My Immortal (Seven Deadly Sins #1)(26)
Author: Erin McCarthy

"What’s the matter?" He reached for her again.

Marley retreated backward. "Nothing." She put her hand on his chest to stop him when he would have taken her into his arms again. "But if I’m in charge, then we play it my way. And I don’t want to do this in the driveway."

The corner of his mouth tilted up and he looked aroused, excited. If she had doubted his interest ten minutes earlier, she didn’t now. He couldn’t be faking that tightness in his jeans, that lusty look in his eyes.

"Are you teasing me? Going to make me work for it?"

Marley didn’t know the rules to these kind of games, but she knew she couldn’t let him see the letters from Marie, and she knew if she took pleasure from him, it was going to be precisely and only that. She wasn’t going to open up to him, she wasn’t going to give herself, her heart, or her trust, or try to take more than Damien was offering.

She was going to be in control, and she was going to stand up and get what she wanted, exactly what she wanted, for the first time in her life.

"Yes. I want you to work for it." Marley shoved him backward with the palm of her hand, knocking him off balance.

Damien shook his head slightly, a scoff of disbelief escaping. But he was smiling, a dangerous, sensual smirk.

"Then start running, Marley," he said in a low, rough voice. "Because I’m going to start chasing."

The conception of our baby had arrived so quickly, mere months after our marriage, that I think we both assumed a second pregnancy would occur just as easily. But as the winter thawed into spring, and the spring warmed to summer, there was no baby, and I was secretly pleased.

I wanted an infant, absolutely, but I couldn’t help but feel a vicious sort of triumph that whereas Damien had put random effort into conception the first time and succeeded, he was denied again and again now. He seemed to take it as an affront, as if I were doing something to prevent it, and he showed up night after unpleasant night, reeking like whiskey and climbing into my bed with a grim determination.

One night he said, "Are you preventing a babe?" Then before I could even shake my head, he laughed, a cold, empty sound. "Of course not. As if you’d know how to do such a thing. No, we’ll just have to keep trying."

I didn’t answer. I never did. I never spoke.

Another time he complained bitterly about that very thing. "Don’t nod your head! Use a goddamn word, I want to hear you say a word."

He was unbuttoning his breeches, and he looked sufficiently angry that I forced myself to say, "Yes," to his original question, which had been to inquire if I was eating when I first awoke in the morning, a suggestion from the physician to build my strength back up.

"What?" He put his hand by his ear in a mocking gesture. "Did you hear that? I thought I heard something. It sounded like my wife, but she speaks to me so infrequently I’m not sure I’m right. She’ll repeat it now so I can verify that is what I heard."

"Stop," I whispered, wondering if I had finally pushed him too far.

"That’s another word! This is astonishing. This brings us to a grand total of eight words you have spoken to me in the past two weeks. I have been tallying them, you know. I was hoping we might achieve double digits before we reach week’s end."

I sat up in bed, suddenly ashamed of my behavior. "Damien."

The candle flickered on the nightstand, the shadows playing across his face, "You know, I believe I have changed my mind," he said, "I’ll leave you alone in your misery tonight."

He left, slamming the bedchamber door behind him. I could hear his boots stomping down the front stairs, and his anger was sufficient enough that I even heard the front door shut behind him, the windows rattling.

Unable to return to sleep, I paced the floor in front of my open windows. There was a soft breeze stirring in the June night, and I stepped out onto the gallerie, not caring that I was in my nightrail. I was suddenly worried. I had resented and despised Damien’s visits to my bed, but it came to me for the first time that the cessation of those visits would in fact be worse. At present, it appeared my husband wanted relations with me, wanted a child. I had that, such as it were.

If he lost the desire for me or for an heir, what would I have then? Nothing. I would be thousands of miles from home, the despised and deposed wife of a wealthy man, the talk of the neighborhood, the unenviable little nothing of a social whisper, shut behind the doors of this plantation for the rest of my life. No baby of my own.

Damien could live his life as he chose, with or without me. But I, without the care, concern, or support of my husband, for all intents and purposes, I would be nothing. Less than nothing. And everyone would breathe a sigh of relief when I succumbed to the climate and finally took myself off into eternity. I would receive a small stone marker in the du Bourg mausoleum, beside my child, and that would be that.

I found, quite vehemently, that I didn’t want such a fate. I wanted a husband who respected me. I wanted a child, then a second, and a third. But I needed to acknowledge that I was going about my marriage in an entirely wrong fashion.

Which was confirmed at that exact moment by the realization that I could hear my husband’s voice floating up from the front steps. He was speaking to a woman, voices too low for me to hear exactly what they were saying. Neither could I see, not even by leaning as far over as I dared, so I found myself, with neither thought nor direct purpose, heading down the stairs and pulling open the front door.

I’m not sure what I expected to find. A part of me had to have known that any business my husband was conducting at midnight on the front porch with a woman when he had been drinking was undoubtedly inappropriate. Yet I confess myself still shocked to see the vicious truth of it directly in front of me. My husband was embracing with a woman, his hands on her backside, hers digging into his hair. They were flush against one another, mouths entwined, legs entangled.

She whispered in his ear, while I stood there, frozen in shock. Her thick black hair trailed loosely down over the back of her bold red dress, which had a Grecian line to it and a high waist, no stays. It clung to her everywhere and I was suddenly inexplicably jealous of her health, her vitality, the clear sensuality she exuded, the way she sank her teeth into my husband’s ear and smiled a delicious little satisfied smirk.

Damien turned then, looking unconcerned to see me. "Good evening, Marie. Care to join us?"

What to say? What to do when forced to face his clear insouciance? I could only think what my behavior had been, my disgust at his physical attentions, my lack of concern for my appearance, my all-consuming grief and refusal to speak, and how for all my ladylike pretensions, breeding, and notions of self-worth, I was now jealous of a raven-haired harlot.