THE UNMAIDEN

ONE

NOTE: Before starting the book, please understand this is a Dark Romance and it is ripe with possible triggers and mature content. Please read at your own risk.

We need to talk.

Are there any worse words a woman can hear from her husband?

Yes. Yes, there are.

And I was hearing them right now. Sort of. They were a droning buzz in my brain. I didn't care about the excess details. And I couldn’t understand how my body was raging fury and cold simultaneously - ten years of marriage, for this.

“I want to see other people.”

By other people, Patrick met f**k.

His distance made sense now. But the bastard could have just broken it off. Been honest about it. Separated. Divorced. It would have devastated me then, two years ago, when his attitude toward me had begun to sour. But it would have saved me these last two years from the heartache of misunderstanding and fighting for something not even worth fighting for. Fighting for someone who didn’t even want me.

Love. Ha.

I quit believing in it long ago. I married for the first time, young, naive, and easily manipulated, when he claimed he couldn’t live without me. After two years, I learned love was nothing more than a manufactured scheme for control. Nothing more.

After that, I swore I’d never let another man control me again. I would never believe in love again.

Until Patrick. Patrick came into my life when I was a free spirit. Late nights in bars. Later nights in cars in parking lots. I was wild and unbound by the morals of the righteous. But when I met him, he was a solid rock of steadfast love and devotion. I didn’t want a relationship, but he hunted me down to the ends of the earth. He came back every time I pushed him away, and he planted seeds in the cracks in the walls around my heart. They took root, blossomed, and crumbled them to dust.

Which was all that was left of my heart now. The irony of the destruction of those walls I had carefully in place, the one thing I protected for so long, wasn’t lost on me.

I wanted to take that dust and force-feed it down his throat in fistfuls, and watch him choke on it like I was choking on the air I couldn’t breathe. The asshole knew, knew the traumas of my first husband. The late nights he worked, the days he locked me in the house with no one to talk to, nowhere to go, and the mornings I would wake up to his mouth on my most sacred of places.

That didn’t even cover the lies about who he was with, or when he was with them, late-night calls to his ex-girlfriend, begging her to meet him. Or the women he worked with. So, yeah, class act that one. The final straw was when I had a miscarriage, and he admitted to trying to get me pregnant on purpose. After I left, he showed up at my work with a gun, forcing me to go with him. I broke away the only way I knew how - I ran halfway across the country and never looked back, never believing I was safe until six months later, when I heard he had moved a girl in who was even younger than me. A year later, he hired a PI to serve me the divorce papers.

But Patrick knew all of this. And after letting myself believe love wasn’t the problem, only the man was, I agreed to marry again. I put my whole life and effort into the marriage. I was upfront about my colorful past and ensured he never had to worry about that behavior from me. I cherished him and what I thought we had, respected, never belittled or nagged him, and was ultimately rewarded with this.

“I’m not saying this to hurt you, Mel,” he said. “I just needed to get this off my chest. I hope you understand.”

“Whatever, Patrick,” I said woodenly. “Go do whatever, or whomever you want.”

“Melissa, I still love you,” he pleaded.

“Go f**k yourself,” I said. “Oh, Patrick?”

“Yes, baby?”

“Don’t you ever call me that again, for one,” I seethed. “Number two, I’m not leaving my home, and you’re not going to bring any of your whores around either.” This was the only emotion he was getting out of me from all of this.

But he had an attitude all his own. “I’m not leaving, Melissa, this is my home, too.”

I didn’t have the energy to fight with him about this. I’d move my s**t into the other room. Luckily, the guest bedroom was at the far end of the house with an ensuite bathroom. I rolled my eyes and walked out of the house to my car. I knew it was getting late, the sun was already down, but I couldn’t stand looking at or being around him right now. I might kill him.

I drove, not paying attention or knowing where I was going. I kept expecting the crippling pain to hit. But it never did. I just felt… empty. My phone dinged a notification. After a pause, it dinged three more, back to back. I assumed it was Patrick, so I chose to ignore it.

Then my phone started blowing up like I had just been spammed with a multitude of messages. I was at a stoplight, and it was beginning to rain. I could hear thunder in the distance. I opened up my phone to a number I didn’t recognize. The notification said eighteen new messages. What the actual f**k?

The first one was a video. A feeling of dread came over me, knowing I wasn’t going to like what I was about to see, but like a moth to an open flame, I was drawn in, knowing I was going to get burned.

A video with full sound began playing. It was my husband’s office. I heard the door that was positioned just outside the frame open and close, and the sound of heavy breathing, giggling, and fumbling before a petite blonde came into the picture. Shortly behind her was Patrick, his hands groping her ass like he couldn’t keep them off of her as they walked closer to the desk.

He grabbed her elbow and spun her around, his mouth hungrily closing on her as he pushed her backwards to the desk, his hand squeezing her tit. Once she was pressed against the desk, he moved his mouth down her neck and chest while he pulled her blouse up.

She moved quickly to undo the buttons, and he clawed his way into her bra, the kind that fastened in the front. I watched as her fake, perky breasts spilled, and my husband pressed his face between them, then began pushing his hips into hers.

I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to watch this, but I couldn’t stop. I watched as she undid his belt and pants and pushed them down past his hips, their panting coming through the speaker, heavy in the air of my enclosed car.

He hiked her skirt up.

“No panties today?” he asked in a husky voice. “Did you do that for me?”

“Of course, I did,” she replied with a smile as she looked up at him. I watched as his hand swiped back and forth through her folds. She was spread-eagled, leaning against the front of his desk, her head thrown back in ecstasy. As her moans got louder, he reached up and placed a hand over her mouth.

“If you don’t be quiet, I’m going to stick something in there,” he warned. “f**k, you’re so wet.”

And as if he couldn’t wait anymore, positioned in front of her, I had the perfect view of his ass pumping as he f****d her. Even though it didn’t take long, it felt like an eternity.

You share almost thirteen intimate years with someone, you can never brace yourself for the sight of your husband balls deep in another woman. After he finished, cumming in her and having put absolutely no protection on, he moved away from her, fixing his clothes while he gave her a chance to put herself back together.

She looked directly up into the camera and smiled a wicked, triumphant smile.

Bitch.