The woman who held her hate within her heart, who embraced loneliness as her companion and readied herself to slaughter all who wronged her. Only the love for her sister kept her from acting on her violence, from utilizing the skills she learned in the quiet of the night alongside the man I'd planted in her security.
The ally I'd given her when I couldn't, who would protect her if things ever escalated past what Thalia was strong enough to handle on her own.
She'd been a girl who needed my protection. As a woman, she needed my acceptance and my love, and with it the ability to be the woman she was born to be. If I survived our wedding night, she would thrive at my side—a goddess born in the light who I would drag down to the pits of hell to make her mine.
I pushed open the door, stepping inside my bedroom and glancing to the wall of monitors where I watched Thalia move around her father's house. She stepped out of his office, her face twisted into a grimace as she withheld the grief of whatever her father had said to her. In the months since I'd started watching Thalia, I'd come to realize there was only one topic that could penetrate that shield she kept locked tightly around herself.
Her mother.
While Thalia and her mother hadn't been particularly close, as dictated by her father, Neri’d been the only thing she'd had that even remotely resembled family. The closest thing she’d known to love.
She made it to her room safely, leaning her back against the door as her lungs heaved with deep gasps of breath. Her fists clenched with the need to kill, to hurt and maim as they'd done to her. As she stepped away from the surface, she stretched her hands up to reach for the zipper at her back. Shoving the dress down her body frantically, she stripped away the layers of who they wanted her to be.
Her face transformed from that pleasant expression, hatred filling it as her amber eyes hardened into a glare she thought no one could see. My eyes moved over her body as she stepped through her room in pink undergarments. There wasn't an ounce of fat on her frame, her ribs protruding slightly from her form past what could be considered natural or healthy.
The strict diet her stepmother kept her on showed in every sharp edge of her body, on the exposed hip bones that drew attention down to her panty line. She stripped off her bra and underwear, grabbing a nightgown from her dresser and tugging it over her head frantically before she moved to the bathroom to wash the makeup from her face and brush her teeth.
Watching her go through her nighttime routine, I stripped off my clothes and settled into my bed with the laptop off my desk, resting it on one of the pillows as I got comfortable. I grabbed the e-reader off my nightstand, opening the fantasy romance Thalia had been reading earlier in the day.
She did exactly as I knew she would when she returned to her bedroom, grabbing her own device and opening the protective case she kept it in. She got comfortable on top of the covers, her eyes moving as she lost herself in the world of fantasy. I alternated between reading the pages of the book and watching her, studying her face and her body as she read.
I loved every twitch of her face. I lived for every intake of breath.
I lusted for the moments when her legs rubbed together to stall the ache building in her when she approached a sex scene, watched her cheeks tinge with hesitant desire that she didn't fully understand when she thought about a man taking her body.
As a woman who knew what it was to be treated like property, to be owned and have no free will of her own, I'd been shocked to discover that Thalia's choice of reading involved dominant men.
But they were dominant men who loved hard, who worshiped their women even as they controlled them.
As it always happened, her hand drifted down to the space between her legs as she read, biting her lip shyly as if someone could see her being naughty.
She didn't know how right she was.
I slid my hand down to grip my cock, pumping slowly as her long, delicate fingers slid down to touch her clit. Her hips rocked as if overcome with the need that one touch filled her with, the desperation for the freedom to touch and be touched written in every line of her body.
The light moan came through the computer speakers as I pumped, watching as she bit her lip to keep silent.
There had been a time when I hadn't been able to imagine wanting Thalia, when we'd been children too far apart in age for our relationship to be anything other than platonic. That had changed the moment I’d seen her as an adult after sending Christian to keep an eye on her and give me video access to the house. The moment I saw her, the pieces had clicked into place.
She'd become mine in the way a wife became her husband's.
And that was what I would be to her. Not solely a protector, but a husband in truth.
Her fingers danced over her flesh as she turned to her back, giving me an unobstructed view of the space between her thighs and the way she touched herself. I'd show her true passion soon enough, but until then I'd tolerate reading books and touching myself while I watched her.
The sight of her back arching off the bed and the soft swell of her breasts thrusting into the air sent me over the edge, pumping my cock furiously until I covered my stomach in my release.
As my heart raced and I watched Thalia come down from her high, impatience rose in me. She rolled to her stomach, revealing a fresh welt across her shoulders from her stepmother's favorite cane.
I didn't usually believe in killing women, but that bitch would die alongside her husband soon enough for what they'd done to my woman.
10
Thalia
My hands remained clasped in front of me, carefully contained and controlled as I made my way down the steps. Lydia's plan for a grand entrance remained firmly in place, all of them watching me as I descended slowly in my heels. The light dress hung off my shoulders, lace covering my stomach and the tops of my thighs.
I ignored the weight of my father's stare and of all the ways he would judge me and find me lacking. Keeping my gaze intent on the man who stood beside him, I forced my face to remain impassive but pleasant. If he was to be my future, then pleasing my father was no longer my main concern.
Keeping Damianos happy would be my only purpose.
He stepped forward to meet me where the stairs curved around the corner at the bottom, holding out a hand for me to place mine in. Tipping his upper body forward, he touched his lips to the back of my knuckles. The split on his bottom lip scratched against my skin, a reminder of the violence from his fight only a few days prior.
Where he'd won me without a hint of concern for what I might think of it.
I shoved down the thought, tipping my lips into a slight smile as he stood straight. "You're as beautiful as ever, η νύφη μου," he said. I winced, only reminded of the contract that bound us together without any of the love that came with marriage in my favorite books.
It certainly didn't help that the overly affectionate name in Greek reminded me that there had been rumors of his rivalry with Calix. That the two boys had been competitors before Calix was banished, but I couldn't allow myself to care. Calix was forever gone from my life, and I had to do what was necessary to find peace with the life I had.
The very one he'd promised to protect me from.
"You're too kind," I said, my cheeks heating with the lie.