Married To The Mad Vampire Lord-Chapter 46: A soothing kiss_Part 2

Belle felt her throat turn suddenly dry as he regarded her with that his smiling face that was anything but warm. She had learned to accept that Rohan did not have any warm or tender expressions, and if it weren’t for his warm body, she would have thought he was a dead man completely incapable of living.

"Cat got your tongue, little bunny?" he snarled when she didn’t speak and looked as pale as a ghost. He bracketed her tiny waist in his large hands and pulled her dangerously close to him, where their bodies pressed, and he leaned down to her neck, grazing his lips against her damp skin until he reached her ear, where she stiffened.

"I can hear your heart beating so fast, it’s the rhythm of guilt, sweetheart. Why are you guilty? Are you keeping the stake to do something very, very bad, hmm?" he hummed, his lips so close to her ear his breath tickled her into moving her shoulder up as if to block the ticklish feeling and the sensation it brought.

"I don’t know what you are talking about. I—" she began to feign ignorance about the matter as she believed that was the only way to avoid revealing what she was not to say to anyone of his kind. She had been warned that if she gave the humans’ secrets away to anyone of the bloodsuckers, then she would be on her own, and the people of Aragonia would reject her as one of them and wash their hands of her. Those were her father’s strict warnings on the day of the wedding when he had come to speak to her alone.

However, she felt Rohan’s hand tighten around her waist, and he pulled her more into his body before she could finish speaking, but because of the layers under her dress, Belle did not feel what her presence did to his body.

"Don’t lie to me, little bunny, I can see right through you. You are not a good liar, your little heart gives you away so easily. What a traitor of a heart you have," he tsked as he loosened the lace of the dress slowly and let his other hand rest low on her hip.

"H-how can you judge my words through my heart?" Belle questioned, clenching her fingers against his damp front coat as she could not move from where he trapped her against his body with his hands moving in her back dress, making her more anxious about what he planned to do to get the truth out of her.

"Because I am a madman, like all of you think. I know the rhythm of the hearts, every beat gives away a person, and your heart, my dear, is telling me you know more about the things I found in your trunks. And if I don’t get an answer that fits with your little heart, I will just have to strip you down to nothing until I find something pleasing enough to make me distracted."

Belle’s eyes widened at his words. She pushed at his chest, but she might as well go and try to push a mountain because he did not budge even a little—he was a solid rock who was determined to make her give away words that would make her become a traitor to Aragonia, or strip her to nothing. She wasn’t ready for either!

"It’s not fair that you are trying to force me to speak about what I do not know about," Belle said while trying to get away from him, but he only smirked and leaned down towards her, his head coming so close to hers that she was forced to stop struggling or risk getting her lips grazed with his.

"Not fair?" he whispered softly, his breath fanning her lips from how close he was to her. "Nothing has ever been fair in this world, and nothing will ever be. So while I am being nice, Isa, I want you to tell me why you agreed to take your sister’s place and marry me when you already love Merchant. From your definition of love, I can tell you are still harboring those things you speak of, and it makes me all the more curious why you decided to be here, and with those things in your trunks. You don’t want to see me when I am not being nice, so start speaking," he moved back slightly and then yanked the lace of the dress with one tug that made it come loose at once, causing her to inhale sharply.

Rohan had seen the stake and the other things she kept. He wasn’t so foolish as not to know why a human would keep that in a vampire land because there had been a myth that said a stake to the chest turned a creature of the night into dust. Of course, it was just a myth, but he could not believe she would keep such things. He had been wondering why she would have them in her possession, which he had wanted to find out himself. He had asked her about love and led her to that ring so he could get his answers on why she was here.

If she loved this nobody so much, she would not take his expensive gifts—why did she fall into a marriage that wasn’t for her? He had gotten a version of an answer to that question, but he did not want to accept it and wanted to hear it from her first. Just because she was special from all the others and he’d taken her as his possession did not mean he wouldn’t lose his cool with her. One thing was for certain, though—he wouldn’t be able to kill her like he did those who became a threat to his life, but he would reshape her into a form that would make her never think of being like the others.

If she had been anybody else, her life would have been over in that garden, and since she was still alive even after breaking his plant, that meant he wouldn’t kill her for any other reason—only that the ways he might use to torture her might be too much for someone like her, which was why he was giving her a chance to speak and let him believe otherwise about what he was thinking was the answer.

Belle felt the back of her eyes burn as he brought his hand to her shoulder and began to slowly push her sleeve down. He was going to strip her naked, she thought in panic.

"Start talking, Isa. My patience runs out faster than a flame in a storm," he warned calmly as he worked his hand down along with her sleeve that slid down her shoulders to her arms. "Why did you accept this marriage?"

Belle knew she was walking on a thin thread across a flaming bridge. If she did not choose her words carefully and let her anxiousness of being naked in front of him make her reveal what she was not supposed to, then she was doomed on both paths. The people of Aragonia would pretend they did not know about the plans, and the vampires would either send her to their slave establishment to have babies they would sell, or she would get drained of blood by the devil in front of her.

All of the options were not something she wanted. Thus, there was only one easy way—to tell him a part of the truth since he claimed her heartbeat would give her away if she lied to him. Clenching her fists more tightly against the front of his coat so he wouldn’t be able to easily remove her hands from the sleeves of the dress before she finished talking, Belle looked down where his Adam’s apple was and began to speak.

"I agreed to take Eve’s place because I wanted Mama and Papa to be proud of me again. I want them to see me as their daughter..." she said in a small voice that was barely audible, but because of Rohan’s sharp hearing, he heard her like she had spoken it in a loud voice. He did not say anything and let her continue to speak.

"I hate the way they treat me differently from Eve and how disappointed they always were about me. I want to earn their love again, so what better way to do that than to step in and help their favorite daughter from marrying a man she did not want to marry? I did not think about my love for Jamie when I agreed until it was over..." She paused, ashamed that her eyes were burning so much that she could no longer hold in the tears that spilled out and rolled down her cheeks.

"You can choose to believe me or not, but I swear to you that I agreed to marry because I wanted them to be proud," she gritted out forcefully so her voice wouldn’t quiver and show that she was tearing up like a fool. It was the truth, she did not care so much if her mission failed for as long as her parents opened their arms to her and looked at her with warmth.

Rohan’s hands fell away from the sleeves of her dress and went down to rest on her hips, gripping them a little bit too tight for comfort. "Why do you want them to be proud of you when it doesn’t look like they deserve any of your sacrifices? Tell me, what makes you think they will ever like you when they never have?" He let his right hand slide up her spine to rest on the back of her neck.

"Because it was my fault that they stopped caring about me. Something happened when I was a kid that made them like me less..." Belle rested her forehead against his solid chest and blinked the tears out of her eyes. "I shouldn’t have wandered far away into the forest that day. I should have stayed where they would find me..."

"What do you mean?" Rohan asked, his other hand that was still on her hip tightening as a sudden tension seeped into his temple and made his body go rigid.