The bed dips behind me.

I don't turn around. I already know it's Damien his scent hits me first, that dark blend of sandalwood and something sharper, something uniquely him. My wolf stirs, restless beneath my skin, tail wagging like an idiot before I shove her back down.

Not now.

His hand slides up my thigh, confident, proprietary. No greeting. No "how was your day." Just touch, claiming, owning.

This is how it always goes.

Once a week, maybe twice if he's feeling generous, my husband comes home. He climbs into our bed in the middle of the night, pulls me against him, and fucks me until I can't remember my own name. Then he leaves before sunrise, back to whatever or whoever keeps him in the city.

His fingers find the hem of my nightgown, tugging it upward. I lift my hips automatically, letting him strip it away. Three years of this has made me well-trained.

"Damien "

"Shh." His mouth grazes my shoulder, teeth scraping lightly. Not a bite. Never a bite. He's never marked me, never will. That wasn't part of the contract.

I bite my lip as his hand cups my breast, thumb circling my nipple with practiced precision. He knows exactly how to touch me, where to press, how much pressure to apply. It's mechanical. Efficient. Like he's studied my body the way other men study stock portfolios.

My back arches despite myself. My wolf whines, desperate for more contact, more him. She doesn't understand why he won't mark us, won't claim us properly. She doesn't grasp that this marriage is just another business transaction for Damien Blackwood.

But I do.

His other hand slides between my legs, finding me already wet. I hate that my body responds so eagerly, hate that he can reduce me to this needy, aching thing with just a few strategic touches.

"Good girl," he murmurs against my neck.

I squeeze my eyes shut. Those two words shouldn't make my stomach flip, but they do. Every damn time.

He shifts behind me, and I feel him hard, ready pressing against my ass. No foreplay beyond this. He doesn't need it, and apparently neither do I, if the slickness coating his fingers is any indication.

He enters me in one smooth thrust.

I gasp, fingers clutching the sheets as he fills me completely. He doesn't pause, doesn't give me time to adjust. He just takes, his rhythm steady and relentless, exactly the way he knows I like it even if I've never admitted it out loud.

My wolf preens, rolling in the sensation of our mate inside us, surrounding us, consuming us. She's too simple to understand that sex isn't love. That fucking isn't mating.

That Damien Blackwood will never be ours.

His hand tangles in my hair, tugging my head back. I expect his mouth on my throat, his teeth breaking skin, the sharp sting of a mark finally, finally

But his lips never touch mine.

They graze my jaw instead, skimming the column of my neck, carefully avoiding any real intimacy. Because that's the rule. The one condition in our contract that matters more than any other.

No mouth-to-mouth kissing.

I knew that coming into this. Agreed to it, even signed my name on the dotted line. But knowing and experiencing are two different things, and every time he fucks me without kissing me, it carves another piece out of my chest.

"Lara." My name sounds like a command on his lips.

I come apart at the sound of it, my body clenching around him as pleasure crashes through me in waves. He follows seconds later, his grip on my hip tightening as he spills inside me with a low groan that I feel more than hear.

For a moment, we stay like that connected, breathing hard, his forehead resting against my shoulder blade.

This is the part where I let myself pretend. Where I close my eyes and imagine that this means something to him. That when he touches me like this, it's because he wants me, not just release.

But then he pulls out, and the spell breaks.

He doesn't leave immediately, though. That's new. Usually he's in the shower within seconds, washing away any trace of me before disappearing back into the night.

Instead, he gives my ass a light smack playful, almost affectionate.

"Go to sleep," he says.

My heart does this stupid, traitorous flutter.

Stop it, I tell myself. Stop reading into things that aren't there.

But it's too late. Hope has already taken root, fragile and foolish, whispering that maybe things are changing. Maybe he's starting to care.

I roll onto my side, watching as he stands and stretches, completely unselfconscious in his nudity. He's beautiful all lean muscle and sharp angles, with dark hair that's perpetually disheveled and gray eyes that could cut glass.

'Our mate is so handsome,' my wolf sighs dreamily.

I almost laugh. Almost.

Because he's not our mate. Not really. Oh, the Moon Goddess paired us I felt the bond snap into place the moment I turned eighteen and our eyes met across his mother's charity gala. But Damien made it very clear from the start that he had no intention of honoring a bond he didn't choose.

Instead, he offered me a contract.

Three years. Play the role of the devoted wife in public, the obedient fuck in private, and at the end, I'd walk away with enough money to never worry about anything again. All I had to do was sign away any claim to a real relationship, real affection, real love.

I was nineteen and desperate. My pack had just collapsed after my father's death, leaving my mother and me with nothing but debt and enemies. Damien's offer wasn't kindness it was convenience. He needed a wife to appease his mother and maintain his public image. I needed survival.

So I signed.

I remember the conversation I wasn't supposed to overhear, six months into our marriage. Damien and his Beta, Leo, in his study after too much whiskey.

"When are you going to ditch the contract wife?" Leo had asked.

"When I find Mrs. Right." Damien's response was casual, unbothered. "Soon as I meet someone worth actually mating, Lara gets her payout and we part ways. Clean, simple."

Mrs. Right.

Not me. Never me.

I look at Damien now as he pulls on his boxer briefs, and I feel that familiar ache in my chest the one that's been growing steadily over three years despite my best efforts to kill it.

Because somewhere along the way, I made the most spectacular mistake of my life.

I fell in love with my husband.

My fake husband. My contract husband. My husband who sees me as nothing more than a warm body and a public relations asset.

'We should tell him,' my wolf suggests hopefully. 'Maybe he feels it too and he's just scared '

He doesn't, I cut her off sharply. And even if he did, it wouldn't matter. This marriage has an expiration date.

The thought makes my stomach turn.

Damien walks to the dresser, pulling out a fresh t-shirt. He's staying the night. Another unprecedented development.

"You okay?" he asks, glancing at me over his shoulder.

The question catches me off guard. He never asks how I am.

"Fine," I manage.

He nods, accepting the lie because caring enough to dig deeper would require actual emotional investment.

He slides into bed beside me, keeping a careful distance. We might share a bed and bodily fluids, but cuddling is apparently where he draws the line.

I stare at the ceiling, hyperaware of his presence beside me, and I remember something else. Something his mother said a year ago when she was pestering us about grandchildren.

"Give us time, Mother," Damien had said smoothly. "We've only been married two years. We'll think about children after our third anniversary."

Our third anniversary was last week.

I hadn't thought much of it at the time just another deflection, another polite lie to get Vivian Blackwood off our backs. But now, with Damien's "playful" swat still tingling on my skin and the unfamiliar warmth of his body beside me, I can't help but wonder.

What if it wasn't a lie? What if that arbitrary timeline actually meant something to him?

Don't be stupid, I scold myself. He was buying time, nothing more.

But my wolf is whispering traitorous what-ifs, painting pictures of a future that will never exist. A future where Damien chooses me. Where this contract becomes real.

Where I'm not just Mrs. Blackwood on paper, but his mate in truth.

I close my eyes against the sting of tears.

Three years. Three years of playing house with a man who will never love me. Three years of hoping he might look at me the way he looks at his car collection with actual fondness. Three years of being the world's most expensive placeholder.

And the worst part?

I'd sign up for three more if he asked.

Because I'm just that pathetic.

Just One Kiss, before divorcing me — Chapter 9: The Stairwell

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