NTR: The live-in-husband gets a perverted heart system

Meanwhile, at Tom’s end, he had ended the call without answering Stella’s question.

Stella’s last question of *Can we meet?* still hung in the air when he pressed the button. He dropped the phone onto the bed as if it had burned him and sat there. The towel was loose around his waist, his heart beating too hard. For a long moment he only stared at the dark screen.

He couldn’t help but wonder...

He had done it. He had told her what to do to herself in that low, filthy voice, and she had listened. She had come. And then she had asked to meet again, as if the line between them had already been erased.

Tom dragged both hands down his face and exhaled shakily.

A week ago he would have panicked at the idea of using those flirty words. Now he had just made Stella Marchetti fall apart over the phone while her fiancé waited somewhere nearby. The distance between those two versions of himself felt too wide to be real.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and stared at the floor.

Would things have been different if the System had come earlier? Before the marriage?

The question pulled an old memory up without mercy.

FLASHBACK

That night at the bar when Sienna had proposed to him...

He knew she was definitely celebrating something. Contrary to how she usually come to the bar alone for an alone time, she had arrived with her two friends; Suzanne and Rebecca.

Contrary to how she would just sit elegantly, getting served wine on a command by him or another bartender while she drank until she was satisfied, that night, she was laughing loudly with her friends.

She was drunk. Her friends were drunk too. Their cheeks were flushed, the kind of drunk that made people lean on each other for balance. Tom had watched them claim a corner table from behind the counter, the same way he always watched her: carefully, in short glances, never long enough to be caught.

When Sienna had looked at him, pointed at him and crooked one finger, his feet had started moving before he could stop himself. His feet moved before his brain caught up, a small, stunned part of him already smiling at the fact that his crush had finally noticed him.

She looked up at him when he stopped in front of the booth, grinning like whatever she was about to say was the funniest thing in the world.

"Would you marry me?" she asked. "Be my live-in husband. Say yes and we go to the registry first thing tomorrow morning."

From how her friends were already leaning in, their eyes bright with alcohol and amusement, Tom knew they were all in a mischievous game together. But being starstruck and half in love with a woman who didn’t even know his last name, Tom had said the only thing his mouth could form.

"I’ll be anything you want."

The table erupted. Suzanne and Rebecca roared with laughter, one of them nearly sliding off her stool. Sienna had laughed hardest of all, her head tipping back. And Tom, drunk on being noticed for the first time, didn’t care.

He looked at her face - open, flushed, smiling in a way she never did when she was sober and felt something in his chest pull painfully tight. He knew she was drunk. He knew the morning would probably bring a different expression, a quieter voice, even regret. But the part of him that had watched her for months, quietly and without any real hope, could not make itself say no.

He told himself that whatever made Sienna Kensington happy...

"Why don’t you sit besides your wife to-be and drink with us?" Suzanne said.

Despite wanting to keep the women, no, Sienna in particular entertained, Tom couldn’t joke with his job.

"I need to finish my shift first." he told them.

At that, Rebecca leaned in and said something about the husband-to-be being serious even if he was lacking. The words had an edge, but Tom refused to pick an offense.

Sienna waved a dismissive hand, still smiling that loose, bright smile. "How much are they paying you for this shift that I can’t cover?"

"Sorry, I can’t drink while on duty." He declined again, gently. Then went back to what he was doing.

An hour later he watched the three of them stand up to leave and felt his stomach drop. None of them were in any condition to drive. Sienna never brought her driver here; she treated the place as a pocket of privacy. Tom noticed that much about her already.

Tom wiped his hands on a clean towel, stepped out from behind the counter, and walked over to their table.

"Give me the keys. I’ll drive you home."he turned to Sienna and said.

Suzanne and Rebecca found that hilarious. They teased Sienna about her new fiancé already volunteering as her chauffeur. Sienna only laughed and dropped the keys into his open palm.

He drove them with the help of the car’s GPS. Rain had started by the time they reached her street, steady against the windshield. When he pulled up to the house, Sienna was half-asleep, her head resting against the passenger window. Her friends piled out first, still giggling, telling him in loud whispers to take care of his wife-to-be.

Tom opened her door. She nearly slid out of the seat. He caught her, steadied her, then lifted her when it became clear her legs would not hold her properly.

She felt warm and light in his arms, her head resting against his shoulder, her breath carrying the sweet-sharp scent of whatever she had been drinking. He carried her up the stairs and into her bedroom while her friends’ drunken laughter faded somewhere behind them.

When he laid her down on the bed, her hands found the front of his shirt and pulled. He lost his balance and sat down hard on the mattress. Sienna climbed half into his lap, her eyes glassy, mouth soft and unfocused.

"You like what you see. I know it." she murmured. "Come and have it."

The offer shook Tom. For a moment the temptation was real - she was right there, soft and willing, looking at him like the answer was obvious. Then the knowledge that she was drunk cut through everything else like cold water. Tom carefully loosened her fingers from his shirt.

"No," he said quietly. "You’re not yourself right now. I won’t do that."

She made a small, frustrated sound, then slumped forward against his chest and went still.

Within moments her breathing evened into sleep, one hand still loosely fisted in his clothes. And Tom stayed where he was, his back against the headboard, staring at the dark ceiling of a room that did not belong to him. He did not try to move her. He was afraid of waking her. He was afraid of disturbing her sleep.

He stayed like that until his arm went numb and the rain outside slowed to a drizzle.

END OF FLASHBACK

Tom blinked and the memory released him.

He was back in his own room, sitting on the edge of his own bed, the towel still around his waist. The air felt cooler than it had a moment ago. The phone lay face-down beside him...

[Host was painfully innocent,] the System chimed in, its voice lighter than usual, almost thoughtful. [Noble, even. Refusing a drunk woman who was offering herself. Most men wouldn’t have stopped. Especially when it was a woman they crush on.]

Tom let out a short breath that was almost a laugh. "Well, I can’t say I’m innocent anymore."

[Right. Now I’m correcting the imbalance. Making you better... and worse. You can feel it already, can’t you?]

He could. The man who had just made Stella Marchetti come over the phone was not the same man who had sat rigid on Sienna’s bed more than a month ago, too careful to even shift her weight. That older version felt far away, like someone he had watched in a movie rather than someone he had been.

Tom lay back against the pillows and stared at the ceiling. The question still sat in his chest, quiet and useless.

If he had said yes that night... if he had had sex with her when she offered while she was drunk and soft and laughing... would any of this be different? Would Sienna look at him with something other than calculation and irritation? Or would she only have hated him sooner?

There was no answer.

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