Married To The Mad Vampire Lord-Chapter 44: The feeling of love

"Don’t tell me you are still thinking of having this scrap, Isa?" Rohan questioned with an arched brow as he saw her eyes looking at the ring longingly. Wasn’t the expensive jewelry he got for her enough to make up for this excuse of a ring?

He’d heard women liked expensive and shiny things, and he had gone out of his way last night after leaving her to make the arrangements to get all sets of jewelries and dresses. Being the Duke of Nightbrook and the so-called mad vampire, every merchant and shop owner would drop everything to attend to him. He had used that to his advantage, acquiring every expensive thing he thought would suit her, things that would make her look the way he had envisioned since the day he first set eyes on her and claimed her as his on their wedding day.

Many of the dresses he burned to make fire this morning did not look like something a lady should keep in her possession. Most of them were old, and he’d enjoyed burning them. Yet she did not look at the things he got for her with the eyes she was using to look at this useless ring.

When Rohan went out of his way to do something, not that he could recall the last time he had done so for anyone, but when he did, he expected to be appreciated. Yet, it seemed his little wife did not want what he had gotten for her, but rather what had been given to her by another man. It seemed he would really need to get the head of her merchant before she would forget him and all the cheap things he gave her. frёeωebɳovel.com

Belle looked away from the ring and turned her eyes on her husband, who did not seem to know the value of love tokens. She did not lie to him when she parted her lips to say, "Yes. I want it back," she said with a hopeful note in her voice, hoping he would let her take it back.

Belle saw his eyes flick briefly to hers, but they never focused on her eyes and went back to the middle of her head as he tilted his head to the side and questioned, "Why do you want it back? It’s not like it’s expensive or has any value. It belongs right where it is lying now."

"It has all the value in the world to me, my Lord..." she muttered, trying not to show that she hated how he kept insulting something dear to her. The more he insulted it, the more she wanted to hit his handsome face with her wet shoes. The necklace he had put around her neck was already itching her wet skin, and she couldn’t wait to take it off. She longed for the light weight of the chain and its familiar feeling around her finger when she gripped it.

"Why?" She heard him ask her like he did not understand why she valued the plain ring so much. But before she could form a reply, he said, "Is it because Merchant gave it to you?" He narrowed his eyes dangerously at her.

Belle did not answer as she feared he might threaten to go to Aragonia to hurt Jamie like he had threatened last night. She had already hurt Jamie by agreeing to come to Nightbrook in Eve’s place to marry the mad vampire and spy for the humans. She would not hurt him more by giving her vampire husband another reason to hunt him down—because she believed he would with that look in his eyes.

"I don’t want the ring anymore," she lied just so he would stop regarding her with that studying expression and let them walk away from it so she could come back later for it. Now wasn’t the right time to pick it up. But unfortunately, Rohan did not move from where he stood. Instead, he sighed in a way one does when they give up on trying to figure out something complicated.

"What is it like?" His words were so low she barely caught them as he tucked his hands inside his pockets and continued to stare at her. "Explain to me what love feels like, Isa. I want to understand why it makes one value something like this," he glared in disgust at the ring and then looked back at her patiently.

Rohan waited, his dark eyes burning, for her to explain the mysteries of this part of the world, which he did not understand and was not capable of feeling. His parents had always said they loved him, and everyone believed it. But their love had never felt the way she made it seem, cherishing something given in the name of love. It had been something else, something that left him detached rather than warm, something that overwhelmed him and made him want to erase every trace of them and anything that has to do with them. Yet here she was, holding on to what was given to her in the name of love.

"It is the most divine thing imaginable," she tried to explain.

"I don’t want to hear about divinity. I want to hear about flesh and bone. Is love like the need to fuck?" he demanded with a deep frown and a serious face.

Belle flushed as she realized he had used that foreign word she knew was something crude, a respectable lady was not to know it. And as if realizing she did not understand what he compared the feeling of love to, he rephrased it in a way that was no less crude than the first one.

"Is it like the feeling you had last night when my finger was inside you, when you came undone? Is the feeling of love like that?" he questioned bluntly and shamelessly, causing her face to heat up in embarrassment. The feeling to disappear and drop the topic entirely consumed her so intensely she wished she could take back time and tell him she had not enjoyed what he did to her last night.

Couldn’t he at least have a sense of respect for a lady?! She swallowed hard as his eyes bored down at her impatiently. She knew she wouldn’t escape this unless she gave him an answer.

"Answer me, Isa. Is love like carnal desire?"

Sweat trickled down Belle’s back, despite the wetness of her dress and the light breeze in the garden. The trouble with Rohan’s questions was that he asked the unanswerable—things even she did not have a clear answer to. And yet she should know how to answer. Everyone should. But they couldn’t, because everyone simply knew the feeling of love. Everyone except Rohan.

Her love for Jamie had nothing to do with the feeling she had last night after what Rohan did. She’d never felt that way in all her life, and yet she knew if Jamie had done that to her, she might have felt it, only Jamie was a gentleman who would never do that to his woman.

"No..." she said slowly. "Love is something entirely different. It’s love for another’s presence, but also love for their heart and their mind, and for all the silly things they do, no matter how absurd. Your world brightens when they walk into a room, dims when they leave it again. You want to be with the beloved so you can see him and touch him and hear his voice, but you want his happiness as well. Your heart beats faster when they are near and slowed when they are not..."

"So it all has to do with the heart. No wonder I don’t know it. I only know the need to want," came Rohan’s voice, his eyes seemingly lost for a moment before they came back to her again, dark and dragging over her, like a predator sizing up his next meal. The intensity made her uncomfortable, and she subconsciously peeked her tongue out to wet her lips. His gaze lingered on her parted lips. Then, with a slow blink, he added, "And right now, you’re the only woman I want to keep and bed, Isa."

His voice was toneless and void of emotion, but the crude honesty of his words sent a shiver down her spine and made her look away from him. Right now, he was the last person she wanted to be with, he was too straightforward and crude for her innocent soul, and she feared that if he continued like this, her treacherous body might continue to betray her. Does one’s lack of a heart make them shameless, or was it just Rohan’s way?

Curious, she bit her lower lip and then released it before she asked, "W-when you don’t want a woman, you feel nothing for her?"

"Not a thing. When I don’t desire her, she will not live to see the next day if she comes close to me," he said with a nonchalant shrug and a cold grin that suddenly unsettled Belle, making her press her lips shut. She decided not to ask him anything again and pretend he had not said he wanted to bed her—and that if he did not want her in such a way, she wouldn’t live to see the next day. Should she be happy that he desired her like this or worried that the moment his want faded, so would her life?

Why would he even desire a woman like her to begin with? Were his harem of whores not enough to keep him busy? Furthermore, her instructor in Aragonia had not prepared her for this part of life in Nightbrook. She had only been taught to be discreet and subtle in her spying, to study without revealing it, and to maintain a keen interest in everything about the night creatures. No one had told her that she would become her husband’s next target—to want to... to bed.

"Shall we?" he said, motioning for her to walk forward, causing her face to fall as she had for a moment believed that he would let her have the ring after he asked her what love felt like. But she had hoped too much of a man like Rohan. She dejectedly walked forward after looking at the ring one last time.

They did not speak again as they walked back into the castle. She had thought Rohan would stop following her when they got into the castle, but he followed her up the long flight of stairs and into her chamber, where he closed the door behind him when they entered, causing her heart to miss a beat and her head to swing around in alarm.

Why did he follow her into the room and even lock the door? Belle wondered in dread.