to!

He slowly wrapped his arms around me, but his embrace was light and loose. Not the same strong desperation I was used to feeling.

He didn’t tighten his hold when I tightened mine. He kept giving me room to move, room to leave… I hated that.

“Talk to me, husband,” I whispered to him, running my fingers through his hair. “Give me your burdens.”

That’s what he would tell me, I was pretty sure.

He sniffed, but he didn’t say anything.

His demeanor wasn’t cold. I couldn’t complain about that. But when you’ve spent a marriage in the heat of Eoghan’s particular brand of passion… this tepidness felt arctic.

“I’m fine, love,” he said, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.

He said the words, but there was no conviction there.

“Eoghan, you can talk to me,” I whispered, placing a kiss on the underside of his jaw. “Tell me what you need.”

He gasped, his lips parting. There it was—the sign of lust.

I traced my fingers over his chest, letting my nails graze his skin. He softly groaned at the feel of it.

“If you will not talk to me,” I said, trying to be as seductive as I could, “then would something else make you feel better?”

He shut his eyes, his lips pressed in a tight smile, but I could still read the signs. His skin heated, and his Adam’s Apple bobbed. I tentatively touched his lower lip with my finger, smiling when they parted, his tongue darting out to taste me.

“I feel like you’re on the precipice,” I said, honestly. “Like you’re pulling further and further from me.”

His eyes fluttered open; his mouth relaxed as he took a deep breath that grazed over my skin.

“I’m falling into my madness, Kira.” His brows knit together; his face etched with concern. “I don’t want to lose myself again. I don’t want to frighten you, or the boy. I don’t…”

“You won’t,” I whispered, when his voice trailed off. “You won’t lose yourself.”

He scoffed, his hands leaving me, as they went to press against his temple. He whimpered. It was a heart-wrenching, pathetic sound. “How can you know that?

“Because you’re mine.” I turned my hand, letting the emerald of my ring graze his skin. “Or are you saying that I no longer mesmerize you like I once did?”

It was a dare. A challenge. I questioned his love.

“Maybe I don’t pull you in the way I once did.” He might take lies as an insult, but I knew that questioning his passion for me was a greater sin in his eyes.

His face snapped up, his intense gaze on me. He was offended by my question.

“How could you say that?” His voice was breathless. “I am a fool for you. You are my wife, my muse.”

Maybe he wasn’t ready to talk. Maybe we were shit as husband and wife, because we never had time to build any kind of foundation for ourselves.

But in our bed, we still worked.

If carnal passion was how I could draw him back to me, then I would do whatever I had to.

I’d be a little slut, if that kept him by my side. If it kept his mind clear, present, and out of the darkness that lived behind his eyes.

“Why aren’t you making love to me?” It was a rotten tactic. But I was a desperate woman.

I held his face in my hands, staring into his eyes. I did not see any madness there. I just saw a sad man, his face sullen and closed off, masked in a way he only used to do for others. Never for me.

“Make love to me.” This time it was a command.

Sex was where we made sense. It was where his devotion lived.

If he did not make love to me with the same beautiful dedication that he always did, then I would know. I would understand that there was something between us that was truly broken.

If he did not love me with the same rigor as before, then I would know that his love had diminished somewhere. Or maybe it had died.

He tilted my chin up with the crook of his index finger until I stared into his curious gaze.

“Do you want me to?” he asked, quietly.

“Have I ever denied you?”

“No,” he admitted, with a nod. “But that’s not the same thing.”

I had never initiated anything between us. I had always been the passive partner. But how could I initiate something when he had always taken every opportunity possible? He was always the first to love, and the first to demand love in return?

Because I’m too chicken shit to ever admit that I need him.

I needed to get over that, now.

“I’ve never had to make a move.” I squirmed on the bed, pushing myself so we were face to face, nose to nose. “You always did it for me.”

I kissed his throat, as my hand trailed down his body to the warm, thick length of him that pressed against my lower belly. I lightly grazed him with my fingers, feeling it twitch with my attention.

“Should I show you what you mean to me?” It was another challenge.

I wrapped my hand around his cock, strangling it in my palm.

I pressed myself up until our lips touched. Still, he did not kiss me. He simply parted his lips, just a little, until my tongue entered his mouth. His tongue met mine, massaging together, as I groaned at his response.

Any response that wasn’t a rejection, I would jump on, just for the reassurance of it. I pumped his cock a few times, and he moaned. But still, he did not pounce on me. He did not grab me, demand things of me. He did not pin me to the bed, and have his way with me.

Had everything these past few days been too much? Was Paradigm, my secrets… Giorgio Morelli? Was it all finally too much?

Had I been too much? Had I stopped being the person he’d fallen for? That niggling insecurity existed in the back of my mind. It brought tears to my eyes… just the thought of not having his complete and total attention cracked something inside me.

“What’s wrong, sweet Muse?” he asked, gently. But still, he did not pull me in. He was distant…

Just a small distance, sure. We were still physically connected. But he felt so far from me. Like an ocean separated us.

I knew that I loved my husband. I knew that I was soul-crushingly infatuated with Eoghan Cillian Green. How I had the strength to leave three years ago, I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t do it now.

If anything ever happened to him, I wouldn’t survive.

“I’m fine.” I felt the moisture on my cheek as I lost the battle to stay strong.

“ Fine doesn’t cry such bitter tears,” he said, his hand coming to cup my cheek.

The tears spread beneath the press of his palm. He didn't wipe them away. He didn’t kiss them and declare that my tears were his. He didn’t do anything but wait for an answer.

Yesterday, he would have demanded “who did this to you?” Then gone to kill whoever was responsible.

I was such a spoiled wife, and I’d been too stupid to cherish it.

“Wife, talk to me.” He slid closer to me, and the moment his hand curled around my waist, I completely broke down.

“Then why aren’t you holding me? Why aren’t you kissing me? Why aren’t you…” It all spilled out, even as I tried to keep it in. “Christ, I should be comforting you tonight, but instead, I’m crying like a pathetic, insecure woman.”

“Love, I’m… I’m trying to be a decent man.” He blurred in my vision as more tears came. There was no stopping them now. “I’m trying not to be so… demanding and obsessed. I’m trying to do the right thing by you.”

How could the right thing be distancing himself from me? When was that ever the right thing to do?

“Love, I’m trying to be normal, ” he spat out. “I’m trying not to be the bastard I have always been. I’m trying to be…”

He let out a long sigh, as if the words defeated him.

“I don’t want to be a monster, Kira. Not to you, and not to Cillian.” His thumb came to flick my tears away, but more came to replace them. “I don’t want to be the man who made that painting outside. I want to be someone who can do right by you.”

“You’ve always done the right thing by me! Why—” my voice broke.

“I haven’t,” he said quietly, placing his thumb on my lips, stopping me from interrupting him. “I haven’t done right by you… or by our son.”

The ominous words added a new shade of black to the darkness around us.

“Yes, you have. You’re doing the right thing now to protect us.”

“I am,” he agreed, but then belatedly added, “I am, now. ”

His hand came to my cheek and cupped my face. I reached up to put my hand on his shoulder, wanting to pull him closer.

“Don’t cry these for me, my loving Kira.” He leaned down and kissed my cheek, then one brow, and the other. “I am not worth your pain.”

His use of my name pricked at my ears. I had always been Wife, Muse, Love… so many names that only he could use for me. So why was I now just Kira? I didn’t like it. More confirmation that something had shifted. Something bad had changed between us.

“I love you, Eoghan,” I whispered, “I love every part of you. I love you exactly as you are.”

“I’m a monster,” he said, his voice so heavy with sorrow. “You’ve seen what I am. You’ve seen what I can do. It wouldn’t take much to push me over the edge… I don’t want to be like my father. I don’t want Cillian to become like me. I don’t want you to be—”

I kissed him. I kissed him deep and hard. I wrapped myself around him, my arms and legs twisting until I could hold him against me, clutching on to him like he was my last lifeline.

I don’t know if he kissed me back. I didn’t care. I needed to kiss him. I needed to show him that as desperate as he was for me, I was desperate, too.

When I pried us apart, I asked the question that I truly needed him to answer.

“Does my love mean anything? Is my love not enough to ground you? Am I not enough?”

“Your love means everything.” His breath tickled my skin. “You are everything.”

He kissed my nose, the tenderness of it sending shivers down my spine.

“Your body is where I feel the sanest.”

“Then make love to me,” I commanded. “ Use me, Eoghan. Let me make you whole.”