Ch. I can hear my cold husbands dirty thoughts 6 I can hear my cold husbands dirty thoughts 6

Chapter 6 

Chapter 6 

+45 Coins 

By the next morning, Damian was human again, suited again, and pretending none of it had happened-except now, every time he passed me in the kitchen, his thoughts whispered, “She stayed. She stayed. She stayed.” 

I was on my way to deal with Kane and his “something special” when a girl ambushed me outside the building. 

“Mrs. Blackwood! Two minutes. Please.” 

Lacey. The coffee intern. The audacity of her, standing on the sidewalk in a trench coat with the haunted expression 

of a Victorian ghost. 

“You have negative minutes,” I said. “You drugged my husband.” 

“I know! I mean-I didn’t know what it was! A man gave me the vial and the words just-” She squeezed her eyes shut, took a breath, and then her whole demeanor changed, like an actor stepping into the light. Her chin lifted. Her voice turned poisonous. “You think marrying Damian makes you somebody? He’s never even touched you. The whole city knows. Be smart, sign the divorce, and clear the way for a woman who can actually-” 

A bolt of lightning came out of the cloudless sky and struck her. 

I’m going to repeat that, because I needed a moment too: a bolt of lightning, out of a clear blue sky, struck the sidewalk girl, leaving her smoking gently, hair standing in all directions, otherwise unharmed. 

“…Do terrible people actually get smited now?” I asked the sky. “Because I have a list.” 

“It’s the contract,” Lacey wheezed from the pavement. “Okay? I’m cursed. Last year I made a deal-a witch, a bar in Brooklyn, I was very drunk and very broke-I signed something called a Narrative Service Agreement. Now I’m contractually obligated to play ‘the other woman’ in three marriages or I forfeit my soul. Standard terms, apparently!” She sat up, frizzed and furious. “Every time I go off-script, that happens. The drugging wasn’t in my script-Marcus Blackwood blackmailed me into that part, he knows about my contract. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Your husband fired me, 

slapped twelve NDAs on me, and honestly? Fair.” 

I stared at her. Smoke curled off her shoulders. Somewhere in my purse, my divorce papers sat unsigned, my 

husband was a wolf, and now witches were real and ran predatory gig-economy schemes. 

“How many scenes do you have left?” I heard myself ask. 

Her eyes went huge and wet. “Three. Just three scenes and I’m free. But they all require him-or someone with his 

scent-and he’ll literally throw me off the building, and I can’t blame him-” She grabbed my hands. “You smell like him. 

Wait. That’s weird. What I mean is, the contract just needs the scent and the lines. It can’t tell the difference. You could 

play his part. Three little scenes, and I’m out of your marriage forever, I swear on my smoking trench coat.” 

“You want me to roleplay as my own husband. While you seduce me.” 

Chapter 6 

“When you say it like that, it sounds insane.* 

“It IS insane.” 

+45 Coins 

“Mrs. Blackwood.” She bowed so low her singed hair flopped over. “Please. You’re married to a werewolf. Your bar for 

insane should be adjustable.” 

She had me there. 

I sighed, pulled out a card for my family’s private clinic-“Get the burns looked at first”-and watched her clutch it like a holy relic. Against every instinct of self-preservation, I said: “Fine. Three scenes. But we do them where my husband will never see, because if he catches me being seduced by the woman who drugged him, no contract in any realm will 

save either of us.” 

Lacey beamed through the soot. “You won’t regret this!” 

Narrator voice, somewhere in the universe: she would regret this immediately. 

That night, Marcus Blackwood’s name lit up Damian’s phone at dinner. I watched my husband answer with perfect courtesy, and underneath it, one thought, cold as a blade leaving its sheath: 

“Full moon in two days, cousin. Let’s see which of us is the monster.”