I accidentally clicked on a serialized fiction site the other day. I was just about to close the tab when the live comment feed on the screen suddenly exploded. A reader had posted a wild theory: the male protagonist’s secret identity as a romance author was cracking. Another comment chimed in, pointing out that even though the guy hadn't managed to win the girl in real life, his fictional counterpart was doing unspeakable things to her in the chapters. Someone else theorized that it wasn't a lack of desire keeping the male lead away; it was paralyzing fear of rejection. He could only live out his fantasies behind a keyboard. Then came the bombshell: the top-ranking story on the entire site was allegedly written by him. I froze. Driven by a morbid, half-believing curiosity, I clicked on the top-ranking novel. The moment the page loaded, my screen was flooded with graphic, breathless descriptions of intimacy. … 1 My hands were trembling so badly I almost couldn't push the laptop closed. My mind was a complete blur of white noise. What the hell had I just read? God, Margot wants Declan to blow her so bad… Unless I was suffering from sudden-onset amnesia, my cold, untouchable, aristocratic husband’s name was Declan. And my name was Margot. 2 Declan and I were a merger, a marriage of convenience orchestrated by our families' board of directors. Before the wedding, he had laid out the ground rules with chilling precision. "This marriage is a transaction, nothing more," he had said, sliding the prenup across the mahogany desk. "Three years. After that, we divorce. You will be compensated generously, exactly as outlined. If you have no objections, sign it." Since the wedding, his work had consumed him. We were ships passing in our cavernous penthouse. I knew, with absolute certainty, that Declan felt nothing for me. Until today. The live comments on the chapter were scrolling at breakneck speed: [No way, did the wife actually find the link?] [Is our girl gonna confront him?] [What happens after she confronts him? Do they finally do it, or is it gonna be an enemies-to-lovers forced proximity thing?] [I am trash for the possessive billionaire trope! Bring it on!] [I can't even imagine what she's feeling right now. Imagine finding out your icy, professional husband is secretly serializing absolute smut about you.] I buried my burning face in my hands. My mind flashed back to the audacious, explicit prose of that novel. Beneath the sheer shock was a suffocating layer of embarrassment. Who would have ever looked at Declan—a man whose resting heart rate probably mirrored a glacier—and guessed that beneath that pristine designer suit hid a man who was simultaneously incredibly cowardly and absolutely feral? Cowardly—because he allegedly loved me but couldn't say it to my face. Feral—because it wasn't enough to just fantasize about me; he was publishing it on the internet! 3 I lay in bed, tossing and turning, tangling the silk sheets. After agonizing over it for an hour, I decided the only path forward was sheer denial. I would pretend this never happened. I was just reaching for the lamp when my phone screen lit up with a notification from the site. [The author just updated!] Like a woman possessed, I opened my laptop again. There it was, a glowing red dot on the screen. The Icy CEO’s Secret Obsession: A Marriage of Convenience had just dropped two new chapters. [He buried his face into the silk, his heavy breaths dampening the fabric…] [Baby… god, I need my wife…] [The silent, violent ache expanded in the quiet of the room, taking a long time to settle.] [That's enough, Declan thought. I'm going to go down on Margot.] 4 What?! Declan was coming to go down on me?! The thought hadn't even fully registered when— Knock, knock. I stared at my bedroom door in absolute, paralyzed horror. "Margot? Are you asleep?" "Yes! Yes, I'm completely asleep—" I cut myself off, immediately realizing the profound stupidity of answering while claiming to be unconscious. Resigning myself to my fate, I dragged my feet to the door and pulled it open just a crack. "Did you need something?" I peeked through the sliver of space. Declan was standing there. His breathing was visibly shallow. His face was flushed, a deep, uncharacteristic crimson. And his usually sharp, calculating eyes were clouded over with a hazy, heavy mist. It was exactly—exactly—how the author had described him in the aftermath of those explicit chapters! Declan looked down at me, his voice rough and gravelly. "Is your—" "It's not that big of a deal!" I blurted. "Can you give me—" "No!" "I just want—" "Absolutely not! No, no, no! Absolutely not happening!" I shook my head so frantically I felt dizzy. 5 Declan’s brow furrowed, a crease of genuine confusion forming between his eyes. "Margot, what is wrong with you?" I bit my lip, my mind racing for an excuse. "I really can't. I... I just got my period." So going down on me or whatever else was completely off the table! Declan fell dead silent for a moment. "You're on your period and you're standing on the hardwood floor barefoot?" Before I could even process the shift in his tone, he pushed the door fully open, bent down, and scooped me up into his arms. The moment I hit the mattress, a thousand explicit verbs from the novel flashed through my brain like strobe lights. I squeezed my eyes shut, my voice trembling. "Declan, I... I..." "Where is the Tylenol?" "Huh?" Declan looked around my room, his chest rising and falling. "Martha said she brought the spare fever medicine into your room a couple of days ago." The comment feed in my brain malfunctioned. [Wait, what?] [Didn't he come here to eat her out?] [LMAO I am dying, she totally misunderstood!] [What was all that 'absolutely not' stuff? What was our girl imagining?!] [Did she think our guy was about to earn his red wings or something?] … My face was burning so hot it felt radioactive. I stammered, "So... your face is red and you're sweating because... you have a fever?" "Obviously." His tone returned to its usual dry baseline. "The real question is, what bizarre things were going through your head just now?" … 6 Perhaps because he had cleared his schedule to recover at home, Declan’s updates became incredibly frequent. The positions, the settings, the sheer duration of his fictional stamina—they were evolving at a terrifying rate. The comment section was foaming at the mouth, starved for every update. And I, the unwilling muse, spent my days walking around with a permanent, mortified flush. Meanwhile, the author—my husband—sat across from me at the breakfast table, sipping his black coffee with the serene, detached aura of a monk. I glared at his broad back, my eyes full of silent resentment. Because I had been reading far too much smut, my subconscious had betrayed me, serving up consecutive nights of vivid, exhausting nightmares. In my dreams, Declan tore off his icy mask. He was exactly the man from the novel. Wicked, demanding, and utterly relentless. "Oh!" I stumbled backward, a hand clutching my chest, suddenly snapping back to reality. "Why did you stop walking?" Declan’s gaze snagged on my flushed face, lingered for a fraction of a second, and then slid away. "The car is here." 7 I accompanied Declan to a charity gala that evening. After my third glass of champagne, I finally spotted my best friend, Gemma. I discreetly tugged on Declan’s cuff, giving him a look that said I was wandering off. He gave a curt nod. "Pace yourself on the raw oysters." The second I was within earshot of Gemma, she started wiggling her eyebrows. "Oh, please. Married for five minutes and you're already hopelessly devoted to your fake husband? You have to file a flight plan just to come say hi to me?" "I am not," I shot back defensively. I hesitated, swirling the bubbles in my glass, before the secret finally clawed its way up my throat. "And actually, it's the exact opposite of what you think. I'm not the one hopelessly devoted to him." "It's... it's Declan. He is insanely, desperately in love with me." 8 Gemma laughed so hard she practically choked. A splash of champagne sloshed over the rim of her flute. "I'm serious!" I hissed, panicked. "Okay, okay, I believe you." She was bent over, struggling to catch her breath. "I totally heard him declare his undying, maddening love for you over the canapés." "...He hasn't actually said it out loud." The fact that he was writing incredibly graphic fanfiction about our marriage was a secret I intended to take to my grave. My neck felt hot. "Even if he hasn't said the exact words, I know he is obsessed with me! He just... struggles to express himself emotionally." "Struggles to express himself..." Gemma tapped her chin, a wicked gleam in her eye. "Well, then you need to create a little friction. Push him over the edge so he's forced to say it." ... Honestly, I didn't particularly need him to confess his love. But if it meant stopping him from digitally ravaging me in front of thousands of internet strangers... I leaned in, desperate for wisdom. "How do I do that?" Gemma arched a perfectly sculpted brow. "Get a little pet. Keep a young, pretty plaything on the side. Let him see what a little competition looks like." The comments in my head: [Lmao Gemma knows exactly what she's doing.] [A boy toy! A little sugar baby! Yes!] [This is the exact kind of angst we need.] 9 I didn't fully understand how keeping a pet was going to force Declan into an emotional confession. But Gemma was the expert, and the hypothetical comment section in my brain agreed with her. So the very next afternoon, I drove down to an exotic pet breeder and picked out a tiny, soft, bright-yellow canary. I named him Lemon. Before I could even introduce my new pet to Declan, he left for a week-long business trip to London. The penthouse suddenly felt hollow, a strange, quiet emptiness settling in my chest. With Declan gone, I decided to temporarily set Lemon up in the townhouse I owned from before the marriage. 10 A few days after bringing Lemon home, I called Gemma to share my success. "I did exactly what you said," I beamed into the phone. "I got a canary." "He's gorgeous, and honestly, so eager to please. I'm completely obsessed with him! I've even been letting him sleep in my room the last two nights!" Gemma sounded utterly stunned on the other end of the line. After a long pause, she whispered, "Margot, you are a savage." Over the next few days, several people in our social circle texted me, vaguely asking about my "canary." Though confused by their sudden interest, I replied earnestly to everyone: "He's wonderful, incredibly handsome, and I adore him." 11 I had just finished an afternoon of shopping. The moment I pushed open the door to the penthouse, I froze. A familiar silhouette was sitting perfectly still on the living room sofa. "Declan." I blinked in surprise. "I thought you weren't flying back from London for another week?" He didn't move a muscle, save for lifting his eyes to meet mine. "Are you disappointed I'm back early?" The tone of his voice sent a weird chill down my spine. "...Of course not." He sat in silence for two agonizingly long seconds. Then he stood up and began walking toward me. Step. Step. I instinctively took a step back. He stopped dead in his tracks. "Word travels," he said, his voice stripped of any decipherable emotion, his eyes heavy as they locked onto me. "I hear you're keeping a canary." The phantom comments went wild: [Wait, did he catch the red-eye back the second he heard she had a boy toy?!] [Obviously! If he waited any longer, his wife was going to run off with her little pet!] [Men really do need a little competition.] [What’s next? Is the possessive jealousy trope dropping? Am I getting my enemies-to-lovers chains sequence?!] Dizzy from the internal monologue, I just nodded blankly. "...Yes." "Where are you keeping him?" "At the Silver Creek townhouse." "So that's where you've been sleeping these past few nights." It wasn't a question. It was a flat, dead statement. Finally, I snapped out of my daze. "Is there a problem with that?" Declan stared at me in a suffocating silence. Suddenly, he turned his back to me. "No problem. No problem at all." His voice was tight, clipped. "The prenuptial agreement is perfectly clear on this. We do not interfere in each other's private lives. I have no right to dictate what you do. If you want to keep someone on the side, that is your prerogative." "The only rule is that he never sets foot in this house." "But—" "There are no buts." He looked back over his shoulder at me. His voice was ice; his eyes were absolute zero. "I told you from the beginning. You can play however you want. But in public, the facade of this marriage remains spotless." I had no idea how a tiny yellow bird threatened the facade of our marriage. But I had never seen Declan look so genuinely, terrifyingly furious. I swallowed the words in my throat and stayed quiet. 12 Gemma's advice was terrible. Instead of opening up to me, Declan had iced me out completely. He was practically radiating frostbite. I was just picking up my phone to complain to Gemma when my screen lit up with an alert. [What the hell is the author doing? One second he's throwing a jealous fit, the next he's rage-writing in the drafts?] [Our guy has sworn to become a ruthless, unfeeling smut machine to punish his wife!] [Oh man, the guilt she's gonna feel.] [Real life Declan: Submissive and breedable, too scared to start a fight. Internet Declan: An absolute beast using his wife’s 'canary' as fuel for a six-page explicit revenge scene!] [This is the greatest misunderstanding in the history of literature.] Trembling slightly, I opened the browser. … The paragraphs were even more unhinged, more possessive, and wildly more explicit than anything he had posted before. I bit my lower lip, my face flushing scarlet. Beneath the embarrassment, a sharp prick of hurt bloomed in my chest. I didn't understand why Declan was throwing such a massive fit over a literal bird. And I certainly didn't understand how he could write about doing those things to me with such desperate, possessive heat, only to look at me in reality like I was a stranger. 13 My grip tightened on my phone. I was going to march over to his office and demand an explanation. I knocked on his door three times, but there was no answer. [Why isn't he coming out? I need the confrontation scene right now!] [Give the man a minute, he's busy... taking care of things with his hands.] [Is this it? Are the secrets coming out?!] [Are we finally moving from fiction to reality?! I'm vibrating!] The longer I stood there, the more my courage leaked out onto the floorboards. Just as I turned to make my escape— My phone rang. It was my cousin, Elise. She was practically in tears, explaining that her startup was on the verge of bankruptcy. The only person with the leverage to save it was Declan’s uncle, and she needed me to ask Declan to make the introduction. When we were kids, Elise had literally fought off a stray dog that had gone after me, leaving her with a permanent scar near her hairline. She almost never asked for anything. My heart softened instantly, and I promised her I would try. I had just hung up, trying to figure out how to broach the topic with Declan— When the door clicked open from the inside. My feet rooted themselves to the floor. 14 "Did you need something?" Declan had clearly just stepped out of the shower. His skin was damp, radiating a clean, soapy heat, and droplets of water were still falling from his dark hair. He leaned against the doorframe, looking down at me through half-lidded eyes. A single drop of water fell from his hair, landing right on the back of my hand. My heart skipped a violent beat. "I... I can help you dry your hair." He raised an eyebrow. He didn't move. He just stood there, staring at me, letting the silence stretch until my skin prickled. "...Is that okay?" I managed. He stepped aside. I kept my head ducked, stepping into his room with the awkward stiffness of a rusted machine. [Oh my god, the lamb just walked into the wolf's den.] [Someone tell our girl to take a deep breath. Can she smell the tension?] [Look at the trash can! Are there tissues? Did he just finish?!] Against my own will, my eyes flicked to the wastebasket. Oh God. There were tissues. "Why is your face so red? Is the heat up too high?" "No, no." I grabbed the hairdryer from the vanity, desperately over-explaining. "I just... get flushed at night. It's a night thing." Declan made a low noise of acknowledgment. The hairdryer hummed to life. I stood behind him. My fingers sifted through the thick, damp strands of his hair. They say people with soft hair have soft hearts. Coupled with the fact that I knew—digitally, at least—that he was obsessed with me... I took a breath, gathered my scattered courage, and relayed Elise's plea for help. The hum of the hairdryer clicked off. Declan met my eyes in the mirror. "So, all this sudden affection... the whole routine... it was just so you could play lobbyist for your cousin?" His voice was terrifyingly level. But a cold wave of dread washed over me. I couldn't find my voice. "Margot." He turned around in the chair, facing me fully. "What makes you think I have any obligation to do you this favor?" [Look at this guy acting so tough! Just admit your feelings are hurt, stop trying to humiliate her!] [He's just pissed that she's only touching him because she needs something for someone else. Look at him put on that armor.] [Oh no, is she going to take him seriously?] [Stupid male lead. This is exactly why she still doesn't love you.] [This is why I hate the emotionally repressed trope sometimes.] I stood paralyzed, my hands suddenly feeling empty. "...Aren't we husband and wife?" I hesitated. "Even if it's... a marriage of convenience." Declan’s eyes darkened, the brown almost bleeding into black. "Since it is a marriage of convenience, you should act like it. You're asking for a business favor. If I agree, it's out of charity. If I say no, it's my right. Nothing here is a given, is it?" Logically, he was right. "But—" "No buts." He stood up, towering over me. "You want my help? Fine. But we play by the rules of the contract." "What am I supposed to do..." He stepped closer. So close I could smell the sharp, clean scent of cedar and bergamot radiating off his skin. "What is the foundation of our contract? Equivalent exchange." His voice dropped, thick with an undercurrent of something entirely unreadable. "You want me to move mountains for your family? You need to show me some genuine sincerity." I stared up into his impossibly dark eyes. A specific paragraph from the novel suddenly seared itself into my brain— [“You want my help?”] [Declan stopped moving, his voice dropping to a dark, slow drawl. “Sure. Kiss me. Beg me. Then I’ll give you what you want…”] Sincerity... Equivalent exchange... Kiss me. Beg me. My heart was hammering so wildly against my ribs I thought it might fracture bone. My hands shook as I reached up, cupping the sharp angles of his jaw. I squeezed my eyes shut. I leaned up. I smashed my lips against his. A loud, deeply unromantic smack echoed in the quiet room. "I'm begging you, okay?!" 15 I spun on my heel, ready to bolt. Before I could take a step, a large, damp hand clamped around my wrist. The room tilted in a dizzying blur of motion. The next second, I was pressed down into the velvet armchair, Declan looming over me, his hands gripping the armrests, trapping me. The icy, detached veneer was completely gone from his eyes. "Margot." His voice was broken, raw. "Do you have any idea what you're doing right now?" "S-sincerity." My entire body felt like it was on fire. "Didn't you say you wanted sincerity?!" He stared at me for two long, excruciating seconds. Then, a low, dark laugh rumbled in his chest. "When I said sincerity, I meant—" He stopped. The amusement vanished, replaced by a sudden, sharp tightening of his jaw. "Who taught you to do that?" His mood snapped like a whip, leaving me completely disoriented. [What the hell does he mean? She initiated a kiss and he's suddenly acting like a cop?!] [This guy. He should be thrilled, why the attitude?!] [He's so jealous of this imaginary boy toy it's rotting his brain.] [He literally wrote this exact scenario in his own book!] I bit the inside of my cheek. "You know exactly who taught me!" Declan stared down at me, his chest heaving, his eyes heavy with a storm I couldn't navigate. It took a long time for him to speak. "It's not enough." "What do you mean, it's not enough?!" He leaned down, his burning breath brushing against my lips. "That kind of sincerity... isn't going to cut it." The next second, his mouth crashed down on mine, fierce, consuming, and totally inescapable.
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