“Did you want it that way?”
Her heart thumped as his gaze probed hers. The flickering firelight deepened his predatory intensity. She felt like a cornered rabbit, the instinct for self-preservation coupled with a paradoxical thrill. That of being…seen.
“It is what you wanted,” she ventured.
“Is it whatyouwanted? For your husband to make love to you once a week, per the schedule?”
“I wanted to be a good wife.” She moistened her lips as the truth seeped from the cracks in her heart. “To please you.”
His smoldering gaze caused her pulse to race with alarm and longing.
“What would please me most is to hear whatyouwant, Gabriella,” he said. “Are you satisfied with supper once a week, each of us going our own merry way? A once-a-week bedding on a specified schedule?” A pause. “A husband who tells you he doesn’t believe in love?”
Her breath caught on a jagged edge. “How did you…?”
“You told me. When you were drunk.”
Her temples tightened. “I shouldn’t have said—”
“I wanted the truth from you then, and I want it now.” He didn’t blink. “Are you happy with the way things were?”
Confronted, panicked, with nowhere to run, she stilled—and the answer flashed in her head. She saw fully, for the first time, the price she’d paid for security. For eight years, the limits and routines of her marriage had kept her safe, but those walls she’d hidden behind had also been a cage.
“I want more.” In her admission, she heard the click of a key, felt the tremble of something shifting, opening within herself. “I always have.”
“How much more?”
Is he really going to make me confess my deepest desires?
He would, for she recognized his focused calm. She’d witnessed him in this state throughout their marriage. When he was about to close a difficult business deal or when the children got too rambunctious. Or the time when she’d been overtaken by despair after Max’s birth.
This was the way Adam got before he stepped in and conquered the chaos. Before he made everything all right. Because he’d always done that for her, even when he’d been clear that romantic love wouldn’t be part of the equation for him.
Yet Adam now wasn’t the same as Adam then. He seemed less god-like and more human. He’d pushed for intimacy between them, had even helped her to realize a truth about herself. He made her feel beautiful and wanted, not just because of her wifely aptitudes, but simply for being…herself.
“I want all of you.” The words welled up, unstoppable as her tears. “I want a marriage of hearts and minds and bodies, too. I want nothing between us. Nothing.”
“Then we are in accord, my sweet wife.” In a lightning-fast move, he was by her side, thumbing away her tears. Then he scooped her up in his arms. Her hands landing on his rock-hard chest, she was captivated by the ferocity of his expression. “Because when it comes to our marriage, I won’t settle for less than everything.”
22
Adam carriedhis wife to her bedchamber, his heart pounding with wonder and pride. She was a fantasy come true, and she was his. Whatever the reasons behind their prior stupid arrangement—not for the first time, he wanted to knock some sense into his old self—he planned to erase it from her mind, replace it with what he wanted from her now.
What she’d so bravely admitted she wanted too.
Everything.
He set her on her feet by the bed, tipping her chin up.
“Tonight, we start over,” he told her. “I don’t give a damn that it’s not Wednesday. From now on, I won’t limit my desire for you in any way.”
“I don’t want you to. I want to please you, Adam. It’s…it’s all I’ve ever really wanted.”
Her sweet submission swelled his cock with lust, his chest with tenderness.
“Your trust is a gift, sweetheart,” he said, his voice hoarse with reverence. “But if I ever do something you don’t like, you will tell me, hmm? I want honesty between us at all times.”
She nodded, then sighed with pleasure as he ran a possessive hand through her hair. The lamplight turned her tresses into molten copper, and he reveled in the satiny slide between his fingers. When he got tangled, the slight tug on her scalp made her neck arch, her eyelids growing heavy. He made note of her reaction, the way he made note of everything where she was concerned.
