Becoming Lailah: Married to my Twin Sister's Billionaire Husband

Chapter 320: The Clock

THE SUN WAS TOO BRIGHT. It sliced through the gap in the heavy curtains like a silver blade, catching the dust motes dancing over the rumpled, salt-scented sheets.

Mailah shifted, and a soft groan escaped her.

Her body felt heavy, unanchored, and distinctly claimed. There was a dull, pulsing ache in her hips and a lingering heat between her thighs—a physical ledger of the hours Grayson had spent mapping her skin with a hunger that had finally moved past the predatory and into something far more dangerous: devotion.

He had learned. God, had he learned.

In the past after the memory loss, he had been all sharp edges and efficient friction, a man—or a monster—taking what he needed to survive.

But last night, something had shifted.

He had learned to slow down. He had used those massive, terrifying hands to cradle her as if she were the most fragile relic in his treasury.

He had replaced frantic desperation with a methodical, agonizingly tender exploration that had left her shattered and rebuilt a dozen times over.

She rolled over, expecting to find the cold, hard planes of his chest, but the bed was empty. The pillow beside her still bore the indentation of his head, smelling of the "Alpine Fresh" detergent he so despised.

"Grayson?" she croaked, her voice raspy from the sounds she’d made in the dark.

Only the distant cry of a gull answered her.

She sat up, the sheet sliding down to her waist. Her skin was a map of faint, fading marks—reddened patches where his stubble had burned her, the dark ghost of a thumbprint on her hip.

She touched the spot, a shiver chasing away the morning chill. He was a cold-hearted, arrogant, amnesiac prince, but his body had a memory of its own, one that seemed to recognize her even if his mind didn’t.

She dressed slowly, her movements ginger.

She pulled on a thick wool sweater and leggings, making sure she was thoroughly covered. Arthur was blind, yes, but the man had a terrifying knack for "seeing" things he shouldn’t.

Two days ago, he’d commented on the "unusually rhythmic" thumping of the pipes in the utility room, and Mailah had nearly died of mortification while Grayson had simply stared at the old man with a look of clinical confusion.

She crept out of the bedroom, her socks silent on the floorboards. The cottage was quiet, but as she approached the small sunroom at the back—a glass-walled lean-to that looked out over the cliffside—she heard the low rumble of voices.

One was Arthur’s dry, papery chuckle. The other was the jagged, deep baritone that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

She peered around the doorframe and stopped, her mouth falling open.

Grayson was hunched over a low table, his massive frame dwarfing the delicate chair he sat in. He was shirtless again—apparently, the man had a personal vendetta against fabric in this place—and his back was a landscape of tensed muscle.

But it was what he was doing that stopped her breath.

Spread across the table were hundreds of tiny, shimmering pieces of brass, glass, and steel. It was a grandfather clock—or rather, the skeletal remains of one.

Arthur sat across from him, his sightless eyes fixed on the ceiling, his hands moving with the grace of a pianist as he sorted through a tray of microscopic screws.

"No, no, Your Lordship," Arthur said, his voice laced with amusement. "That is a pivot for the third wheel. If you force it, you’ll bend the arbor, and then we’re all just staring at a very expensive pile of junk."

Grayson’s jaw was set so tight it looked like it might crack. He held a pair of tiny, human-sized tweezers in his hand. Between the tips was a gear no larger than a grain of sand.

"This is an exercise in futility," Grayson hissed, his voice vibrating with suppressed violence. "The tolerances are absurd. A single breath could displace the entire assembly. Why do humans build things that require the patience of a saint and the eyesight of an eagle?"

"Because," Arthur replied, "it’s the only way to catch time. If it were easy, we wouldn’t value the seconds, would we?"

Grayson growled, a low, animal sound. He began to lower the gear into the clock’s housing. His hand, usually so steady when holding a blade or a throat, was trembling with the sheer effort of restraint.

"I could weld this in a millisecond," Grayson muttered. "A focused heat-lance would fuse the brass to the steel. It would be permanent. It would be perfect."

"It would be a paperweight," Arthur countered. "The beauty is in the movement, lad. The friction. The struggle."

Mailah watched, fascinated. This was it—the "unexpected" human task. She had expected him to be out killing something or perhaps glowering at the sea.

Instead, he was performing surgery on time itself under the tutelage of a blind man.

Grayson’s brow was damp with sweat. He looked more stressed than he had when Theron’s guards had surrounded them.

"Grayson?" she said softly.

He didn’t look up. He didn’t even blink. "Do not move, Mailah. The air displacement from your footsteps is currently my greatest enemy."

She stifled a laugh, stepping closer until she was standing just behind him.

The heat coming off his skin was immense—a furnace of frustrated energy. She could see the silver light dancing just beneath the surface of his skin, a sign that his mana was itching to be used.

"Remember the rule," she whispered, leaning down so her breath tickled his ear. "One spark of magic, and I’m ’closed for maintenance’ for a week."

Grayson’s hand froze. The tiny gear hovered a hair’s breadth from its destination.

He turned his head just enough to look at her from the corner of his eye. His pupils were blown wide, dark and predatory, but there was a flicker of something else there—a desperate, grinding need to satisfy her.

"You are a cruel mistress," he rasped.

"And you’re an apprentice clockmaker," she shot back. "Focus."

With a slow, agonizing exhale, Grayson lowered the gear. There was a tiny, metallic click as it seated into place.

He didn’t move for three seconds. Then, he sat back, the tweezers clattering onto the table. He looked exhausted.

"It is done," he announced, as if he had just conquered a kingdom.

Arthur reached out, his fingers dancing over the assembly with uncanny precision. He nodded, a smile touching his wrinkled lips. "Well done, Lord Ashford. You have the hands of a surgeon and the temperament of a landslide, but you got it in."

Grayson stood up abruptly, his height nearly hitting the low ceiling of the sunroom. He turned to Mailah, his gaze sweeping over her with a territorial intensity that made her pulse skip.

He reached out and hooked a finger into the collar of her sweater, pulling her toward him until their chests brushed.

"The clock is functional," he said, his voice dropping into that low, private rumble. "The sun is up. And I have spent the last two hours denying my nature."

"I’m very proud of you," she teased, her hands coming up to rest on his bare, warm stomach.

"I don’t want your pride," he muttered, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw. "I want to know if the ’soreness’ you were complaining about in your sleep has subsided. Because if it hasn’t, I shall have to find a way to... apologize."

Mailah’s face went scarlet. She glanced at Arthur, who was busy winding a small spring, a knowing smirk on his face.

"I wasn’t complaining," she whispered, leaning into him. "I was... acknowledging the craftsmanship."

Grayson’s eyes flared—a brief, hot flash of silver that died out as quickly as it appeared. He was fighting the urge to use his power to simply blink them both back into the bedroom, away from the prying "eyes" of the old man.

"Come," he said, taking her hand. It wasn’t a request.

He didn’t lead her to the bedroom, though. Instead, he led her out the back door, into the crisp, morning air.

The storm had left the grass damp and the sky a brilliant, heart-aching blue. He walked her toward a small, secluded hollow in the cliffs, a place hidden from the house and the path.

He stopped in the center of the hollow and turned her to face him.

He kissed her then—not with the hunger of the night before, but with a slow, possessive tenderness that was far more undoing. It was the kiss of a man who was surrendering his crown for a single, precious territory.

Mailah clung to him, her fingers digging into his shoulders. She could feel the vibration of his heart, the steady, rhythmic beat of a man who was becoming human, one heartbeat at a time.

When he pulled back, his eyes were soft—as soft as Grayson Ashford’s eyes could ever be.

"I have another ’human’ task I wish to attempt," he murmured against her lips.

"Oh? And what’s that?"

"I am going to attempt to ’relax,’" he said, the word sounding foreign on his tongue. "And you are going to help me."

He lowered himself onto the grass, pulling her down with him. He sat with his back against a sun-warmed rock, drawing her between his legs so she was leaning against his chest.

He wrapped his arms around her, his chin resting on the top of her head.

For a long time, they just sat there, watching the waves crash against the rocks below.

"Mailah?"

"Yeah?"

"The clock," he said, his voice a low vibration against her spine. "Arthur says it will chime on the hour."

"Yeah?"

"I think I shall smash it if it wakes you up."

Mailah laughed, a bright, clear sound that echoed off the cliffs. She turned in his arms, reaching up to kiss the tip of his nose.

"You’re a terrible human, Grayson."

"I am a work in progress," he said, his lips finding hers again.

Later that evening, as the first stars began to pierce the twilight, Arthur sat in the kitchen, a bowl of stew in front of him. He listened to the silence of the house.

He smiled to himself, a slow, knowing thing.

"Time is a funny thing," he whispered to the empty room. "It takes a king to lose his mind to finally find his heart."

From the sunroom, the grandfather clock let out its first, tentative chime. It was a little off-beat, a little rough around the edges, but it held.

Just like the man who had built it.