The Wife He Never Knew I Became novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The Ring on the Chain

At home Lena sets her terms: Holden judges Daniel's company straight and nobody learns who she is until she says it herself, and the next morning Mei calls to say Margaret Zhang is in the shop.

Holden was home before me, which never happened.

I found him in the kitchen with a fish on the cutting board and a knife in his hand, and he didn't look up.

"You're cooking," I said.

"I'm cooking."

"You cook when you want to hit someone."

"I cook when I'm hungry." He took the head off the fish in one stroke. "Sometimes both."

I put my bag on the counter and stood in the doorway in my wet coat.

Through the glass wall behind him the water was dark, and the city lit up on the other side of it.

"He asked my assistant if you were single," Holden said.

"Daniel?"

"On his way out. He thought she'd know." He laid the knife down. "She told him to ask you."

I laughed, and it came out wrong.

Holden looked up then. He had gray eyes, the gray of the sea off Prince Rupert where he grew up, and they missed nothing.

"Come here," he said.

I went.

He held me against his chest with his wrists out so he wouldn't get fish on my coat.

"I went to the auction," I said into his shirt.

"What?"

"Three years ago. I sat in the back row of a hotel conference room with three thousand dollars in my account."

He went still.

"A man in a gray suit bought it in four minutes. I had my hand halfway up. I don't know what I thought I was going to do with it."

"I saw your face this morning," he said. "When he said nobody else bid."

"You didn't look at my face once."

"I looked at it the whole time." He let me go and washed his hands. "Say the word and the meeting never happened. My team writes them a polite no tomorrow."

"No."

"Lena."

"You'd be doing it for me." I took my coat off and hung it on a stool. "Then I'm the woman who got her rich husband to sink her ex. Margaret would love that. That's her whole story about me, with a bigger number."

"So I lend them two hundred million dollars?"

"You send it to your committee like any other deal." I sat on the counter beside the sink. "And I don't sit in on another meeting about it, unless one of them asks for me by name."

"They won't."

"Then I won't."

"And when they find out who you are?"

"They don't."

He dried his hands slowly.

"Nobody finds out until I say it myself," I said. "Not you. Not Mei. Me. When I'm ready."

"You've been saying that for fourteen months."

"I know."

He didn't argue.

He never argued with that one, and I knew what it cost him.

He was a man who'd never hidden anything in his life, married to a woman who wore her wedding ring under her shirt.

He put rice on and seared the fish and made me eat half of it standing up.

He told me the story of the time his father's boat lost its engine off Haida Gwaii and the two of them rowed a dinghy to shore in the rain, and I laughed until I had to put my fork down.

Then he went quiet over the dishes.

"He looked at you like you were still his," he said.

"I'm not."

"I know you're not." He turned off the tap. "He doesn't."

He dried his hands and held one out. "Give it to me."

Every night at the front door he took my ring off the chain and put it on my finger.

Every morning I took it off and hid it again.

I'd forgotten tonight. I'd walked straight past the door to him.

I reached behind my neck, undid the clasp, and put the chain in his palm.

He slid the ring free.

He didn't put it on right away.

He held my hand and turned it over and kissed the inside of my wrist, where my pulse was, and then the base of my finger.

Then he pushed the ring on, slowly, all the way down.

"Whose is this?" he said.

"Yours."

"Not the ring."

"Me," I said. "I'm yours."

"Say it like you mean it."

I pulled him down by his shirt and kissed him, and I meant it.

He took my hand and led me up the stairs.

The bedroom was dark except for the city across the water.

He stopped me in the middle of the room and turned me to face the window.

"You stood in my boardroom for twenty minutes," he said. "While he talked to me like you weren't there."

His hand found the top button of my shirt and stayed there.

"And the whole time I was thinking about this."

His mouth found my neck just under my ear.

I let my head fall back against his chest.

"About undoing every button on that white shirt," he said. "While he was still in the room."

"You didn't look at me once."

"I was counting the seconds until I could get you alone."

He turned me around to face him.

The city lights put half his face in shadow.

The shaving cut was a dark line on his jaw.

I reached up and touched it with my thumb.

"You bled for me."

"I bled for a dull razor." He caught my wrist. "But I'd bleed for you too."

He pulled the clip from my hair and dropped it on the floor.

My hair fell around my shoulders.

He pushed his fingers into it and tilted my head back.

"Whose are you?"

"Yours."

"Say it again."

"Yours."

He kissed me then, hard, with his hand in my hair and his other hand working the buttons of my shirt.

He didn't rush.

He took each button like it belonged to him.

When my shirt hung open he pushed it off my arms and let it fall to the floor.

He unhooked my bra and pulled it away with one hand.

The air from the window was cool on my bare skin.

He stepped back and looked at me.

"Turn around," he said.

I turned to face the glass.

The city glittered across the black water.

Houses, towers, the bridge, all of it.

I could see us reflected in the window.

Me half-naked, him behind me, still fully dressed.

He pressed against my back.

I could feel him hard through his trousers.

"That's what he doesn't get to see," he said, his mouth at my ear. "You, like this. For me."

His hands came around and cupped my breasts.

I leaned back into him and closed my eyes.

"Look," he said. "Look at yourself."

I opened my eyes.

His thumbs circled my nipples, slow.

I watched myself arch into his hands.

"He thinks he can walk back into your life and pick you up where he dropped you," Holden said. "He doesn't know you spend your nights under me."

I moaned.

He pinched one nipple, just hard enough.

"Tell me what you want."

"You."

"Be specific."

I watched his hands in the glass, holding me, owning me.

"Your mouth," I said. "Your hands. Your cock. All of it."

He laughed, low, against my neck.

"That's my wife."

He turned me again and backed me toward the bed.

When my legs hit the frame he went to his knees.

He unbuttoned my jeans and pulled them down my legs, taking my socks with them.

I stepped out of them, naked now except for one thing.

He looked up at me.

The ring caught the light.

He took my left hand and turned it, watching the platinum gleam.

"He touched this hand today," he said. "When he gave you his card."

"Holden."

"I'm going to make sure it never remembers his."

He lifted my foot and set it on his shoulder.

Then he put his mouth on me.

I grabbed his hair.

He licked up my slit, once, slow, from bottom to top, and I almost came apart right there.

"Fuck," I whispered.

He did it again.

Then he flattened his tongue over my clit and pressed.

My knees buckled.

He caught my hips with both hands and held me up.

"You taste like you've been waiting all day for this."

"I have."

He slid two fingers inside me.

I cried out.

"Since you walked into that boardroom," he said. "Since you stood there with your flowers while he talked."

He curled his fingers and sucked my clit at the same time.

I couldn't think.

"Holden. Please."

"Please what?"

"Don't stop."

He didn't.

He worked me with his mouth and his fingers until I was shaking, until I was close, until my thighs were trembling against his shoulders.

Then he stopped and stood up.

I whined.

He caught my jaw with his wet fingers and made me look at him.

"You don't get to come yet."

"Why not?"

"Because when you come tonight, it's going to be on my cock."

He turned me and pushed me face down on the bed.

Then he pulled me up by the hips so I was on my knees.

I heard his belt.

His zipper.

The rustle of fabric as he pushed his trousers down.

Then his hand spread flat on my lower back, pressing me down into the mattress.

"Look out the window," he said.

I opened my eyes.

The city stared back at me.

"He's somewhere out there," Holden said. "In his glass office. Begging for money I don't have to give him."

He positioned himself at my entrance.

"And you're here. In my bed. Wearing my ring."

He pushed inside, one slow inch, and stopped.

I gasped.

"Soaking wet for me," he said. "Like you've been mine for years, not months."

He slid deeper.

I pushed back against him, frantic.

He grabbed my hip and held me still.

"Don't rush me."

He pulled out.

Then he slammed back in, to the hilt.

I screamed.

He did it again.

And again.

Each thrust shook the whole bed.

I gripped the sheets with both hands.

My ring scraped against the cotton.

"That's it," he said. "Take all of it."

I did.

He fucked me hard, deep, his hips slapping against my ass, one hand on my hip and the other pressing my shoulders down.

"You think he ever fucked you like this?"

"No."

"Say my name."

"Holden."

"Louder."

"Holden."

He reached around and found my clit.

I sobbed.

"Say it like you mean it."

"HOLDEN."

He pulled out, flipped me onto my back, and pushed my legs apart.

I looked up at him.

His shirt was still on, pushed up, his cock slick with me, his eyes dark.

"Look at me," he said.

He pushed inside me again.

I kept my eyes on his.

He set a slower pace this time, deep and deliberate, every inch.

"Whose ring is on your finger?"

"Yours."

"Whose name did you just scream?"

"Yours."

"Who's the only man who's ever going to be inside you again?"

"You."

He grabbed my left wrist and pinned it to the mattress beside my head.

The ring pressed into my skin.

His other hand cupped my ass and lifted me to meet his thrusts.

"He looked at you like you still belonged to him."

"I don't."

"Tell him."

"He's not here."

"Tell him anyway." He thrust hard, and I cried out. "Say it to the city. Say it to him. Say who you belong to now."

"I belong to you."

"Louder."

"I BELONG TO YOU."

He kissed me then, rough and claiming, his tongue in my mouth, his cock buried in me, his hand still pinning my ring hand to the bed.

I wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled him deeper.

"Don't stop," I said against his mouth. "Don't ever stop."

"I'm not stopping until you've forgotten your own name."

He drove into me faster.

I felt the buildup low in my belly, the heat climbing, the tightness.

My body knew what was coming.

I couldn't hold it.

"Let go," he said. "Let go for me."

I did.

The orgasm took me apart, ripped through me, left me shaking and screaming and clutching at his back.

He kept going.

Through it, past it, chasing his own release while I bucked under him.

"Fuck," he growled. "Lena."

His rhythm broke.

He slammed into me once, twice, three times more, and then he buried himself to the hilt and came with a groan torn from the back of his throat.

I felt him pulse inside me.

He collapsed onto his forearms, still inside me, his forehead against mine.

We lay there, breathing hard.

Then he pulled out and rolled onto his back, pulling me with him.

I settled against his chest.

His hand spread across my bare back.

The city lights came through the window and caught the ring on my finger where my hand rested on his stomach.

I looked at it.

"That's exactly where it belongs," he said.

I turned my face into his neck.

"Thank you," I whispered.

"For what?"

"For not asking me to prove it."

His fingers traced slow circles on my spine.

"I never needed proof," he said. "I needed you."

I closed my eyes.

The water was black below us.

The city blazed beyond the glass.

And for the first time since Daniel Zhang walked into that boardroom, I wasn't anyone's leftover.

I was exactly where I belonged.

"Mrs. Rutherford," Holden said into my hair, like a promise.

I fell asleep with his hand on my back and his name on my tongue.

I woke at eight to the smell of coffee and a phone buzzing on my nightstand.

The ring was still on my finger.

I slid it off, threaded it back on the chain, and fastened it under my collar before I answered.

"Lena." Mei was whispering, which Mei never did. "Margaret Zhang is in the shop."

I sat straight up in bed.

"She's standing at the counter in a fur collar," Mei said. "And Lena. She brought your bride."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend