The Marriage Debt (Underworld Kings)

Luca’s face and those kissable lips are right in front of mine, and I’m unable to look away.

“Do you know what it does to a man to watch the only woman he wants lust after another?” he asks, his veiny hand tightening into a fist.

“I … I …” I don’t even know what to say.

I instinctively touch my lips.

“I was the first,” he says, his voice gravelly, raw, and filled with emotions. “The first to kiss those lips.”

“But you told me not to tell anyone,” I murmur.

His jaw tenses. “Because I knew you were supposed to marry him.”

I always thought it was a fairy tale I’d spun up in my head, that Luca actually wanted me, because all he ever showed me was hatred and disgust, and it blinded me from the truth.

The one truth I ignored for so long … from the day I drove away from him in my car after he caught me kissing his brother.

“Why do you think I climbed in through your window in the fucking rain?” he says.

I suck in a breath, but my throat feels like it’s completely shut.

Rain splashes up against the windows just like it did that night.

That night he took everything from me.

All the puzzle pieces click into place.

My lips part, and the words nearly float out, “You … were jealous of him.”

He grabs my face and holds my cheek like I’m a precious jewel. “You made me want something I couldn’t fucking have, and I knew it. And when I took it anyway, you fucking hated me for it.”

My heart beats in my throat as he’s so close I can feel his breath on my skin.

His voice filled with so much anger as he says, “I never should’ve told you Liam was supposed to marry you.”

Thunder strikes, making me jolt up and down.

“All this time, I thought you were punishing me for his death,” I say, my lip quivering.

“I thought so too,” he replies.

“But that isn’t true, is it?”

He shakes his head. A simple move that barely scratches the surface of just how much my world has caved underneath my feet.

Another bolt of lightning lights the sky, filling the room with a flash of brightness, illuminating the sparkle in his eyes and the dark shadows that followed him for so long.

“You kissed him.”

That’s it.

That’s the reason behind all the lies.

And even when I knew, deep down, it was true … I lied to myself and told myself it wasn’t.

Because if it was … I couldn’t face myself knowing what it meant.

How deep his obsession with me really went.

And just how much his affection really affected me.

I called him my monster … but he just wanted to win.

Even if it meant chasing away the one he truly wanted … me.

So when my parents decided to marry me to Liam, it was an easy way out for me. A way to pretend nothing ever happened between Luca and me. To make sure that it was the right choice, that Liam was really what I wanted, what I needed, what I … craved.

“… I needed to know,” I say.

Luca’s hand slides down my cheek, his thumb grazing my lip, pulling it down agonizingly slow. “How it felt to destroy me too.”

Tears well up in my eyes. “I didn’t mean to.”

His fingers slide down to my chin, and he tips it up so he can stare me down with those beautifully haunted eyes of his. “Did he kiss you the way you wanted?” He leans in and presses his lips onto mine so softly that I almost melt into a puddle. “Did he make your heart pounce and your pussy throb?” Another slow and deep kiss makes me close my eyes, ready for more. “Did he kiss you the way I would have kissed you?”

Suddenly, he pulls away and leaves me bereft with inescapable emotions swirling through my body. Not the kind that makes you moan, but the kind that makes you sigh.

Something I only ever felt with … Luca.

After he looks at me over his shoulder with a tempting gaze, he walks out of the closet, leaving me in here with a pounding heart while staring down at a small bunny nibbling on some food.

All this time, I thought I was going insane, that what I felt when he first kissed me was just my raging hormones betraying me, and he took advantage of that.

But I was wrong.

So wrong.

I fought so hard not to feel anything to fit in, to make my parents proud, that I ignored everything that took me off the path that led me to Liam. And it hurt the only guy who ever cared enough about me and what I wanted.

I hurt Luca so much he wanted nothing more than to hurt me as much as I had hurt him.