Like a glutton for punishment, I lean in closer and flare my nostrils. The scent emanating from her mouth is unmistakable. Enough peanut butter to kill me coats her tongue, and a droplet of grease smears one corner of her full mouth.
As I inch back, a smile plays on my lips. I had hoped the woman I’d fallen in love with was still there, hidden beneath the years of dishonesty weighing her down.
This is more than I expected.
I conceal my smile while searching her eyes, seeking an explanation.
Emerson’s expression remains unreadable, and it frustrates me more than her wish to kill me. Not that long ago, I could read her like a book.
I also hate that I’m losing a battle I had no clue I wanted to win until now, and I am done playing fairly.
Despite the pleas of my head, I band my arm around Emerson’s waist and tug her in close. Her chest flattens against mine, and our crotches align, but the hiss she releases when she learns the response my body had to her cock-thickening dress is what I pay the most attention to.
She doesn’t want me dead.
She wants me at her mercy and on my fucking knees.
The swift resurrection of her gall already has me halfway there.
As I press my lips to the shell of her ear, the scent of peanut butter lingers between us. It is a bitter reminder of the complexities of our union and the fuel needed to even the field of our coupling.
“Deny me again, and I’ll show Father Loroza, on this very fucking altar, that a mouth isn’t the only place a man can kisshiswife.”
When she involuntarily tremors, I kiss the edge of her mouth, my embrace brief and mechanical, before I stomp down the aisle as I did ten years ago—without my bride at my side.
Chapter 9
Emerson
As I scan my eyes over a private jet gleaming in the late afternoon sun, I stuff the EpiPen I hid in my bra into the bottom of my knapsack. My pettiness is pressing heavily on my chest, but the confusion swirling in my mind is even more overwhelming.
I’m so confused. From what I’ve read, Mikhail is wealthy in his own right. He doesn’t need his grandfather’s money. So why did he marry me as if he’s desperate for some coin?
I guess someone who’s never had money can explain its allure. Before my mother got sick, my family lived comfortably, but it was never at this level of wealth. The private jet idling next to us is flashy, as sparkling as the diamonds now caressing my ring finger.
The taste of peanut butter lingers in my mouth as a shadow casts over half my torso. Mikhail is standing at my door, preparing to open it. I can see the hurt in his eyes, the confusion, but since those emotions are barely visible behind the arrogance of a man who left his wife standing at the altar for the second time in his life, I pretend not to notice them.
I refuse to let him blindside me like he did when he threatened to defile me on the altar of my family’s long-serving church.
It pains me to admit, but I swallowed the bait he threw out without chewing it. My head was so airy from his closeness that the only thought that crossed it when he walked away was how I could deny him again and force him to make true on his threat.
The lightbulb only switched back on when the priest coughed, announcing I’d been dumped again—afterour vows this time.
Mikhail’s walkout told me everything I needed to know.
Our marriage is a sham. It is a ploy for payment.
Only a fool would act as if it were anything else.
So, instead of waiting for my husband to open my door and lift me into his arms like a groom would to a bride, I throw it open so fast that it skims past his crotch, almost castrating him.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Emmy! You almost took out my cock.”
“Only almost?Boohoo.” I glare at him, warning him what will happen if he calls me Emmy again, before I march toward the jet.
“Where are you going, Emmy?” Mikhail’s shout cuts my stomps in half before he quickly recovers. “Emerson? Our ride is that way.”
He hooks his thumb to the left, and my heart falls to my shoes.
