Amusement flickers through me, alien and unwelcome, but I don’t push it away. “Fainting would have been… inconvenient.”
Her lips curve just slightly. “Terrible start to a marriage of convenience.”
Convenience. That’s what I told her this is. Temporary. A contract.
Good.
Better she believes it. Because nothing about the way I want her is convenient. It’s a problem. A risk. A red stain spreading beneath a locked door.
We drive in silence for a few minutes. She stares out the window as the mansion comes into view through pine trees and snowfall, and I study her profile. The slope of her cheek, the soft line of her mouth still pink from my kiss.
A kiss that should have meant nothing. Should have been forgotten the moment it ended. Instead, it’s stamped into me like a brand.
“I don’t know anything about you,” she murmurs suddenly.
“You know enough,” I answer. Because to me, she does. I’m the heir to this family and I need an heir of my own. What more does she need to know?
She turns to face me fully. “Actually… no. I don’t. I don’t know what you like. What you hate. What makes you laugh. What makes you rage.”
I hold her gaze, every muscle taut. “All things you’ll learn in time.”
“In time for it all to be over?” she asks, voice so small it’s nearly invisible.
The car slows at the entrance. Guards nod. Gates open.
“Vitali?” she whispers, fingers tightening on her dress.
I look at her hand. So small. So breakable. My own curls into a fist to keep from claiming more than I should right now.
“Yes, Charlotte?”
“When the baby is weaned…” She swallows. “You’ll let me go?”
A strange ache pulses through me, violent and uninvited.
“That is what the contract stipulated.” My voice is a locked door.
But inside, something screams. And I already know I won’t survive her leaving.
The car stops. I step out first, offering my hand. She takes it, trusting me to guide her.
I lead her into the family mansion, to the wing we will inhabit for the next fifteen months until the baby is weaned and the contract ends.
She quietly takes it all in and then turns to me, a blush creeping over her chest, up her neck and staining her cheeks.
I should give her time to settle in. Get used to the way the world feels beneath her feet now. But I want her beneath me, gasping, pleading, filled with me until I’m certain my child is growing inside her.
I want her claimed in every way a man can claim a woman; body, name, soul.
“This is all ours until the baby is six months old,” I say, closing the carved door behind me.
I take her hand in mine, wanting the contact, but also needing to lead her. I made a promise to myself that I would go gently onher, ease her in at least for tonight. But the more we stand here alone delaying the inevitable, the harder it is becoming to fight the urge to fuck her senseless right here in the foyer.
Her gaze flits to the staircase, then back to me, wide-eyed.
“Now?” she asks, voice trembling.
My control is a thread stretched thinner than glass.
