Page 83 of Inconvenient Marriage
He has his dark side, too. It’s hot and it’s sexy, and it makes me melt every damn time. I’m helpless to love him. And I know. I swore up and down that this would be a marriage of convenience, that, next March, we would go our separate ways… but the idea of saying goodbye to Sebastien hasmydark side coming out.
So that’s that. We’re a perfect match, and every time I reach up, rubbing my thumb over the pendant made from the ashesof our marriage agreement… whenever I nuzzle the tattoo on his arm that he got to commemorate our wedding… I wonder how I ever thought that I’d be able to keep things strictly professional between us. Even before we started having sex regularly, I honestly believed I could play the part of an Order wife, laying flat on my back, letting my ‘husband’ fuck me, then let him roll off of me to find some Used to keep him company next.
Hilary Morgan helped me learn that lesson. I’m as possessive of Sebastien as he is of me, and while he promised he’d cut off the fingers of the next woman who touched him without his permission, I’m the one he gave his pocket knife to. So that pleasure will be allmine.
But watching him work in the garage—grease on his hands, rock music humming from the speakers, a motorcycle engine on the stand—it’s like seeing the weight fall off him piece by piece. The cabin workshop helped, but building his shop here, in town where everyone can watch him do mechanical magic? I don’t think I could’ve given a more thoughtful gift with his own money.
He already has plenty of ‘customers’. Nosy Order members who pretend they want a tune-up, but who just want to gawk at the Reynolds screw-up working for a living. He doesn’t care, and if he doesn’t, I don’t.
Not when his mother came barreling into the garage last week while I was hanging out with him, hugging him so hard the wrench he was holding fell out of his hand. Ambre Reynolds kissed both of his cheeks, then mine, before beaming at her son.
“This is what you were meant for, Sebastien. I’m so proud of you.”
His father followed behind his wife. While she dabbed her proud eyes with a handkerchief, Guy shook my hand and told me, “Thank you, Annaliese. My son couldn’t have chosen better.”
I cried in the manager’s office for ten minutes, so happy that his parents approve of me—andhim. I’m not being hidden anymore. I’m another member of Sebastien’s family, and after all those years with Eric… it’s all I wanted. It doesn’t matter how our relationship began. We’re together now… we’rehappynow… and it’s even better that Eric has finally decided to back off. For all of his threats about what he would do to the man who replaced him in my life, as soon as he confronted me only to have Sebastien confront him, he’s all but disappeared.
Well.No. Eric has disappeared from my life. He hasn’t stopped plotting against the King just like he threatened that night at Alexandre’s party. In fact, he keeps trying to gather enough of the old guard together to push Dallas out of office completely. They’re trying to use a clause in the Order of the Owed manifest that says that the King isn’t exempt from the ‘get married by thirty’ rule. If he doesn’t have a wife by next November, they’ll push to have him replaced.
Sebastien’s name has come up. He laughed, saying he’d rather slit his own throat than subject me to being the wife of the King, let alone take the position from his ‘bro’. Especially since Dallas has taken the attempted coup to heart. He doesn’t want to be King, but he doesn’t want the old guard screwing things up again, either. So he’s picking an Offering out now—his own marriage of convenience—and my husband has somehow earned himself a seat on Dallas’s council, alongside Adrian and a few other Owed.
Alexandre is helping. So is their father; with Guy throwing his support behind Dallas, most of the Owed is staying out of the politics. Sebastien is stubbornly doing what he has to because he wants to keep me safe. Sure, he’s loyal to his friends, but he hates that Eric is the one working behind the scenes to overthrow Dallas.
He wants to gut him. I thought he was kidding.
He wasn’t.
And that’s how I discovered that, since he joined the council, he’s also taken over Dallas’s role as enforcer. The second Eric does more than just run his mouth about betraying Dallas, he has the King’s permission to take the sleazy lawyer out of the picture. For now, everything Eric and his compatriots are doing is technically legal, following the law, but the second it isn’t…
I’m not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, I never want to see Eric again. On the other, the idea of Sebastien being the one to eliminate him… my husband is a good man with a dark side. I’d hate to see it become even darker because of me.
The worst part is that I first thought Sebastien was kidding when he offered to take care of Eric for me. I’d laughed, told him I didn’t need protecting.
My husband didn’t laugh back. Instead, he kissed my temple before murmuring, “You have no idea how many men I would kill to keep what I have. I’m not letting anyone near you ever again.”
But Eric is leaving me alone. He stopped harassing Miranda, too, and we only have a little more than eight weeks until the Claiming ceremony when Colton will have his hand branded by fire, the mark of the Owed ruining his palm, before he tells everyone gathered that he intends to take Miranda Crawford as his wife.
In fact, Sebastien told me that Eric actually dared to show up to a council meeting with Cicely on his arm. They were presenting themselves as a unified front, and I really believed it was over. That Eric’s cruelty might be focused on Dallas, but it’s not me he’s after anymore.
Too bad I waswrong.
TWENTY-FIVE
UNLOCKED
ANNALIESE
Sebastien got called into an emergency meeting at the Fortress tonight. It was Adrian who sent him a text, telling him he was needed to sit in on a discussion with him, Dallas, and Connor Heyward. The fact that Connor would be there made it impossible for Sebastien to refuse, choosing dinner with me over heading out to see his friends for Order business.
He offered to let me go with him. Connor’s delicate wife, Haven, was just dropped off at Adrian’s house so that she could stay with Loni and the Hellers’ cats. I was invited to go hang with them, the third member in our Order trio until Dallas finally chooses his Offering—though, if it is a marriage of convenience and not a love match, there’s a good chance Connor won’t let Dallas’s new wife anywhere near his—but I declined. I was happy to just stay home myself, get a little work done, maybe watch some TV while I wait for Sebastien to come home.
About half an hour after he left, he sent me a text:
HUBBY
I don’t think I’ll be coming home soon. Lock the door, love. I brought my keys.
Oh, Sebastien. After he proved how easy it was for him to break into my apartment, he has this fear that someone will do the same here. I tell him he’s being silly. No one in Harmony Heights is dumb enough to go up against Sebastien Reynolds. Sure, my husband is loaded, but they’re taunting a leather-wearing devil if they think they can rob him.
