HIS DOE, HIS DAMNATION (An Erotic Billionaire Romance) novel Chapter 129

Alaric’s POV:

“You told me the code the night I carried your drunk ass to your apartment, remember?”

That was a year ago. He had called that night begging for forgiveness, and was trying to punish himself. I found him at the bar and brought him to his house instead of taking him to our mother’s.

“And out of everything that just happened here, that’s the one question you’re worried about?” I breathed, arching a brow.

Nolan’s nostrils flared and he slammed me against the wall again. I only felt a slight pressure as my head hit the wall, but not the pain.

“Why did you do that?” he seethed.

He wasn’t hitting me.

Why wasn’t he hitting me? I wanted him to hit me.

“Do what? Call you out for being unfair to my wife?”

His jaw clenched. “You came all this way to give me trouble about being unfair to your wife? I don’t fucking buy it. You’ve never been here, and if you really wanted to fucking scold me for the things I said, you’d have already hit me a long time ago. And you certainly wouldn’t let me pin you to the wall.”

Well… he got me there.

“And I’m letting you hit me right now so why the fuck aren’t you hitting me?” I finally snapped.

Nolan’s eyes widened, and he stepped back, a look of confusion on his face. “Holy shit. You want me to hit you.”

“Don’t sound so surprised. You do the same thing all the fucking time,” I muttered, brushing off invisible lint from my suit jacket.

“Yeah. I do it because I want you to punish me. Why the hell would you want me to punish you, Ric? I thought getting married to Meadow was already the punishment you sentenced yourself to?”

I opened my mouth, about to fire back, when realization suddenly hit me.

The words he’d said to me two nights ago. He’d told me that the only reason he could come up with that explained why I got married to the woman whose father killed ours was that I was trying to punish myself.

Tilting my head, I asked, “You really think the only reason I married her is because I wanted to punish myself?”

“Am I fucking wrong to think that?” he muttered. “Why else would you subject yourself to the reminder of what happened? The reminder of the pain our father caused us, and then the pain HER father caused… Mutti.”

He stepped closer, his jaw clenching so hard I could see the vein in his forehead practically pop. “And why the fuck would you subject Meadow to that torture? How could you do that to her?”

My eyes widened in surprise? He was defending her? “I’m not with her for revenge,” I said firmly. “At first, I thought that was what I wanted. But then…” I heaved a sigh, walking toward the counter to lean forward. I rested my hand against the edge of the counter, my head hanging between my shoulder blades. “I felt her touch by accident. She came to the company and was waiting on that fucking retard who broke her heart and her hand grazed mine. I mean, I’d been watching her for months, but I didn’t think she would…”

Shaking my head, I continued. “I didn’t think it was even fucking possible. Not after Clarissa–who’s her fucking aunt, in case you didn’t know.”

I wasn’t sure Nolan knew that. He didn’t care about Clarissa enough to know that. He never did. It’s why it was easy to forgive him for sleeping with her in the first place. Clarissa, however, wanted to spite me because I wasn’t giving her as much attention as she wanted that period.

Nolan froze. “Wait, what?”

I looked up at him lazily. “Yeah, she is. But that’s not why I’m here.”

“About fucking time.”

Despite myself, a chuckle escaped my mouth. Nolan shrugged his jacket off, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed.

“That night, when you punched me, I felt it.”

A long moment passed where Nolan just stared at me blankly. And then I watched as his expression formed into a confused one, with his brows furrowing, and then one of shock–with his brows going high up.

“No fucking way,” he scoffed. “That couldn’t have fucking happened.”

“Exactly what I said,” I murmured. “Thought I was imagining things but I could’ve sworn that I felt it. It’s why I came here. To see if you could fucking hit me again.”

Nolan’s gaze narrowed. “You could’ve just asked me to touch you, man.”

“No,” I growled, pinching the bridge of my nose. “If I wanted a fucking touch, I’d ask my wife. I haven’t felt pain since I was fifteen years old, Nolan. And that night, I fucking did. So just… fucking hit m-”

The words were barely out of my mouth when my brother swung his arm and connected his fist to my jaw.

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