Ch. I can hear my cold husbands dirty thoughts 9 I can hear my cold husbands dirty thoughts 9

Chapter 9 

Chapter 9 

Kane fled. Smart man. Wrong continent, but smart man. 

+45 Coins 

Which left me alone in the garden, holding a ribboned box of incriminating lingerie, with a husband whose composure 

was a paper screen over a forest fire. 

“Damian,” I began, “context is important-” 

“You told your coworker,” he said, taking the box from my hands and setting it on a stone bench with unsettling gentleness, “that I’m a dud.” 

“I’d had wine! It was months ago! And in my defense, you hadn’t touched me in two YEARS, what was I supposed to tell people, that my husband is a perfect gentleman with the self-control of a marble saint? Nobody believes that, 

Damian, it’s not a real personality-” 

“A dud.” He loosened his bow tie with one hand, eyes never leaving mine, and his thoughts had gone from thunder to something darker and warmer. “Two years of cold showers. Two years of sleeping one wall away, listening to her heartbeat through the drywall like a lovesick teenager. And she thinks-” 

“Wait, you can hear my heartbeat through the-” 

He went very still. “What did you say?” 

Oh no. 

“What did you just say, Sienna?” He stepped closer, head tilting-that wolf-tilt I now recognized. “I didn’t say that out 

loud.” 

Oh no. 

“You… implied it,” I tried. “With your face. You have a very loud face.” 

“I have the least loud face on the Eastern Seaboard. It’s my entire brand.” His eyes narrowed; I watched the deduction assemble itself behind them with terrifying speed, the same mind that ate hostile takeovers for breakfast. “The office -she answered things I never said. The garden just now-she reacted before I spoke. She looks at me when I think about her. Every time. Every single time, for the past three days, since-” His breath caught. “Since she fell into my 

arms.” 

“Damian-” 

“Can you hear me right now?” 

His mouth hadn’t moved. We stared at each other in the fairy-lit dark, and his heart-I could see it in his throat-was 

Chapter 9 

pounding. 

+45 Coins 

“… Yes, I whispered 

The fortress of his face came down all at once. Not anger. Not the horror I braced for. Something almost unbearable: 

wonder. 

“Do you know what that means?” His voice came out rough. “Sienna. Do you know what it means, when a human 

starts hearing a wolf’s mind?” 

“That your security clearance situation is a disaster?” 

“It’s the bond.” He took my face in both hands, careful, reverent, like I was made of something that might dissolve. 

“The mate bond. It only opens in one direction first-from the wolf to his fated mate. I thought-“A disbelieving laugh broke out of him. “Two years, I thought the marriage was a cage I’d trapped you in. An arrangement. I never let myself 

check, never let myself hope, because if I courted you and you ran-” 

“They always run,” I quoted softly. 

“You heard that too.” His thumbs brushed my cheekbones. “She heard everything. The poetry about her collarbone. 

Oh god. The collarbone poetry.” 

“It was a good poem,” I said. “Strong imagery.” 

“I’m going to throw myself off the trellis.” 

“You’re going to do no such thing.” I grabbed his lapels. “You’re going to explain why-if I’m your fated cosmic destiny 

wife-you spent two years treating me like I was radioactive. Because I’ve heard your thoughts, Damian Blackwood. I 

know what you wanted. So why?” 

The wonder in his face flickered. Guilt moved in behind it, old and worn, like furniture he’d lived with a long time. 

“Because of the contract,” he said quietly. “Sienna… haven’t you ever read our prenup? All of it? Clause forty-seven?” 

‘Nobody reads clause forty-seven of anything!” 

“Your side added it. Before the wedding.” His jaw tightened. “I assumed you knew. I assumed it was yours. Clause forty-seven: “The parties agree this union shall remain without physical intimacy in perpetuity, at the bride’s request.” 

The garden tilted. 

“Damian,” I said slowly, “I never requested that.” 

His face went white. And then-both of us, the same heartbeat, the same dawning horror-we said one name together: