Oboedientia. She knew what she was signing when she married me….” he murmured, fumbling with the buttons on my shirt.
That was the part I couldn’t understand. Why would someone as smart and fierce as Michaela sign a marriage oath promising fidelity to a husband who wasn’t bound by an equivalent clause? Was the lure of money and status really worth a husband who screwed around right under her nose? In her own house? Right in front of her?
But then, who was I to judge? The specifics of my involvement with her husband weren’t exactly pretty, so maybe the same was true for her.
“Your people are starting to talk, Ruben.”
He shook his head and reached for my waistband, and I let him push the button through the hole. Because I couldn’t stop him. He hadn’t hit that brick wall yet. “My people are bound by privacy clauses. All except you.”
“I’m not yours.”
“Yet.” He stroked the unmarred skin of my left bicep with his thumb. If he had his way, my arm would look just like Tomas’s.
And then there’d be no escaping him.
“Well, someone’s talking.” More than one someone. And whoever they were, they didn’t have their facts straight.
He knelt to unlace my boots, then slid my jeans over my hips and let them crumple on the floor. Then he wrapped his arms around my waist, pressing one stubbly cheek against my stomach. “The best way to silence the masses is to cut out a single tongue,” he whispered against my skin. Then he stood slowly and his fevered gaze met mine. “I could set something up. You can use my best knife if you let me watch.”
“You’re a sick bastard.” I bent for my pants, but he pulled me back up by one arm.
“Stay.”
“I have to work.”
“Stay as long as you can….” he insisted. I tried to walk away from him, but again, he pulled me back. “That’s an order.”
Damn it!
“Not today,” I said, and agony exploded behind my forehead, bright white and unbearable. I staggered and he picked me up. Several steps later, he lowered me onto the leather couch, cold against my bare legs, and knelt on the floor beside me.
He stroked hair back from my forehead while the pain raged behind my eyes and my hand twitched on the center cushion. “Why do you do this to yourself? You know you can’t win.”
“That’s exactly why I fight,” I groaned through clenched teeth.
Ruben ran one hand down my leg. “Let me see it,” he whispered.
My temper flared at his touch and I shook my head. The pain radiated toward the back of my skull and my left foot began to jiggle. My whole world was agony.
“Stubborn little bitch …” he whispered. “Let me see it.”
That time I didn’t fight. I’d made my point—he could never truly rule me, no matter what he made me do—and we both knew I wasn’t going to win in the end. So I didn’t resist when he slid one hand beneath my left knee and bent my leg to expose my bare thigh.
He traced the small black ring tattooed there, and my skin tingled beneath his finger, recognizing his touch. Because the ink was infused by his blood. A year and a half ago, when the needle spilled my blood, he rubbed it with his pricked thumb and sealed the binding.
“You’re mine, Olivia,” he whispered, leaning closer. His lips brushed the black ring, and I gasped as it burned hotter. Fortunately, he’d finally hit the brick wall—that was as far as he could go without breaking his word and suffering the same pain I’d brought on myself. But that didn’t make his next words any less true.
“Until you find and deliver what you promised, I own you, head to toe. And I won’t ever let you forget that …”
Five
“You’re late,” Cam said, as I unlocked the office door and held it open for him.
“Yup.” I’d left with just enough time to get there by noon—Cavazos had to let me go to work for official clients, but didn’t have to leave me any spare time—but I’d stopped by my apartment first to shower. I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing Cam again with the feel of Cavazos still crawling on my skin.
Not with the memory of him calling me “clean” still echoing in my head.
I tossed my scuffed satchel onto the couch and headed straight for my desk.
“You really think that’s the best way to start this working relationship?”
“Nope.” I dropped into my chair and pulled open the bottom right-hand drawer, pawing through the contents as I spoke. “If you wanna work with someone else, I fully support your decision.” In fact, that was the only way I could get out of a direct request from Anne.
“You’re not going to get rid of me again, Liv. Unless you have a new vanishing act you’d like to try out.”
My fingers brushed smooth glass beneath a tangle of holster straps and receipts I’d really meant to file, and I pulled out a half-empty bottle of cheap whiskey. The shot glass in my pencil drawer had eraser shavings in it, so I tapped it upside down on my desk until they fell out, then poured myself a shot.
I threw it back and closed my eyes, half wishing the alcohol still burned. I’d tried drinking before my weekly report to Cavazos once, and once was all it took. Turns out I don’t really want to be relaxed around him after all.
“What’s wrong with you?” Cam demanded, sinking onto the couch with his elbows on his knees.
“I had a rough morning, and based on your presence in my office, my afternoon isn’t looking much better.”
His blue eyes narrowed in anger, and I had to swallow my own regret before it surfaced as an apology—I couldn’t afford to let him in again. “When did you turn into such a bitch?” he growled, and my urge to apologize dried up and blew away.
“About a year and a half ago.” I poured another shot and pushed the bottle toward him.
Instead of taking it, he watched me slowly turn the shot I’d poured for myself, staring down at the contents. “Are you going to be like this the whole time?” he asked.
“Nope. Sometimes I’ll be irritable and unpleasant.” I downed the shot and reached for the bottle again, but he pulled it out of my reach.
Cam tilted the bottle to read the label, then set it on the desk again with a disgusted look. “I guess you really don’t work for Cavazos. He pays better than this.”
“What, you’re too good for my whiskey?”
“Yeah, and so are you. When this is over, I’ll buy you a real drink.” His arched brows were a challenge, but his eyes were serious, and so was the question he hadn’t really asked.
“I might let
