All Chapters of bound by deception: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Chapter TenIrabella's POVI stood in front of my mirror and thought about Isabella's smile when she said Derek is coming to dinner.That cruel little curve of her mouth. So satisfied. So certain she'd already won.My wolf had been pacing since Monday. Up and down, up and down, restless and agitated at the idea of sitting across a dinner table from a stranger while the man who was supposed to be mine sat beside my sister and cut his food and pretended everything was fine.I watched myself in the mirror.This has to stop.She stole him from me. She threw herself down a flight of stairs and she took my mate and I stood there and let her because I thought that was what you did. You let people take things. You stay quiet. You disappear.Five years of disappearing.Five years and I came back and I was still doing it. Still shrinking. Still wearing perfume that erased me and sitting in the chair furthest from him and smiling until my face hurt while Isabella ran the table.My fists closed a

His hands gripped my waist harder.No warning. No hesitation.He yanked me sideways—one sharp, brutal motion—and the world tilted. My shoulder hit the doorframe of the guest suite at the end of the hall. He shoved me inside. The door clicked shut behind us, sealing us in darkness so thick I could feel it pressing against my skin.Our mouths didn't stop.Not for a second.Not even when the dark swallowed us whole.His kiss was hard. Intense. Demanding everything I had and everything I hadn't decided to give yet. He kissed me like he was angry about it—like wanting me this badly was something he resented and couldn't stop anyway. His lips crashed into mine, teeth catching my bottom lip, tongue pushing past any resistance I might have pretended to have.I didn't resist.God help me, I didn't.He backed me against the wall. The cold surface hit my spine and I gasped into his mouth—but his lips followed me, not letting the sound escape, swallowing it like it belonged to him. His mouth left

His hand found my thigh under the table.I didn't flinch. Didn't blink. Kept my eyes on Derek across the table, kept the polite curve on my lips, kept breathing through my nose like my whole body hadn't just caught fire from the inside out.His palm slid higher.Slow. Deliberate. Like he had all night.The wolf in him was jumping — I could feel it in the pressure of his grip, feral and barely leashed, fingers spreading wide against my skin like he was claiming territory he'd already decided was his. My pussy tingled the moment he touched me. Not a flutter. A wildfire — igniting somewhere deep, somewhere I couldn't press down or breathe away, spreading heat up through my stomach and into my throat.I reached for my wine glass.Damien's face remained motionless beside me. A predator's calm mask. Elbow on the armrest, jaw relaxed, eyes forward — like he was listening to Derek's story about the quarterly numbers, like his hand wasn't currently sliding up the inside of my thigh at a dinner

CHAPTER THREE — "Wrong Name"He came home and the room was perfect.I'd made sure of it.Two hours. Every detail. The petals spread across white sheets, the lamp turned low, the perfume I knew he'd smell the moment he stepped through the door. The red lingerie that cost more than most people's rent, cut exactly the way it needed to be cut.I was ready.I was always ready.That was the problem nobody talked about — how exhausting it was to be always ready. To maintain the performance every single day inside your own marriage. To wake up and calculate and arrange and present and then lie next to a man who slept with his back to you like you were furniture.Five years.He pushed the bedroom door open and stopped.Looked at me.His face did nothing.That face. I had memorized every line of it, every tell, every micro-expression that most people missed — and I was watching for something. Anything. A flicker. A shift behind the eyes.Nothing."Isa." Flat. My name in his mouth like a fact he

CHAPTER FIVE — "Scalded"They were taking too long.I stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked up and the hallway was quiet and the door was closed and I told myself it was nothing — they were sleeping, it was early, people slept — and then I went up anyway because there were things that needed handling and the day didn't wait because someone decided to sleep in.I knocked once.Nothing.I pushed the door open two inches and got the answer to a question I hadn't let myself ask.The bed. Both of them. Sheets tangled beyond recovery, Isa's arm locked across his chest like even unconscious she was making a point, her hair spread everywhere, her face pressed into his throat. Daemon on his back. Eyes closed. Jaw loose in the only unguarded version of his face I'd ever seen and hadn't been meant to see.I pulled the door closed.Quietly. Carefully. Like I was the one who'd done something wrong.The kitchen was cold.I filled the kettle and set it on and stood at the counter and looked a