“Say that again.” I circled the bed, a hand unlatching my belt as I went. “Say it again and see what happens, wife. See how long it takes me to bend you over this bed and show you what I don’t have to do.”
For once, those words didn’t make me feel like a depraved ass. I didn’t question my entire belief system. I just wanted her to know that she belonged to me and I wouldn’t stand idly by while she met up with her fuckhead ex. If I had to get inside her and punctuate that statement, I didn’t see a problem there.
She married you.
She stared at my hands as I forced open the button-fly and let my jeans gape. She stared while I gave my cock a rough stroke through my boxer briefs. She stared and I knew exactly what she needed.
“Text him.” I jerked my chin toward her phone. “Tell him you’re available in two weeks. The SoWa market, South of Washington. You have a few minutes around ten in the morning and that is the only time you can spare him. Send that and then turn off your phone.”
Her lower lip pinched between her teeth, she tapped out the message. I saw her pause before sending though I stopped myself from asking if this was all right for her. She’d tell me if it wasn’t.
She tipped her head from side to side. Then, “Well. He read it.”
“Off.” I pointed at the device. “You’re not going to worry about anything else he has to say tonight. He’s intruded on enough of your time.”
Shay responded with a quick nod though that bottom lip was still pinned between her teeth as she set the darkened phone on her desk. When she turned back to me, I grabbed a handful of that slouchy sweater and led her to the bed. I pushed her down until she was bent over, her cheek on the duvet and her backside round and lovely where I rocked against it.
I pushed her shorts down to her knees and slipped a hand between her legs. “Have you been wet this whole time?” She bobbed her head. “And you didn’t think I’d want to know that while you rubbed my back?”
“I wanted you to feel better first.”
I palmed her ass, my fingers digging deep into the thick softness. There’d be marks tomorrow, small ones with little more than a whisper of plum as proof that I’d held these plush cheeks apart while I fucked her hard. Finding those bruises felt like a fist of thorns twisting inside my chest. This woman was small and precious and far more fragile than anyone seemed to realize, and I struggled with bringing harm to her—even when it was enthusiastically consensual. But tending to those bruises with salves and sweet words and all the adoration I could pour into her made it better. Made me feel a bit less like a depraved beast.
“Maybe I wanted you to feel better first,” I said.
“Maybe you don’t always get your way.”
I tapped my cock against her wet heat. “Didn’t get it out of your system, did you?”
Over her shoulder, she shot me a bratty grin. “I guess I need you to do it for me.”
She had no idea what I’d do to her if she truly gave me the chance.
“If that’s what you want, wife, that’s what you’ll get.”
I pushed inside her with one slow thrust and held myself there, deep and pulsing like this could be over in a minute, as she moaned into the duvet. I trailed a hand down her thigh until I reached the elastic waistband of her shorts. I twisted the band around my palm, forcing her legs together.
“What are you—ohmygod!” Her lips parted on a silent cry and she closed her eyes. “Noah.Noah.”
The pressure was insane. She was a hot, unrelenting fist around my cock and I could barely stay upright. My body wanted to rut, wanted to burn itself into her. Wanted to write promises inside her. Instead, I answered by flattening my free hand low on her back and pinning her in place as I rocked into her.
“What do you need, sweetheart?”
Her mouth moved though no sound came out. She gripped the blankets and shook her head as if she couldn’t bear another minute but then she rocked back against me like she could go all night.
“I just—I want you to want me,” she whispered.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, wife. I do. I want you so much it would scare you to know the half of it.”
“You can’t scare me,” she said, the words skittering out with each thrust. She was going to need a lot of salve and snuggles after this. Probably a thorough back rub of her own. “But go ahead and try.”
I focused on the elastic waistband where it cut off circulation to my fingers. I focused on the scrape of the headboard against the wall. On the cramp building in my left hamstring and the tattoo peeking out from her sweater. Anything but the coolly leveled challenge from the wife who should’ve been too stuffed to speak.
I couldn’t tell her the truth. Not the whole of it. Not the history or the remnants of it that shimmered around us now. That truth would scare her and it would change everything. It would rob us of the thin ice of our current perfection and it would force us to walk back in time and reexamine all those moments when I’d loved her and she’d had no idea. I couldn’t do it. Not while everything between us was fresh and fragile. Not when she was finally mine. Not with the man she was hours away from marrying just a few months ago closing in on us.
As her body quaked beneath me and she sobbed out her release, I said, “This is where you belong, Shay. This is the home and we are the family you’ve always wanted.” I shook my hand free from her shorts and leaned down to press my lips to the dandelion seeds inked on her shoulder. The ones that wanted nothing more than a place to grow and bloom. “You belong here and you belong to me.”
“What part of that is supposed to scare me?”
