Chapter 5

• Valerie's hands gripped the worn leather steering wheel with whitened knuckles as she guided her modest sedan through the familiar city streets. Her gaze remained riveted on the road ahead, jaw clenched tightly as if afraid even a solitary treacherous thought might fracture her tentative composure.
• Yet no matter how ferociously she attempted to wall off her whirling emotions, they still slipped through in a relentless, eroding deluge.
• Michael. Her new husband.
• The word alone spawn a fresh flurry of disbelief, anxiety, and admittedly...unmistakable tendrils of forbidden longing snaking through her core. Valerie swallowed hard against the unexpected tide of sensation, silently castigating herself for such unforgivable lapses.
• She barely knew this man save for his undeniable magnetic charisma and that blistering, all-too-perceptive emerald stare. A stare that somehow managed to strip her naked down to the most profound, ragged depths of her psyche until she felt utterly flayed open under its scrutiny.
• A tiny shiver traced her slender spine as she recalled the banked intensity, the promise of arcane secrets and formidable power flickering behind those haunting jade depths. Michael was clearly no simple gentleman, that much was indisputable. Valerie may have convinced herself to forge this madcap arrangement in desperation, but something primal Inside recognized her new husband for precisely what he was - a dangerous, uncompromising predator concealing feral instincts behind a veneer of devastating masculinity.
• The memory of his steel-banded arms enfolding her, of that scorching brush of lips against hers only amplified the molten flutter rippling through her guarded thoughts. For the briefest breath, she had glimpsed the true apex predator lurking beneath Michael's controlled facade. Caught a dizzying whiff of the ravenous hunger scarcely leashed behind those piercing green irises.
• Valerie gripped the steering wheel tighter, doing her utmost to physically quell the unwelcome yearning threatening to splinter her restraint into shards. This was madness, pure and simple. Little over an hour ago, she had stood on the cusp of marrying a different man entirely - her childhood sweetheart, first love. The one she envisioned building a life and family alongside once their rose-tinted dreams unfurled into adulthood.
• Yet now...now that tender fantasy lay entombed and cremated beyond resurrection. The nauseating vision of David's revolted sneer as he revealed his sordid betrayal with her own stepsister would forever haunt Valerie. As would the impassive, soulless disdain in the eyes of her heartless stepfamily, more concerned with privelaging Bianca than supporting their own blood.
• If marrying a stranger was the only path to keep what little remained of Valerie's world from atomizing into ash and guttering embers...then she would do whatever necessary to forge onward. No matter what unfathomable secrets or lethal impulses eddied beneath Michael's cool, implacable surface.
• You can always get back at those who hurt you. His husky baritone resurfaced in her churning thoughts, stirring equal parts unease and vindictive relish. Perhaps she couldn't rewrite the excruciating chapters of her past, yet Michael offered another option. One final chance to emerge victorious from the rubble while her conniving relations looked on.
• Even if victory came at the low cost of surrendering her gilded life dream in favor of uncharted, unvarnished territory.
• Valerie inhaled a deep steadying breath as her thumb traced the new platinum band adorning her ring finger. Somehow, miraculously, she was a wife now - Michael's wife, bound by sacred oaths they'd each uttered with improbable ease. Tomorrow the world would know, her betrayers subjected to an uncompromising glimpse of the new path she sculpted from their devastations.
• Whether Valerie intended it from the start or not, the universe had bestowed a single-edged blade to carve her out from the ingrained cycle of compromise and capitulation. And to think, she'd found such an unexpectedly savage curveball in the most unpredictable of all adversaries.
• Her new husband...the complete, magnificent stranger.
• As the stately red brick facade of her townhouse apartment loomed into view, Valerie knew with prophetic certainty that whatever awaited in the aftermath of her hastily contracted vows - be it exhilaration or incineration - her life was now eternally and irrevocably...changed.
• She had best savor these final dregs of solitude while she was able. Because by night's descent, Valerie sensed she would be utterly and permanently enveloped by her new husband's scorching, rapacious orbit. Never to reemerge quite the same.
• Just the dizzying thought alone sent her heart trip-hammering like a SOS code in the hollows of her ribcage. She barely knew the vicious undercurrent powering Michael's magnificence, nor what unfurled once she surrendered herself to its smoldering, relentless embrace.
• Then again, a tiny, reckless spark ignited somewhere in her soul even as the rest recoiled in tenuous self-preservation. What if her precipitous leap into uncharted peril was precisely the exhilarating awakening she needed?
• Almost against her will, Valerie's apprehensive frown curved into a rueful, secretive smile as she killed the sputtering engine and gathered her purse.
• Time would be the only judge whether this particular roll of the cosmic dice landed in her favor or not. And somehow...Valerie suspected she wouldn't mind the chance to spin those weighted tumbler's Michael Donovan's way either.
• Only one complication remained before she could fully embrace her strange new future: informing her sole confidante and best friend Emily Davies of the madness she'd blindly, rapturously undertaken.
• As Valerie slid from her car, the notion of sharing this ludicrous secret elicited a surprisingly breathless pang of amusement and...pure, unabashed daring. With one final lingering look at the unfamiliar eternity band adorning her finger, she plucked her phone from her clutch and dialed her dearest friend's number.
• Emily would undoubtedly balk, maybe even object given Valerie's unassailable sheltered upbringing. But this was one instance the voice of reason would simply have to capitulate to the lush and primal awakening surging through Valerie Ashford's starved soul.
• She had chosen this enigmatic, possibly dangerous path...and she would greet its vast mysteries with irrepressible hunger, not fear.
• Because for the very first time since her mother's passing, Valerie felt _alive_.
• Valerie called her friend Emily, she had to talk to someone about this. The call connected after a few rings, Emily's bright voice chiming through the earpiece. "Valerie! Did the wedding happen?"
• Valerie felt her lips quirk despite her friend's worried tone. If only Emily knew just how epically off-base her assumptions were about to prove.
• "Oh the wedding happened alright," she replied in a tone as nonchalant as she could muster considering the circumstances. "Just...not the one you're thinking of."
• Silence throbbed for several weighted beats, save for Emily's sharp inhalation. "Wait, what? Valerie Ashford, you did _not_ marry David!"
• It was such a quintessential Emily reaction that Valerie couldn't help the soft chuckle bubbling up her throat. Leave it to her brash, perpetually blunt confidante to articulate the catharsis Valerie herself repressed. With a few choice expletives aimed at her faithless former fiance, naturally.
• "Don't worry, I'm not that masochistic. And for the record, that 'prick' is currently shacked up with dear sweet Bianca as we speak." The words dripped with far more venom than Valerie intended, revealing the raw well of anger and hurt she harbored.
• Emily seemed to sense the shift in mood because when she spoke again, her voice lowered to a gentle murmur. "Oh Val...I'm so sorry, babe. When you said the wedding happened I just assumed...God, I can't even imagine what you're feeling right now. Come over tonight, we'll get completely trashed and curse both their miserable existences, okay? It's the least those douchebags deserve."