Chapter 709
A suffocating heaviness suddenly seized Sienna’s chest.
That pressure quickly morphed into a violently irritable heat bubbling up from the pit of her stomach.
It scorched her, making her thoroughly uncomfortable and intensely agitated.
Stripped of whatever patience she had left, she turned her head, her eyes icing over with pure mockery.
“Jarred, don’t play this obsessive, forced-affection game with me. You know better than anyone that I despise being coerced.
“We made an explicit agreement. If you insist on acting like a tyrant and having your way, the only one who will regret it in the end is you p>
She knew him far too well.
Ruthless, stubborn, entirely domineering—if pushed to the brink, it would only end in mutual destruction.
But the moment the words left her mouth, the man beside her moved.
And then, she was swiftly flipped onto her back.
Jarred hovered above her, bracing his arms on either side of her body.
Trapping her entirely between the mattress and his imposing frame.
He narrowed his eyes at her, a faint trace of a smile bleeding into his feverish gaze as his raspy voice ground out from the depths of his throat.
“You’re right p>
He lowered his head, his burning nose grazing her temple, his hot breath fanning across her brow.
His fever-laced breaths were agonizingly hot and heavy.
They brushed against Sienna’s skin, the sheer heat causing the tips of her ears to flush an uncontrollable pink.
Sienna’s breath hitched.
She stared at the striking face hovering mere inches from hers.
His cheekbones still held the flush of a low fever, but some color had returned to his lips.
The corners of his mouth tipped up, forming a lazy, terrifyingly certain smirk.
His gaze dragged over her from head to toe, consuming every inch of her.
Like a man obsessively verifying that a priceless treasure he thought he’d lost forever was completely intact.
“Sienna p>
He murmured her name softly, his burning fingers trailing agonizingly slow down her jawline.
His thumb rubbed against the thin, sensitive skin right below her earlobe.
“Did you decide it was me from the very first moment you laid eyes on me p>
The faint AC in the room was completely overpowered by the intense, radiating heat of the man’s body.
Jarred hovered rigidly above her, his chest heaving violently.
The second that question left his lips, over a decade of history crashed through his mind, violently rearranging itself.
He finally understood.
Understood her inexplicable stares when they were young, her sudden frigidness after they married and how she managed to walk away from the divorce so effortlessly
It was never a doomed marriage of convenience, nor was it a delayed spark of attraction.
From the very beginning, Sienna only had eyes for him.
Since their very first encounter at Azure Ridge when she was twelve, she had silently carried this torch for him her entire youth.
She was the one who fell first.
The one who loved the longest, who loved the most agonizingly, was always her.
And he.
Had been completely oblivious, arrogant, and even coldly indifferent to it all.
He let the vicious rumors tear her apart, letting her burning, devoted love slowly turn to ice over countless lonely nights.
His feverish eyes were blazing, his dark pupils narrowing until everything else in the universe completely ceased to exist.
Absolutely full, entirely consumed, reflecting nothing but Sienna.
In that split second, all the grudges, all the misunderstandings, were violently discarded.
All he knew was this.
This woman had kept him in her heart since she was a little girl.
Her youth, her first love, her absolute, purest devotion.
Had never been given to anyone else; it had solely belonged to him, Jarred.
He had always believed he was the one trapped in a one-sided crush, but he had been so wrong.
Jarred’s fingers trembled slightly, utterly failing to mask the explosive affection in his eyes as he breathed heavily, staring down at the woman beneath him.
He traced every single inch of her face with absolute, greedy reverence.
So he too had been loved this intensely, this relentlessly, with such desperate abandon.
But as this tidal wave of intense realization crashed down on him p>