the light of a dawn which had yet to break, but she brushed them aside; they were too ambiguous and just when she thought she had ahold of one thought, it escaped her. Her mind was a jumbled mess, but she couldn't confuse the sinking feeling in her tummy for anything other than dread. Mayhem. Fear.
She climbed off the bed hastily and slipped into the shower, where she allowed steamy hot jets to scald her skin before she turned the temperature down that froze her skin. It didn't mask the tears that swept down her face. Something had drastically changed the dynamic in her world, and she couldn't change it back, not after what had happened in the early parts of the morning.
She threw on a terry-cloth robe and tied her hair into a messy bun and the dread of her thoughts spread like a disease under her skin. She felt it eat at her bones since she woke up, while she did things as ordinary as showering, brushing her teeth, and still she didn't know what to make of it except that an intense gloom seemed to be suffocating her while at the same time it came with a slew of warnings.
She stood quietly and waited for the unadulterated wretchedness to fall on her. It didn't take long before that heavy, black cloud opened on her and a torrential downpour of dread soaked her right down to her soul. She finally understood what was happening.
What Liam was doing. Oh God, how stupid had she been to have fallen for him? To lay down her life for him when in truth she really meant nothing to him at all. When Liam had told her he owned her, she should have believed he meant as one owned an object. An inanimate thing with no feelings of their own. She, like a silly, young, immature girl had thought he owned her like a precious, priceless jewel when the reality was he owned her like a car, a house, one of his horses.
Shaking, she angrily swiped away the tear that ran down her cheek.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Unsure what to do next, she went downstairs to the kitchen. She needed a moment to think, to reformulate her thoughts and see if they came to the same conclusion because a part of her believed Liam wouldn't do that to her. But again, it all made sense now. He had fooled her, and she had fallen to her knees for him like an idiot.
He was no better than Nunzio Romano. In fact, he was worse. She had let her guard down, put her heart on the line, and now she would be facing the callous consequences of her actions.
Her agitation had reached phenomenal heights, and she wanted to scream and shout and smash things. And she blamed herself more than anything. She had crumbled and flailed and fallen at the feet of Liam and Kade. She had only thought of what she wanted, needed, their touches on her body, their mouths on her, their grunts of lust in her ears.
She had only wanted their cocks so deep inside her she couldn't tell one from the other. But all she had done was spread her legs for another man while her husband watched, and then she had allowed him to penetrate her while she was still full of another man's cum.
But it hadn't been just another man. It had been Kade. A man who had turned her world around with the same intensity, resulting in the same outcome as Liam did, and she realized she couldn't have stopped it from happening if her life depended on it.
But in doing so had she helped herself fall into whatever trap had been set for her?
She needed to calm down, or she was going to break. She ordered herself to get a cup of something hot to drink, to regroup. She put the kettle on to boil, settling for a cup of hot chocolate even though her tummy turned at the thought of putting it near her lips.
Her restlessness continued to strangle her breath until her rapid heartbeat hammered in her ears, making her feel as if she were going to faint or throw up. She silently counted to ten to lessen the severity of her emotions, but that proved futile.
She opened the back door of the kitchen that led onto a porch filled with pots of all kinds of herbs that the chef picked fresh for his dishes. The first