The kitchen is so quiet I can hear the clock on the wall ticking. I can hear my own heartbeat. I can hear him breathing, rough and unsteady, and I watch something crack open behind his eyes that I've never seen before.
He stares at me. Not through me, not past me, not with that searching, dismissive look he's been wearing all week.
At me. Like he's seeing me for the first time.
"Kira," he says.
"Don't." My voice breaks on the word and I hate it. "Don't say my name like that if you're just going to go back to treating me like something you have to endure."
He moves towards me with that controlled urgency that makes my breath catch. His hand comes up and cups my jaw, and he tilts my face up to his.
"Say it again," he says. His voice is raw. Stripped.
"Say what?"
"That it's my failure. Say it again."
I hold his gaze and try to make his words make sense. My heart is slamming against my ribs and my hands are still shaking but I don't look away.
"It's your failure," I say.
He kisses me.
It's nothing like the wedding night. Nothing controlled or careful or measured. He kisses me like I set something alight inside him and he doesn't know how to put it out. His hands are in my hair, on my waist, pulling me against him so hard I can feel the slam of his heartbeat through his shirt.
I kiss him back. Angry and desperate and shaking with something that has nothing to do with fear. My hands fist in his shirt, leaving flour prints on the dark fabric, and I don't care. He lifts me onto the counter and I wrap my legs around him and pull him closer because I meant what I said. Every word.
He pulls back just enough to look at me. His eyes are dark. Wrecked. His thumb traces my cheekbone.
"You're right," he says. "About all of it."
"I know I am."
Something cracks across his face. Something that looks like it hurts.
"I'm sorry," he says.
I stare at him. In a week of marriage, through a cold ceremony and a colder house and a husband who held me at arm's lengthwhile I built his home around him, those are the two words I never expected to hear.
"Prove it," I say.
He touches me like a man who almost lost something and just realized what it was worth.
This kiss isn’t careful. It isn’t measured or restrained or polite. It’s teeth and tongue and the scrape of his stubble against my chin and the hard press of his hips pinning me to the edge of the counter.
He breaks away only long enough to drag his lips along my jaw, down the side of my throat. His teeth graze the place where my pulse is hammering so violently, I’m sure he can taste it.
“You’re shaking again,” he murmurs against my skin.
“Because you’re touching me like you mean it this time.”
A low sound rumbles in his chest and then his hands are under my thighs, yanking me forward until my ass is right at the edge of the granite. My legs hook automatically around his waist; the apron I’m still wearing bunches up between us, ridiculous and forgotten.
He doesn’t bother taking it off.
Doesn’t bother taking anything off properly.
One hand fists the front of my dress and hauls it up to my waist in a single rough motion. Cool air hits the damp cotton between my thighs and I gasp. His knuckles brush me through the fabric and I jerk so hard I almost slip from the counter.
