My cousin saw right through me. “It is if you married for the wrong reasons.”
Hours later, Allegra hadn’t come home. I distracted myself with dinner and cleaning the house. I’d brought down a load of laundry from my room to do, only to discover Allegra had left dirty clothes in the machine, and a pile of clean laundry on top of it. Shoving my things in with hers, I’d set the machine and thenconsidered the clothing in the basket I’d laid down on the floor. Allegra had folded the clothes that were clean and dry and piled her clean underwear on top of that.
I tried not to look too hard at the mix of lace, cotton, and silk as I lifted the basket to take to her room.
It was strange stepping inside what had been Sarah’s room. She and Theo still stayed in here at Christmas. Now they’d be relegated to the attic. I felt almost like I was trespassing in my own home as I entered the bedroom. Allegra’s scent hit my nose as I wandered slowly inside.
She hadn’t changed it much. There were scatter cushions on the bed I didn’t recognize and the duvet was different. Her things cluttered Sarah’s old dressing table. Settling the basket of laundry on the bed, I wandered over to the table. A perfume bottle shaped like a glass grenade caught my attention. Lifting it up, I noted the wordFlowerbombon it and sniffed.
My gut tightened with need as Allegra’s scent filled my senses. It wasn’t a sweet, light perfume. It was floral but earthy. Confident, assured. Sexy as fuck. Just like the woman who wore it.
Jewelry glinted on the table’s wooden surface, and I lowered the bottle. There was a pile of rings and earrings scattered across the dresser. I’d noted Allegra switched up her jewelry regularly, but she had a specific style and taste. The rings looked handcrafted, some hammered metal, some not quite smooth and perfect like they would be if they were machine-made. All of them were fairly unusual, either unadorned metal or with small stones. Not outlandish. But unique.
Kind of like their owner.
Near the jewelry was a picture frame. It also looked handcrafted and held within it a photo of Allegra with Aria. Aria was in her wedding gown and Allegra in a soft silver blue bridesmaid dress. I’d attended the wedding with a date. Allegrahad gone alone. I could admit to myself my eyes had wandered to her more than once at the wedding. The dress she wore was made of silk and had clung to her body in all the right places. She was fucking breathtaking on a normal day, but that day it almost hurt to look at her.
Sighing, I shook myself from the memory and strode back to the bed to take her laundry out of the basket.
Lifting out the pile, I laid it on her duvet but the underwear started to fall. When I reached to stop it, my fingers caught on a pair of barely there lace knickers. Hot blood flooded southward as I swallowed hard and I lifted the pants up with both hands.
Holy fuck.
Allegra was wandering around my house wearing shit like this?
The wife who was legally mine and yet I could not touch was walking around the house we shared with this under her clothes?
The image of peeling the lacy knickers down her toned thighs made me instantly hard.
Fuuuuuck.
I dropped the knickers like they burned, my eyes alighting on a bra in the same material. Lifting it up, I took in the matching bra with a hard swallow. The sheer cups were edged in the same soft pink lace.
Her nipples must be visible through this thing.
Suddenly too hot and feeling like a pervy bastard, I dropped Allegra’s underwear and hurried out of the bedroom with the emptied basket.
“This is fucking torture,” I muttered aloud as I practically threw the basket back in the utility room. Images raced through my mind that I couldn’t stop until I was restless and agitated and in desperate need of release. If I stayed in this state whenAllegra came home, I knew my willpower would break. I knew I’d initiate something we’d both regret.
I needed a shower.
A cold, very, very cold shower.
Marching back upstairs, I glowered at Allegra’s bedroom door as I passed and then undressed in my own room. My movements were hurried and furious.
And when I got in the shower, I let those images run riot in my mind. Where they were safe. Where I was allowed to fantasize about my wife in her sexy knickers and bras … and I did it with my hand wrapped around my cock.
Later that night, I lay in bed, body still thrumming with restlessness. Turning my head on the pillow, I reached out for my phone on the nightstand and pressed the side button. The screen lit up.
Two twenty-three in the morning.
Allegra hadn’t returned to the farm yet.
She’d said she was out at her studio and that she might be late … but this late?
“Bloody hell.” I huffed and slammed the phone down. Worry churned in my gut.
This was not supposed to be part of the arrangement. I did not sign up for lying in bed, wondering where the fuck my fake wife was, and feeling rising panic at her absence.
