I know what she means. “Look at your ring, Lucy.”
Her head moves as she glances down automatically. The ring gleams under the dim moonlight. To Lucy, it’s the simple gold band she woke up with at St. Luke’s. To me? It’s the replacement that I slipped onto her finger the first night I had her sedated. Sure, it’s still a stock-standard Order wedding band—for now—but this one came fromme.
“You are my wife, baby. You wear my ring. I don’t give a fuck about anyone else. You got that? I love you. One day, you’ll love me. And if I have to fuck you boneless every night until that sticks, I’ll do it.” I take her bottom lip between my teeth, tuggingon it before I go in for a kiss that leaves her breathless. “I’ll do anything for you.
“You’re mine, Dandelion,” I murmur. It’s right, using her nickname again. “You always have been. You always will be. Got that?”
She lifts her hand, trailing it between my pecs again. “I don’t know, Dallas, baby. Maybe you should do what you said.” She squeezes my cock with her inner walls. “Maybe you should fuck me boneless.”
It’s the dare. The dare in her voice that is quintessential Lucy Wright. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to control myself when it came to that dare…
Before she can expect it, I do exactly what I refused to do before: I shift our position, laying her out on her back. Taking one ankle in my hand, throwing it up by my ear, I pump into her pussy until she’s keening. Only then do I finally let my cock have its way, filling her up with so much come that it’s spilling out of her pussy.
And, well, then I just had to clean her up, didn’t I? Luckily, my tongue was more than up to the job, and if the first orgasm didn’t do a fucking thing to remind Lucy who Dallas Collins really is to her, maybe the second—and the third—one would.
It didn’t, but hell if I didn’t enjoy myself trying.
TEN
SURPRISE
LUCY
The first few days were definitely weird, but a few weeks into my stay at the penthouse, I’m starting to figure out the rhythm of living with Dallas Collins.
Mornings are quiet. Afternoons stretch long and slow, usually filled with a new book or another television show. And the evenings? They belong to my husband.
He works long hours, always returning with his hair wet, his clothes fresh. I haven’t seen him in a pair of coveralls yet—though he insists that his boss, the French-sounding Sebastien, makes him wear one—since he always seems to wearing what I consider Dallas’s uniform: dark denim jeans, black boots, and tight t-shirts that show off his body so amazingly, I’m glad that he has coveralls on at work. Otherwise, I might have to worry about the female clients hitting on my husband while the sick and broken wife stays at home.
Thinking of how ruggedly striking Dallas is, probably half of the male ones, too, as if I need to give my brewing jealousy any ammunition...
I can’t help it. Maybe it’s because I just finished a mini-series where the wife suspected her husband of lying, ofcheating, but the way he always comes back to me as though he only just stepped out of the shower… I know I should trust him. That Dallas hasn’t given me any reasonnotto trust him. Still, after it happens again, I finally have to point it out.
“I don’t want to smell like exhaust,” he tells me. “Grease under my nails isn’t exactly romantic.”
He said it lightly, as though he knows what I’m really asking, and he’s gently chiding me for even having a hint of suspicion at all. But… I don’t know. I’ve noticed something strange.
His hands are never rough. Not really. I mean, there’s strength in them. Scars, too. There’s no denying that odd mark on his palm, the one that looks like he burned himself on purpose. I can’t quite make out what the design it, but I get the feeling that itisa design. And, yet, when I ask him about that, he mutters something about being ‘a stupid kid’ and joining a ‘dumb club’ before he inevitably changes the subject. So I let that pass, and focus instead on how his hands—when they’re holding mine, when he’s stroking my hair, when he gripped my body after my nightmare and helped me ride him—don’t have the kind of wear I’d expect from a mechanic who works on engines all day long.
He says he is. I believe him. Ihaveto. So I don’t push. After all, Dr. Brannigan says that’s no good for me, and I let all of the questions collect quietly in the back of my mind until they pile up enough that I blurt one or two out.
That I have to ration them… that’s a ‘me’ problem. Dallas has made himself clear. Anything I want to know, all I have to do is ask. If he can answer me, he will, even if he brushes off the topics that seem sensitive to him.
His parents.
Our estrangement.
Why it feels like it’s better if he keeps me upstairs, hiding me…
Oh, I know why he does it. He’s worried about me. I’m not recovering as fast as he thought I would, and I’ve had a few setbacks. None were as bad as how I withdrew into my room for a few days after I went crawling into Dallas’s bed. Only… that wasn’t my amnesia that had me avoiding him.
No. It was the morning after regret at how I basically threw myself at him. He told me he would wait, but I was like, ‘no, Dallas, give me dick now,’ and I’m surprised that he didn’t try to reject me a second time? Of course he’d take the chance to fuck his wife, especially if we’d been separated for so long, but I felt… I don’t know. Like he’d think differently of me for how eager I was to reconnect physically with me.
I was being silly, of course. When Dallas finally figured out the true cause of my distance—embarassment, not my amnesia—he made it his point to assure me that that night… it was one of the best he’d ever had.
I moved from my bedroom to his after our conversation, and for the last two weeks, we really have been living as husband and wife.
Do I feel like something’s going on? I do. Do I wish that Dallas would either take me out or introduce me to the friends he tells me about over meals? Uh-huh. Do I understand that he’s keeping me all to himself so that I don’t get overwhelmed with so many people that I once knew, but no longer go? Yeah. And I get that. I’m grateful that he’s looking out for me. I know I shouldn’t complain, but… it’s hard. It’s hard when I feel more like a responsibility he’s been saddled with that he’s trying to keep occupied while he still lives the ordinary life he’s led since we were apart, rather than the wife that still doesn’t know why we were separated in the first place.
