“Sorry,” the word bursts automatically from my lips on a choked sob. I continue to sweep the bits of glass away, and with them, not blood, but his streaming tears. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” His words are barely audible, and he reaches for my face.
When his palms frame my cheeks, I lean into them. The movement below causes heat, and lust, and longing to shoot from my core to my extremities, and I slowly rock my hips against him again.
“It’s okay, Isla.” Malachi guides my face to his, and he kisses my forehead, my eyelids, my cheeks, and his hips meet mine, thrust for thrust.
The pleasure picks up where it left off, and I brace my forearms against his chest, the bits of glass cutting into my skin, but the pain doesn’t register. Only one thing registers, and my treacherous mouth speaks it into existence.
“I hate hating you. I don’t want to hate you.”
Malachi says nothing, but he continues to kiss my face and meet my hips with his, the pace picking up, a fever pitch, his breath painting my skin, quiet moans and mewls spilling from my lips, and then, the blinding white light of my climax ripping through me. A guttural groan drains from him as he holds me close and shudders inside of me.
After it dissipates, Malachi slides out while still holding me against him with one arm wrapped around my waist, and deftly hoists us both off the floor. His shoes crunch on the broken glass, and then he carries me out of the lounge and up the stairs to my room.
He continues to carry me into the en suite and then the large shower, where he sits me on the marble bench, removes his shoes, and turns on the water. He steps in fully clothed, rinsing the glass off of him, and all the tiny shards funnel down the drain. When the shower floor is clear, Malachi reaches for my hands and guides me to stand up, carefully cleaning the stray bits of glass off my arms as blood trickles from the tiny cuts.
After ensuring we’re both free of glass, he strips off his clothes and tosses them in a soaked heap on the bathroom floor. He does the same with my nightgown and robe, then stands behind me, holding me against his bare chest, his large arms wrapped around my waist and my breasts, while the hot water and steam envelope us.
We stand there for what feels like eternity; for so long that it feels like the comparatively miniscule time between now and before feels like nothing at all.
Malachi has a distinctive scent when he’s drenched like this; as though moisture strips him down to his most intrinsic pheromones. I’m suddenly breathing the scent of home, and with it comes a feeling of loss and anguish, the likes of which I have never felt.
My head falls below my shoulders, drenched hair like a curtain hiding my face, and I sob in guttural, heaving wails. I sob so hard I feel like I’m on the cusp of vomiting. I gasp and choke on the water pouring down my face, and Malachi releases one arm from around me to sweep my hair away from my face while he turns me away from the water and shuts it off. He scoops me up long enough to set my feet on the plush rug, and then retrieves a towel to wrap around me. He wraps one around his hips, and then scoops me up again, carrying me back into my room and to the bed. He pulls back the blankets and sets me down, then climbs in with me, our dripping bodies soaking the crisp, white sheets. My heaving sobs continue to the point that my head is throbbing and my throat is raw, and I’m still so angry, but I’m suddenly too disoriented to know exactly what I’m angry at. Although, it seems like Malachi has his own assumption of what it is.
“It’s trauma, Isla,” he murmurs, his lips against my ear as he wraps himself around my back, leg draped over mine just like he used to when we were children and I’d climb into his bedroom window. “I’m working on a solution to that, too.”
“I don’t want this,” I weep, but I don’t even know which this I’m referring to.
This treacherously intimate embrace?
This moment of tenderness that I longed for for years after I realized he was gone?
This sordid, filthy feeling of egregious violence committed against me without my knowledge?
This awful sense that nothing will ever be right or okay again, and what is the point of even being here anymore?
“I know,” he says, his arms and leg pulling me closer to him. “I know. I will find a solution. You’re going to be okay, Isla.”
I drag in oxygen as my sobbing slowly tapers off and dissipates to shallow, hitched breathing, and everything about all of it is wrong.
“I won’t.”
Silence falls over the room, and the heady swirl of alcohol infects the corners of my brain ushering me to sleep, and I realize it’s the most truthful statement I’ve ever made.
SIXTEEN
MALACHI
Present
DIVORCING ISLA IS HONESTLY the last thing I ever expected to do. For some reason, out of all the things that happened, this one is the most unbelievable because it’s the only thing that is a result of my own explicit choosing.
The private jet is scheduled to depart for New York two hours from now. I will not be on it. I have a number of documents for her to sign, and after she does that, I will put her in a car and let her go.
I’m sitting at my desk, sorting the aforementioned documents, when a quiet knock sounds on the doorframe. I glance up to see Isla standing in the doorway, dressed in an elegant, maroon Chanel skirt suit, her ebony hair swept back and up, while she looks at me with a timid, yet expectant expression. She’s holding a thick stack of paper against her chest, and she offers a small nod.
“Mrs. Maisely said you wanted to see me,” she prompts.
“Yes.” I stand and gesture at the desk. “I have a few items for you to sign before you depart.”
She lowers the papers to the level of her waist as she approaches, and I cross around the desk to pull out the chair for her, then slide it back after she sits. Then I sit, and now it’s time for me to divorce the love of my life, solely because I am a gullible, naïve simpleton and a capital dick.
I clear my throat before I begin. “Due to the fact that the primary intention of this marriage was to keep you out of harm’s way…” I adjust the documents and then turn them to slide them toward her. “And given that your father and I have still not located and dealt with those orchestrating that threat, you will retain royal security detail. A team of bodyguards will accompany you back to New York and reside at your family’s estate in Southampton. If you choose to move out of your family’s home at any point, they will go with you, and I’ll make arrangements to have them nearby at all times. They will be assigned to you for the rest of your life.”
My mind suddenly flashes a picture of Isla on the day we wed. A portrait of perfection in white and glittering jewels.
I, Malachi Tierney Sterling, Duke of Corwick, I hear my own voice saying, take thee, Isla Sofía Reyes, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto, I pledge myself to you.
To love and to cherish.
Till death do us part.
If only.
I cough into my fist and continue. “Additionally, the sum of your alimony has been deposited into an account of which you are the sole owner. You are free to use it for whatever you—”