“Answer the fucking question, Knight. Did you bring women here to fuck them?” she demands, her hands shaking slightly against the comforter, her eyes wide, her cheeks pink.
“I built this house for you. The only people who have been here apart from the contractors who helped me build it are you and me. It’s been nearly two years since I had any sexual interaction with anyone else, and when I did, my encounters took place at hotels. You are my wife. This house is yours. That bed is yours. I am yours.”
Tears drip from her eyes moments before she brings her hands up and covers her face with them. “I’m sorry,” she gasps.
“What are you sorry for?” I ask, lifting her out of the bed and sitting her on my lap.
“For asking you about your exes and accusing you of bringing them here.”
“I don’t have exes. I have engaged in sexual acts with others, but the only relationship I’ve ever had, or wanted to have, wasthis one. I was created to be your husband, and you were made to be my wife. Nothing else before you exists.”
“Why do you make it so easy to be so crazy with you?” she whispers against my chest.
“Everything about us is easy,” I tell her honestly.
“What time is it?” she asks after a few moments.
“It’s 6:32.”
“Christ, it’s early. Knight, why didn’t you just leave me to sleep?” she whines, sniffling slightly.
“Because I can’t do my full PT routine in our bedroom,” I tell her again.
“So just come work out, then get back into bed. The only thing that makes sense between us is the sex, so why are we in the gym when the only reasonable reason to be up this early is because we’re fucking?”
“Do you need to be fucked, Mrs. Taylor?” I ask, lowering my voice until it’s barely more than a gruff vibration.
“No,” she snaps.
Despite my and my dick’s disappointment, I nod, feeling a little relieved that if I hurry, I can still finish my workout and be showered and dressed in time for breakfast. “Okay. I have sixteen more minutes left on my workout. Breakfast is at 0700.”
Placing her back down on the mattress, I tuck the covers around her, then stride back over to the push-up bars and resume my exercise.
“Are you serious?” Octavia snaps, and I sense rather than see her throw off the comforter and slip from the bed. “You’re just going to work out?” she hisses.
Counting down from sixty in my head, I release the hold, then stand up. “Are you upset?” I ask.
“I’m tired. I’m going back to bed,” she announces.
“Wait. Once I finish, I can carry you back upstairs. We’ll have breakfast, then I’ll run you a bath.”
“I’m not sleeping down here, and I’m not hungry, so don’t bother making breakfast for me. I’m exhausted, so please don’t wake me up before eleven a.m.,” she says, her shoulders slumped as she searches for the stairs, then makes a beeline for them, disappearing from view.
The moment I can’t see her, an unexpected panic starts to build in my chest. Grabbing my cell, I activate all the house’s internal cameras and frantically scroll through the streams until I find her. She’s still perfectly naked and clearly unashamed by it as I watch her storm into our bedroom, lift the comforter, and crawl back into our bed, pulling the covers over her head and hiding herself from both my and the camera’s view.
A nagging voice reminds me that I haven’t finished my workout. That the clock is ticking. That order is everything. But another voice is shouting at me to go to her, to be close enough to touch that even if it kills me to ignore my routine, she’s more important, because my pain is nothing in comparison to my need for her.
So I follow my greatest need and stride out of the gym and toward my heart.
The covers are still over her head when I enter the bedroom, strip off my shorts, and climb into the bed beside her. She’s on her side, her face turned away from me, so I lift her and turn her to face me, needing to look at her.
“I don’t understand why you’re upset,” I tell her, hating that I feel like a failure. This is my wife. My mate. My heart. I did something to upset her, and I don’t know what, or why, and for the first time in decades, I feel as weird as others have been calling me my entire life.
Would other people know why she was mad? Would everyone else except me understand her better? Are my limitations going to be the cause of her pain?
“I’m not upset at you,” she says, dipping her chin to keep her face hidden from me.
Hooking my thumb beneath her chin, I force her to look at me, hoping that her expression will resonate with me, even though I’ve never understood more than the basics for other people.
