For a moment, she just rests against me, her body sagging into mine, but then she pushes her arms around my back and clings to me, using me to hold her as she drowns in her emotions. A part of me wants to hunt down whatever is causing her this pain, but I don’t know what it is, or if killing it would make her feel better or worse.
I rarely, if ever, struggle with my lack of emotional understanding, but when it comes to my doll, how can I be everything she needs if I have no idea what’s wrong with her or how to fix it?
“I’m sorry,” she says through her tears.
“What are you sorry for?”
“Blubbering all over you. It’s not exactly sexy.”
“You’re beautiful to me all the time, Doll,” I tell her.
“There’s nothing beautiful about me at the moment,” she sighs sadly.
“Don’t say that,” I snap, pulling her away from my chest far enough that I can properly look at her. “My wife is fucking beautiful. You’re fucking perfect, Doll. I don’t want to hear you talking badly about yourself. I’ve never spanked anyone before, but if I hear you putting yourself down again, I’ll take you over my knee and redden your ass until you understand that you are perfection.”
Swallowing thickly, she stares at me in shock, tears rolling down her reddened cheeks. Her eyes are swollen, her lips puffy and red, but even like this, she’s a gorgeous mess, and I want her just as much as I do with perfect eyeliner and porcelain perfection.
“You’d spank me?” she asks, a hint of a smile pulling at the corners of her lips.
“Until your ass was so hot you wouldn’t be able to sit on it,” I calmly threaten.
Rolling her eyes, she pulls her arms from behind me and wipes the tears from her cheeks, sucking in a shaky breath, before rolling her neck and forcing a watery smile to her lips. “You’re funny, Knight.”
“No one has ever accused me of that before, Doll, and I wasn’t making a joke.”
Her smile slips a little, but she forces it to life again, closing her eyes for a moment as she scoffs and shakes her head. “If I agree to give this a try—” she starts.
“There’s no agreeing, Doll. It’s already happening.”
SIX
OCTAVIA
Why am I not fighting this? This is crazy, all of it is, but instead of being angry, or scared, or any of the other ten million emotions I feel like I should be feeling, I just feel peacefully numb, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.
Knight makes me feel like I just took a diazepam. Since he knocked on the door of the Airbnb, I’ve felt calm, and I have no idea why. There have been peaks of emotion, like fear on the plane and desire and arousal when we had sex, but most of the time I’ve just felt oddly…settled.
A part of me wonders if it’s his certainty. Or maybe it’s his simplistic view of us and our future. Despite my asking him if he was crazy more than once, I don’t really think he is. But he has this assuredness that I’m his, he’s mine, and our future happiness is guaranteed, and that’s not…normal.
But then, from what I know of them, all the men in this town are a little…unusual. More than one marriage has begun with the dude falling hard and fast, including Betty and her husband,Cody, and my bestie, Etta, and her stepbrother-slash-husband, Oz.
But that can’t be what’s happening with me and Knight…right? He’s called me his mate more than once, and even though it doesn’t make any sense to me, he seems to honestly believe that from the first time we met we were destined to be together. But that kind of thing only happens in fairy tales, not in rural Montana.
But the moment he pushed his very hard, very big cock into me, something felt more than simply right. There was no foreplay, no teasing, or dirty talk. He carried me upstairs, stripped me naked, and then forced his dick into my body, and I just went along with it. He told me he knew what we needed, and I’m not entirely convinced he wasn’t right, because it was by far the best sexual experience of my life.
Before Knight, I’d only had one sexual partner. Abel took my virginity, and let’s just say that sex with him wasn’t exactly what I expected. His dick was…unimpressive, and his ability to use it even more of a letdown.
Truthfully, I hadn’t been holding on to my virginity for any particular reason. I’d just been waiting for it to feel right, and I thought Abel was my person. Now I’m just glad I didn’t let him convince me to fall back into bed with him since he offered to help with my landlord issues.
I’m well aware that dick size has no real-life implications on good sex. Dudes with small dicks can be sexual savants, and guys with elephant trunks can have zero game and rely on rearranging a girl’s guts to show them a good time. But Abel is neither well-endowed nor sexually skilled. His idea of being good in bed had been rubbing my clit like wearing it away was the key to making me orgasm, then three-pump chumping it until he blew his load into the condom while telling me how muchIwas enjoying myself.
Until today, and Knight, I thought I was doing something wrong. Abel made me feel like his inability to pleasure me was my failing and not his, and I’d believed him. I’d thought not being turned on by him was my fault. I’d thought that he couldn’t make me come because I was doing something wrong or that my body was a dud. But a few hours with Knight has changed everything.
He made me come without touching my clit. He made me make noises I had no idea I was capable of making. He embarrassed me and used clinical words like penis and vagina, and yet he still made me come more than Abel has ever managed to do.
But despite the sexual enlightenment Knight has helped me discover, I know nothing about him, other than he keeps calling me his wife. He says this house is our home, and that he’s apparently all-in on a relationship I haven’t consented to. But what terrifies me the most is that he’s the most familiar stranger I’ve ever met.
I’ve burst into tears more than once so far today, and instead of being appalled by my show of emotions, he’s comforted me. His touch and clean, soapy scent have settled the swarming battle of emotions lodged inside my chest.
