Under His Rule (Dark Romance Suspense)

by Clarissa Wild

She almost bursts right then and there, and I have to admit it looks amazing. My eyes can’t help but gorge themselves on her ripped dress and those tits that beg to be released underneath that push-up bra. I wish I’d ripped it off in the fields too.

  My peeking is cut short by her immediately grasping the shreds of the dress and pulling them together. “Stop looking at me like you want to eat me up,” she says.

  I shrug. “I’m sorry, but I do.”

  “Control your urges then,” she says.

  I step closer. “Why? Give me one good reason.”

  “Because I’m not your personal plaything,” she answers as I stand right before her. “I’m a human with feelings, with needs, wants, and wishes. You want me to be your wife? Then be a proper husband.”

  “It’s amusing to me that you think you know the rules of our Family,” I reply, and I put a single finger underneath her chin. “Make no mistake … I may be your husband, but I am still your patriarch, and you will do exactly as I say.”

  “Over my dead body,” she hisses back.

  My eyes twitch. I both hate and love her tenacity.

  “You think you’re the only one who can play games? Wrong,” she says. “I’m not going to be easy. I’m not going to be quiet. I’ll never be the good wife you so desperately seek.”

  “I’m not asking you to be,” I reply, caressing her cheeks. “I simply want you to behave. And speaking with that woman is the opposite of that.”

  Her face darkens. “You’re afraid of her, aren’t you?” She slaps away my hand. “She knows what you did, and you don’t want the others to know.”

  “What she did is what any mother would do for a child.”

  Her eyes widen. “So she is my mother.”

  I close my eyes and sigh. I wish I didn’t have to admit it.

  “C’mon, give me something, anything to work with. I can’t do this without information, Noah. I need the truth,” she says, playing at my heartstrings.

  I pinch my forehead. “Fine. Yes, she is your mother.”

  “And you knew all this time and didn’t tell me,” she says.

  “If I’d told you, you would’ve gotten hurt,” I say.

  “She’s my mother! I deserved to know.” She points at me. “You kept me away from her on purpose.” She taps the side of her head near her sleep. “You made me think I was losing my mind.”

  I close the gap between us. “I did it to keep you safe. Knowing this information only puts you and your mother in danger. Don’t you understand? The other patriarchs aren’t as forgiving as I am. They’d do far worse things to you than I ever could.”

  She puts on some attitude. “Oh, like putting me in that suffering hut?” she retorts.

  “No,” I say, leaning in so I can whisper. “They’d cut off your head.”

  It’s true that the patriarchs employ cruel punishments for those who don’t obey. And I’m sure they’d cut off the head of any random girl who would defy them.

  But she isn’t any random girl … She’s the daughter of a matriarch. And if they find out I’ve found her, a riot of epic proportions will break out.

  I don’t want them finding out about her yet. Not until she’s completely on my side … and pregnant. Then and only then will we be able to survive this unscathed and come out on top.

  Her eyes have turned completely cold. Her body trembles in place.

  “What do you think happened to the guard who tried to touch you?” I ask, tipping up her chin. “Or the elder wife who hurt you in ways I never thought would happen? You never saw them again, did you? They never walked around the premise, never came to any of the breakfasts or lunches, never attended any of the events. Now you know why.”

  Her lips quivers. “So that’s how you uphold the rules …?”

  I release her from my grip and walk away. I don’t enjoy seeing her in pain … like she’s terrified of us. Of me.

  “This is the price of our community,” I say. “The price of perfection.”

  “Perfection? People are forced to do things they don’t want to,” she rebukes.

  “The people out there follow us willingly,” I say, looking at the window. “They know the rules, and they live by them. We didn’t force them to do anything. They chose us to lead them a long time ago.”

  “Not me. I didn’t choose any of this, and neither did my mother,” she spits back.

  Marsha told her more than I anticipated. Interesting.

  “What else did she tell you?” I ask.

  She looks like she’s about to break. “My father … Is it the president?”

  I hesitate to tell her. I wish it wasn’t true, wish I could erase his mere existence from her mind. But I nod instead.

  She sinks to the floor. “No, no, no, no, no!”

  She covers her face with her hands and buries herself in the remainder of her dress. “No, not him, anyone but him.”

  “It’s the truth, Natalie. He’s your father, whether you want it to be true or not.”

  “I’m nothing like him, nothing!” she yells, looking up at me with eyes that almost spit fire.

  “You can want that to be true, but you are his daughter, and you were born here.”

  “So what? That doesn’t mean I belong here,” she claps back.

  “We’re betrothed. You’re my wife. You belong here now more than ever,” I reply.

  “This community is wrong, and the Family is vicious. I want no part in it,” she says, averting her eyes.

  I come closer and go to my knees in front of her, and I grab her face. “You know what I see when I look at you? Your mother. Not your father.” When I say this, her face lights up just a tiny bit. “I see the same free spirit, the same tenacity, the same will. And I see potential.”

  She shakes me off. “All you see is a birthing machine.”

  “That’s what you tell yourself so you can keep living your fantasy of escaping this place,” I say. “It’s not happening, Natalie. You’re my wife now, and with my guidance, you’ll become a queen. You were born for this.”

  “No,” she says, shaking her head. “I don’t want any of this. I never asked for this.”

  “We don’t always decide our own fate, Natalie,” I say.

  “All I wanted was to find my mother. That’s it. I recognized your tattoo from my scarf because it was her scarf. Because she draped it around my neck the day she pushed me to that hut where you were preparing that giant suitcase. She saved me. Not you,” she spits.

  “It was my idea, my plan, and I was the one who gave you the freedom,” I say. “But I can take it away again all the same.”

  “You already did,” she hisses back, and she stomps off out of her room.

  I contemplate following her, but I doubt I can reason with her right now. She’s upset and rightfully so. What she just found out would shake me to my core too if I was in her shoes. I thought the least she would do was to try to kill me, but maybe I misjudged her hatred for me. Maybe she’s more attached to me than I thought … and that’s killing her now.

  I groan to myself and rub my forehead, trying to wrap my head around all of this. I never intended for her to find out that the president is her father this soon. If she goes to talk to him, all my plans could be foiled, especially if he sides with her over me. I have to make sure that doesn’t happen.

  She has to get on my side; it’s the only way to make this work. And there’s only one road to conquering Natalie’s heart … Her mother.

  I immediately waltz to Marsha’s room and burst in uninvited.

  “You son of a bitch.”

  My sudden entrance doesn’t go unnoticed. Good. “We had an agreement. You knew everything that would happen, and you didn’t fucking commit!”

  She stares at me with a sour look on her face. “I changed my fucking mind.”

  I normally never swear, and neither does she, but for this occasion, we’re making an exception. It’s worth it.

  She marches straight for me and pushes my chest. �
��This place is no good for her, and you know it. How could you bring her back here?”

  “This was our deal,” I say. “You knew the minute you surrendered her to me that this was going to happen.”

  She folds her arms. “I thought things would be different by now.” Her face darkens. “I would rather burn in hell than let you keep her here.”

  After all these years, this is how she still views us.

  Even when she herself fell for the president’s charms when he took her a long time ago, she’d still berate us for trying to do the same.

  “Change takes time,” I hiss back. “You intervened. You talked with her without my permission. You put everything I hope to achieve at risk.”

  “Permission to talk to my daughter? From you?” she scoffs. “You have balls, Noah.”

  “A deal is a deal, Marsha,” I say through gritted teeth. “You can’t just go back on your end.”

  “I don’t believe you anymore,” she says. “My daughter was innocent, and you brought her into a world she’s not prepared for. Nothing will ever change.”

  My fist balls. She has no fucking clue, yet she jeopardized everything. “You know what? I bet you thought after I freed her, I would let her stay there. That she wouldn’t attempt to seek you out and that I wouldn’t find her. Well, you were wrong about both of us.”

  “She was looking for me, not you,” she claps back. “You wouldn’t recognize a mother’s love if it was staring right at you.”

  A mother’s love … how dare she speak of my mother …

  Rage overtakes me, and I slap her in the face.

  She covers her cheeks, which turn red instantly, and I immediately regret my decision, lowering my hand.

  “I …”

  “You’re a bastard,” she says, eyes filled with tears. “Get out.”

  I take a step back and swallow hard. She pushed me to the brink, making me question my choices and even the love my own mother had for me … and now I’ve gone too far.

  I slapped the mother of my wife, the woman who is married to the president … that same man who could have me killed for touching her.

  I shake my head and stumble backward. “I’m sorry.”

  “GET OUT!” she screams.

  And I do, for my own sake … and hers.

  Because if the president finds out someone else was in her room and touched her … he’ll hurt her too.

  Chapter 28

  Natalie

  I waltz through the property, but I can’t escape the guards. They follow me wherever I go and don’t give me a second to breathe.

  I spin on my heels. “Leave me alone!” I yell at them.

  They don’t even seem to notice, let alone act.

  When I continue walking, they do too.

  How long will this go on? How much further will Noah go to keep me under his thumb?

  He dragged me away from my mother when I’d finally found her. I tried so hard to speak with her, and now I can’t. Whenever I try to get close to her room, the guards block my path.

  “Get out of my way,” I hiss at them.

  “We cannot,” one of them replies. “Patriarch’s orders.”

  “Well, I’m his wife, and I command you to step aside,” I growl.

  “Patriarch’s orders are above those of a matriarch,” he replies.

  I grunt out loud and march in the opposite direction, furious at this constant stalking. I’m not a child who needs to be kept from dangerous things. I don’t need to be contained to my room. I don’t need anything except peace of mind and freedom.

  What I wouldn’t give for the latter …

  But Noah is dead set on keeping me here, and it doesn’t seem likely that he’ll ever budge. I should’ve never assumed that I could worm my way into his heart and make him do the right thing. He’ll never give me what I want because I’m part of his “plan,” whatever that means. He says I’m so important, yet he won’t share any information. What am I supposed to do with that? Sit back and let it all happen?

  Annoyed, I go back to my room and slam the door shut in the guards’ faces. I pound on it again with my fist for good measures and hopefully to scare them just a little bit. I don’t have any power, but at least I can do that.

  I go to the barred window and look outside. There are far more guards out there than usual, probably because of me and my mother escaping the temple. Two matriarchs fleeing the Holy Land? That’ll surely put a dent in people’s faiths, which I’m sure the patriarchs would like to avoid at all cost. They’ll nip any resistance in the bud within a second.

  Which is why I’m so confused about what Noah’s doing. Why would he get me out of here only to bring me back in when I’m much older? Why would anyone go through that trouble? Unless he changed his mind about letting me go …

  But why? Is it because of my father, the president?

  Just thinking about him as my father makes me cringe and shiver.

  The president … the most powerful man in this community … created me.

  The same man who rules this monstrous place.

  My father.

  I refuse to acknowledge it.

  Even if it’s true, I’ll never once call him my father.

  Does he even know? Does he know I’m his daughter, or did Noah not tell him? Did he know my mother and Noah schemed together to get me out? Probably not.

  No wonder Noah wanted to keep me and my mother separated.

  I sit down on my bed and take a few seconds to breathe. My lungs feel constricted, and my heart is racing from all the information swirling in my head. It’s all becoming a bit too much.

  Standing up, I take off my dress and tear off my bra and anything left between, chucking it all into the corner of the room. Naked, I stand in front of the mirror and look at my body and at the scar that rests near my belly. My hand glides over the not so smooth skin, and it erupts into goose bumps. To think this scar was the result of love … and that it wounded me so much. Not just my body but my soul too. And now a man wants to claim my body as though it could do all of that all over again?

  No way. I feel sick. So sick that I run to the toilet and throw myself down just in time before I hurl. After I’ve flushed, I wash my mouth and hands in the sink and stare at the woman in the mirror. I thought I knew that woman, but the longer I look, the more I feel a stranger is staring back at me.

  My body tenses and cramps up, and I hold my belly as I sit down on the toilet and wait until it passes. I feel as though someone’s trying to rip into me, and I feel so dizzy all of the sudden. What’s happening to me?

  I open the tiny wall closet, hoping to find medicine, but there’s only one bottle of painkillers, and it contains a single pill. Lucky me. I pop it and swallow it down without water. But something else in that closet catches my eye, and I can’t tear them away.

  A pregnancy test.

  I swallow again and contemplate closing the door and pretending I never saw it, but I did. And a part of me wonders …

  I grab it, pull it out of the box, and take off the plastic. Then I sit down on the toilet and look at it for a few seconds. Oh, what the heck. It’s not as if I’ll lose anything from not knowing.

  Besides, my panties were already ripped off while I was in the grass, so I’m already halfway there.

  With spread legs, I push the stick underneath and pee on it.

  Then the waiting begins.

  I bite my lips as I tightly clutch the stick.

  How long does it take? Seconds? Minutes?

  Time is ticking, and so is my heart because the last time I did this, I wasn’t prepared … but now, I’m even more unprepared.

  Because when that stick turns bright blue … two lines … my heart sinks into my shoes.

  No, no, no, no!

  I can’t be … pregnant?

  How?

  When?

  Then it dawns on me … that time with Noah in the Jacuzzi.

  The stick drops from my hands, and I immediately run out of the
bathroom and shut the door behind me, staring at the wood as if the devil himself is behind those walls.

  Thud. Thud.

  “Natalie?”

  It’s Noah.

  Shit.

  “Natalie? I know you’re in there. We need to talk,” he says.

  “Wait,” I mutter as I hastily put on a new outfit. All they have in the closet are dresses, so I have to make do with a black flowery one.

  “I’m coming in,” Noah says.

  The door opens before I have a chance to answer, and I’ve only just zipped up my dress. The guards have gone, and I assume Noah told them to leave. Typical.

  Still, I’m quaking on my feet when I come face to face with the man who is supposed to be my husband … and now the father of my child too.

  No, I can’t think like that. Maybe that stick showed something in error. That happens, right?

  “I—” He’s already opened his mouth and was about to say something, but then he stops. “You look beautiful.”

  The sheer honesty in the way he says it brings a flush to my cheeks.

  I shouldn’t let him get to me like that, but it’s hard in a place like this … And with a man who can so easily spin my heart around his finger.

  But I can’t allow him to just wriggle his way back in.

  “Look, I wanted to apologize for—”

  “Don’t,” I interject, raising my finger. No matter how good the apologies sound, they’re void if he doesn’t mean it. “You’re not sorry for what you did; you’re mad I managed to escape and that you got caught in a lie.”

  “I didn’t want it to be like this. I don’t want to hurt you,” he says. “I only wanted to protect you.”

  “By keeping me away from my mother?” I hiss.

  His face turns dark. “I did it for your own good.”

  Always the lies … so many lies …

  I push the tears back. “No, you did it so I wouldn’t talk to my father about your dirty plans.”

  Noah’s eyes suddenly widen, and I know I have him.

  “He doesn’t know I’m his daughter, does he?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer, which is all I need to know the truth.

  “I knew it,” I growl, and I immediately barge at him.