Monster A Dark Arranged Marriage Romance - Vanessa Waltz Page 0,12

centered in my chest. An odd twinge nagged at me as I changed directions and strolled next door.

Last night was a disaster.

The rage had built in me as she drank Aperol spritzes, which happened to be my favorite summer cocktail. I hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol in ages, but watching her drink them had triggered me. I could’ve sucked her tongue dry.

God, the way her cunt gripped my fingers. Evie was more tempting than a line of Colombian powder. I’d almost held her down and fucked her. She’d begged me to, but I took it way too far. She’d made me lose control.

I was off balance.

Fuck.

A clawing sensation gnawed my throat. I shut my eyes, inhaling through my nose. I had to master this crazed impulse.

I slid my keycard in the lock.

The door yawned. Wide-open curtains glowed with the faint light, washing her sleeping silhouette in blue. What I wouldn’t give to be that blissfully unaware.

Her cheek pressed into the pillow and her mouth was parted. Her brown mane fanned on the sheets, the perfect bun from the wedding undone. Without the makeup, she looked younger than her twenty-two years.

I kicked the bedframe. “Wake up.”

She startled horribly, dragging the sheets to her mouth. I braced myself for pleading and begging, but Evie groaned like I woke her up for school.

“Get up. We’re leaving.”

Evie pulled the comforter over her head. “Too early.”

“We need to go.”

She didn’t move.

I ripped the covers from her body.

She hissed, legs curling under her satin slip. “Fine. Jesus. I’m getting up.”

She rolled off the bed and stretched. Light kissed her, illuminating her bewitching face. Dark, mysterious eyes frowned, furrowing slender brows. Her plush pink lips offset the gentle slope of her chin. Her skin complemented the golden room. She seemed of the earth, pure, and desiring her felt like the most natural thing in the world.

Evie’s beauty was the devastating kind that hit a man in the chest, and if I didn’t pull back, I would lose sight of my goal.

I could never love her.

So I set my heart on hating her.

Five

Tony

3 mint leaves

½ oz simple syrup

2 oz white rum

¾ oz lime juice

club soda, to top

Garnish: mint sprig

I spied on my wife.

Cameras placed around the house provided me with constant access to the biker girl. I kept an eye on her, and it gave me an excuse to stay the hell away. Evie hardly seemed the type for espionage, but who the fuck knew. Her family was the sickest bunch of bastards. I could still feel the things they’d done to me.

I sat in my dad’s office, watching Evie on my tablet. His spirit surrounded me, whispering from the dusty volumes that filled the shelves, the desk splotched with grappa stains, the framed photo of me at eight. Dad would roll over in his grave if he knew who I’d married.

Knox winked at me, spinning a pen in his tapered fingers. I’d called him over to help me figure a way out of this mess. The twenty-five-year-old genius was night and day from me at his age. He’d already achieved what most men couldn’t in a lifetime.

He’d graduated from MIT at fifteen with a double major in engineering and political science. At eighteen, he launched some software that had consumed the tech world. By twenty, he was the CEO of a cybersecurity firm worth $2.4 billion. Two years later, Black Prism was under fire for hacking into phones of slain foreign diplomats. When they dragged him to the Court of Appeals, he fired his defense team, represented his company, and won. Then the asshole took the bar exam just for kicks.

“How’s married life?”

“Exceptionally dull,” I muttered as Evie moved a large sketchpad over her lap. “I haven’t seen her since the wedding.”

It’d been a couple of weeks since I’d dropped her at my penthouse in Beacon Hill. Fourteen days of wearing my father’s ring, dodging my mother’s calls, and fantasizing about being single.

“Is that your wife?” Knox put down the pages of lawyerese and peered at the screen. “She’s attractive. Decent body, too.”

My neck flushed. “It’s more than decent, you shit.”

Today, she wore a black leopard-patterned dress generous to her feminine contours. She was sitting on the rooftop garden, staring out into the city. Her dress rode the wind, floating, as though it could be blown off, and she could be undone.

She bent over, displaying her rack to the overhead camera. Big and natural, just how I liked them. Her nipples would fit nicely in my