Page 75 of Iron Cross

I hung up without a word. If they were leaving their Mourningkill home, then it would be an hour and a half before they got here. I did not want fucking guests right now.

“What’s going on?” Kira asked, her eyes watching me like a hawk.

I relished her attention. I adored her presence. I shut my eyes, feeling the relief of it all. The relief and comfort that I had not had time to feel the last time.

There were so many challenges ahead, so many things I had to make right. The journey forward would be heavy, but I was better today than I was yesterday. I was better today than I had been a week ago. I was more alive right now than I had been in the last three fucking years.

“Aoibheann is coming to visit you.” I omitted Jericho, her husband, because he was irrelevant. I knew that it was my former stepmother who would be leading the charge here.

“Is she alright?” She sat up, tucking her legs in beside her. She was wearing the same pajamas I had dressed her in last night, and even then, she was the image of elegance and grace.

Even with the badly dyed purple hair.

“Come love,” I said, extending my hand to her. “It’s time to become yourself again. You are the lady of the manor. You are Mrs. Green.”

She looked down at our comfortably slumbering boy before she glanced back up at me.

She quietly tucked him in, putting a kiss on his temple, as he kept on snoring blissfully in dreamland. Then she came to me.

I did not know where this obedience came from. I could not fathom what could be going through her mind. But I was determined to enjoy every second of her compliance. Every moment we acted like man and wife I would savor, like the sweetest absinthe.

I led her into our shared walk-in closet and standing still, she let me pull off her shirt then the pajama bottoms. Standing naked before me, I got the first decent look of my wife that I’d had since she disappeared.

“Eoghan?” she said on a whisper, my name a question.

“Yes, sweet Muse?” I whispered, as I touched the strands of her hair, feeling the crooked ends of her badly cut bob.

“None of these clothes will fit me anymore.” She brought her hands up, crossing them in front of her abdomen, as though she wanted to hide herself from me.

That simply would not do. I traced my fingers over her skin, and she sweetly shivered under my touch.

"Tell me why you left," I said, as I drank her in, looking at her naked form from behind.

Her rounded hips, her larger breasts. The ways she had changed over the years. She’d had the audacity to grow lovelier, and it was an insult to the time that had been stolen from me.

“I…” she said, turning her head so that I could see the roundness of her cheek and the profile of her glorious features. She bit on her lower lip for just a moment before she opened them again, and I knew she was getting ready to tell me another lie.

"I will remind you that I will take your lies as a personal insult."

I had said that to her many, many times, and yet she still lied. She was lying now. By omission, certainly. But that was still a lie, wasn't it?

"I heard you torturing Morelli."

"And that frightened you?" That couldn't have been it. There was more to it than that. I could feel it.

"You weren't the man I thought you were," she said carefully, and I knew the game. Her game.

She was giving me the truth but concealing plenty of it still.

"You mean to say you didn't know I was in the Irish Mob?" I lifted a brow, and she recoiled.

So, she did know.

I circled her, coming to stand before my naked wife. I fought the urge to come to my knees and place my face against her, like I was a damn supplicant.

She looked at me, her eyes filled with fear, but again, I gave her no comfort. I needed her obedience. I craved it. I needed to know that she was mine, and that would only happen if she surrendered to me.

I let my gaze roam down her body. She wasn’t that different. Not really.

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