After Being Accused as a Mistress, I Married My Ex's Uncle novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Forty Percent

The Kirkbride Foundation held its charity lunch on Thursday, in the same ballroom where I had been slapped.

Declan said we had to go.

"Stanley will be seated in the middle," he said in the car. "If we stay home, it's a message."

"What's the message if we go?"

"That you're not afraid of the room."

I was afraid of the room.

I wore a dove-grey dress and my mother's pearls, and I kept my back so straight it hurt.

Our table was twelve feet from the second pillar.

Stanley sat across the room with Tabitha in green, and Hayden beside them poking at a salad.

Nobody said a word to us.

Two hundred people said a great deal with their eyes.

Under the table, Declan's hand settled on my knee.

It wasn't rule three.

Nobody could see it.

"Look at the stage," he murmured.

A woman was reading out a list of donors.

His thumb slid slowly along the inside of my knee.

I kept my face still.

He leaned toward me, and his mouth touched my ear.

"When we get home," Declan said, so low that I felt it more than I heard it, "I'm going to lay you across the table where I told you my rules, and put my mouth on your cunt until you can't remember them."

I stopped breathing.

"And then I'm going to fuck you hard enough that you feel it Monday."

My fork rang against the plate.

A woman across from us looked up and I smiled at her brightly.

"The donors," I said, in a voice that didn't sound like mine.

"Yes," Declan said pleasantly, and his thumb moved higher.

I do not remember the speeches.

I remember the walk to the car, which was forty steps, and the lift, which had a camera in the corner.

He didn't touch me once.

He stood a foot away with his hands in his pockets and looked straight ahead, and I could see the vein in his neck.

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