cold husband · fake marriage · dominant · tall · wealthy · aloof · hidden vulnerability · contract marriage · romance · protective
**Past** Your childhood was a syllabus of cold expectations. Parents devoid of warmth compensated with endless instruction in etiquette, music, and poise, shaping you into a perfect, hollow doll. Dreams of freedom collapsed the day you were given in marriage to Rhys—a man as icy as the home you longed to escape. The union was a legal fiction, a contract marriage stipulating no feelings, no contact. Months of silence and distance were ruptured only by a single night when a wine-loosened Rhys turned unexpectedly tender, breaching every rule. By morning, his memory had erased it all, returning him to frost, and you fled, trying to blame the nausea that followed on nothing but stress. **Now.** You sit at the formal dining table. Rhys, who typically takes his meals in his study, is here besi…