Ch. I can hear my cold husbands dirty thoughts 14 I can hear my cold husbands dirty thoughts 14

Chapter 14 

Chapter 14 

+45 Coins 

He carried me home over the threshold of the penthouse like we were newlyweds, which, in every way that mattered, we were two years married, twelve hours bonded, zero walls left. 

“I can walk,” I pointed out. 

“I’m aware.” He didn’t put me down. “Two years I watched other men hold doors for you. I’m collecting.” 

The bond, it turned out, was a terrible roommate and the best thing that ever happened to me. All evening it had carried traffic in both directions-his pride, ferocious and glowing, when the old families’ acknowledgments started 

arriving at moonset, one by one, a hundred-year protocol honoring the wolf who’d claimed his territory in the open. My 

helpless laughter when Lacey texted to announce her contract had dissolved at midnight-apparently “true mate bond 

consummated in honesty triggered some force-majeure clause in the witch’s paperwork-followed immediately by her 

asking if she could be my assistant, “since I already know all your secrets and have excellent taste in scenes.” 

I’d said yes. I’m a softie. It’s documented. 

Kane had sent one message: a photo of his lingerie gift box on our doorstep with the caption “NO PRESSURE but if it 

works I want a testimonial for the website.” Damian had drafted, and deleted, four separate responses, each of which I 

heard him compose in his head, each more legally threatening than the last. 

Now the penthouse was quiet. Moonlight came through the tall windows and lay across the floor in long silver bars. 

He set me down at last in the doorway of his bedroom-our bedroom, as of a conversation in the elevator that had 

consisted entirely of eye contact. 

“Sienna.” He stood there in the silver light, this man I’d married as a stranger and fallen for through a keyhole in his 

mind, and I felt him gather himself. “I need to say it out loud once. Not in the bond. Out here, where it counts.” 

“Okay.” 

“Two years, I waited because I thought a piece of paper was your wish. I’d have waited twenty more. So this only goes. 

the speed you choose. Tonight, next month, next year-the bond doesn’t get a vote, the moon doesn’t get a vote, I don’t 

get a vote.” His eyes held mine, gold and steady. “Only you. Always only you. Do you understand?” 

And the bond carried the underneath of it, the part he couldn’t say: a seventeen-year-old learning the word monster, two years of closed doors he’d thought were kindness, a man who would rather hold himself to ash than ever once 

make me feel small. 

I reached up and undid his top button. 

“Damian Blackwood,” I said. “I have been trying to get this shirt off you since chapter one of our marriage. I choose 

tonight. I choose you. Enthusiastically. On the record. In perpetuity-and you can tell the lawyers I said so.” 

Chapter 14 

+45 Coins 

The laugh that broke out of him was nothing like the boardroom. It was young and unguarded and mine. He kissed me-really kissed me, the first true kiss of our marriage, two years and one revolution late-and the bond lit up like the skyline, both directions, no walls, his joy and mine ringing against each other until I couldn’t tell whose was whose 

“I love you,” he thought, and said, and thought again, the words overlapping like echoes. “My wife. My mate. My Luna” 

Much later-much, much later-I lay listening to the heartbeat I’d once been separated from by a wall of drywall and 

a fraudulent clause, his fingers tracing lazy lines along my shoulder, the moon setting somewhere over the harbor his 

family had guarded for three hundred years. 

“For the record,” I murmured into his chest, “the rumor is dead. I’m issuing a formal retraction. Front page.” 

“Three hundred rounds,” his mind offered, insufferably smug. 

“Don’t push it.” 

His chest rumbled under my cheek with quiet laughter, and through the open door of the bond, soft as a vow, came 

the last thought I heard before I fell asleep in my husband’s arms for the first time: 

“She stayed. She stayed. She stayed.” 

THE END