Chapter 154: A Welcome Defeat

ORION’S POV

I sweep into the foyer and head straight for the main living room, my eyes searching the furniture, but Adrien is not there.

The large television screen is dark and dead, the room quiet and still. I turn on my heel and hurry upstairs to his personal bedroom, knocking twice on the wood before pushing the door open.

He is not in his room either, though I notice a half-eaten slice of warm apple pie sitting on the small table near the armchair, a silver fork resting on the porcelain edge.

I instantly wish I had paused to ask the maid at the front door where he was, because now I am almost going mad from the suspense.

My skin feels electric, itching with an unbearable anticipation, and I was already completely unhinged before stepping inside this house.

Driven by a sudden, sharp instinct— a quiet thread pulling at my chest— I turn around and walk down the long, silent hallway toward my own master bedroom suite.

Something deep in my gut tells me this is where he will be.

I reach the heavy doors of my room. I turn the handle with deliberate slowness and step inside quietly.

Standing right in front of the large, framed portrait I painted and mounted over my fireplace, there he is.

He?

A stunning young woman with shoulder-length brown hair straightened into a neat, sharp bob, wearing a simple, elegant sundress, holding an expensive white designer handbag with white sunglasses pushed up over her hair stands there.

Oh...wow.

His lips are painted in a bold, glossy, blood-red lipstick. His brown eyes are outlined lightly with precise dark eyeliner, making his irises pop with breathtaking, dangerous intensity.

He wears a dress that clings to his frame, a white handbag slung over his wrist, and those white sunglasses resting atop his dark, shoulder-length hair.

My world halts entirely. The air leaves my lungs. Orion is gone.

I stand frozen in the doorway, holding the ridiculous flowers and chocolates, staring at her, staring at him, because this is my Adrien.

I stare at him for a few solid, breathless minutes, my eyes blinking in utter shock, my mind short-circuiting as it tries to process the sheer sight of him.

"Did you shave your legs?" I finally manage to ask, my voice sounding faint, raspy, and stripped of all its usual composure.

Adrien shifts his weight onto one leg with an effortless, breathtaking confidence, cocking his hip to the side and smirking right at me in his usual, razor-sharp, sassy manner.

"Wouldn’t you like to know, pretty boy?"

I look down at the heavy gifts cluttering my arms, then look back up at those painted red lips, my pulse racing out of control. I can’t speak.

He glances at the bright, chaotic petals resting against my chest, tilting his head slightly as he examines the bouquet. "Is it fucking Valentine’s Day or something? What’s with the flowers and the chocolates?"

"Did someone actually make that bouquet for you?" he asks, his tone laced with dry, teasing sarcasm, his voice carrying that familiar, intoxicating edge.

"Because what am I looking at? Some of those flowers are meant for celebrating a person’s life, or giving to someone on their wedding day. What exactly is going on here?"

A wild, breathy, helpless laugh bubbles up from deep inside my chest.

I am listening to the sharp, mocking words coming out of his mouth, but I am really not hearing them. My cognitive faculties have completely collapsed.

I am looking at him and wondering, how the fuck he is so captivating. How does he manage to look so impossibly beautiful without even trying?

Why the fuck is he dressed as a woman right now in the middle of my bedroom?

It slams me straight back into the sharp, vivid memory of the very first time I found him again after he ran seven years ago. The beginning of all of this.

My mind flashes to that private room at the very beginning of our reunion, where he was cross-dressing for some reason or the other, hiding his true identity under layers of makeup and wigs.

I remember that frantic night when I too put on a messy brown wig and fake green contacts. I remember cornering him, holding his wrists, and forcing his small hand onto the grip of a cold gun, and pulling the trigger into a corpse.

Ah. The good times.

I adjust the heavy packs of chocolates in my right hand, raising my free left index finger to point directly at my own chest.

"Should I cross-dress too?" I ask, my voice trembling with an eager, pathetic fascination. "To make a memory?"

Adrien blinks at me, his sharp, dark brows pulling together in genuine disbelief. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I want to cross-dress too," I tell him earnestly, my posture slumping slightly as I take an eager step further into the room. "So it can be like what you are doing. Like we are reenacting how we met again after those seven long years. I can get a wig. I can put on contacts too."

Adrien stares at me for a long, silent second, processing the sheer, unhinged absurdity of my suggestion, and then he suddenly bursts into a laugh.

It is a rich, bright, genuine sound that echoes off the high ceilings of my bedroom. I am instantly captivated all over again, my heart hammering against my ribs so violently it feels painful.

The sight of him laughing so freely in my private sanctuary wipes away every trace of dark thoughts in my head.

He turns away from the fireplace and begins walking toward me.

I watch every single movement of his body, utterly mesmerized as he perfectly emulates the graceful, accentuating, rhythmic sway of a woman’s hips. His steps are light, calculated, and terrifyingly sensual.

He stops right in front of me, so close I can feel the warmth radiating off his skin. He reaches out with smooth, unhesitating grace to take the massive bouquet of wild flowers directly out of my hands.

He takes the heavy packs of chocolates from my arm as well, turning slightly to set them down on the nearest side table without ever breaking eye contact with me.

"Well," he purrs softly, looking back at me with his chin tilted up. "Since these are for me, I’m going to be keeping them."

He lifts one slender hand and touches the front of my tailored suit jacket.

To my overwhelming surprise, he has fixed long, acrylic faux nails onto his fingers. They are painted a rich, glossy blood-red, sharp and pointed like the thin, dangerous heels of a stiletto shoe.

He slowly trails those sharp red tips down the center of my dark chest, dragging them over my tie, my lapel, and my suit buttons with an agonizing, deliberate, sensual pressure that turns my blood to liquid fire.

"I want to go out," Adrien says, his voice low and utterly commanding as his sharp nails rest lightly against my sternum, right over my pounding heart.

"And I don’t want people staring at me. I’m not going to sit back at home and wait like a little kid just because of some stupid rumor or scandal on the news."

He tilts his head up further, his dark, lined eyes fixing mine with an intense, burning, unyielding defiance that takes my breath away.

"Yeah, so what if the news says I was a prostitute?" he continues, his bold red lips curving into a dangerous, intoxicating, beautiful smile. "That was years ago. I’m a married man now."

My breath catches entirely in my throat. My vision swims. I swoon right where I stand.

Adrien honestly has no idea what he just admitted to. He doesn’t realize the sacred gravity of those simple words coming out of his mouth.

He thinks he is just making a sharp point, just flexing his defiance against the world that tries to shame him.

But to me, in this exact, frozen moment, Adrien might as well have been the person to put the platinum ring on my finger himself.

He just claimed our marriage. He just claimed me. He called himself a married man.

He called me his.

He lightly taps my chest with one blood-red nail, stepping back with that effortless, intoxicating sway of his hips.

"Now dress up and meet me outside in ten minutes," he orders, his dark eyes flashing with undisputed victory. "We’re going on a date. And if you take more than ten minutes, pretty boy, I’m leaving without you."

He glides past me, the light, soft hem of his sundress brushing against my trousers, the subtle scent of his perfume lingering in the air, and walks straight out the bedroom door without looking back.

The door remains slightly open behind him, letting in the quiet ambient light of the hallway.

I stand completely frozen in the middle of the room for two full, silent minutes. My eyes are locked onto the empty doorway, my mind spinning out of its orbit, my entire body humming with a dizzying, electric shock.

Then, my knees simply give out.

I crumple heavily to the floor, my knees hitting the soft rug with a dull thud, and drag both hands down my face with a low, desperate groan that resonates through the quiet room.

I am so incredibly turned on, so utterly, pathetically whipped, that it feels genuinely unfair.

He didn’t just survive the scandal that was meant to break him. He didn’t just dismiss the filth the media threw at his name.

He turned it into a weapon, dressed himself up, and delivered a devastating, crushing blow straight to a place in my soul I didn’t even know existed.

He has me. He has always had me, but now he knows it, and he is using it to crush me into the ground.

I lie there on the cold rug for a long moment, defeated, overwhelmed, breathing in the scent of flowers and his perfume, completely and joyfully conquered by my husband’s daring victory.