Page 22 of Claimed By the Silver Fox

I could get to my feet, head down the corridor, tell the guards to take the rest of the evening off, and pick up right where we left off on the night of the wedding, just like she hinted at when she came in here yesterday…

Or I could stick to my guns and my good sense and stay right the fuck where I am.

I know if I give in to my instincts, I will regret it, as hard as it is to convince myself of that right now. Shit, I need to get some rest. I’ve hardly been sleeping, snapping upright at every little thing, worried that Salamanca is going to use Andreo’s knowledge to launch an attack on this place whether I’m ready for it or not.

I get up, heading toward my room. The guards are dotted around the entire mansion now, hardly a square yard that isn’t overseen by someone or other. I need to relax, at least for now. There’s nothing more I can do. No doubt Salamanca is counting on me stressing myself out to the point that I make a mistake or leave a gap that he can exploit…

I reach my bedroom and head straight to the ensuite, where I switch on the shower, the sound of the rushing water drowning out my thoughts, at least for a moment. And then my mind drifts to Julia getting out of the shower, that towel, the way it barely covered her body. Her damp hair clinging to her skin, like it was carving out the shape of her, reminding me just how fucking good it felt to undress her when she came to my office on the night of the wedding. Still in that virginal white dress, though the things she did once I had it off told me she had way more experience than I could have imagined.

I strip down and step into the shower, tipping my head back and letting the water rush over me. Shit, I need to get myself together.

But instead, I find myself thinking of her again—thinking of how much I wish she was in here with me, taking this shower right alongside me, her damp, naked body against mine beneath the water.

My cock is already stirring at the thought, and I close my eyes and lean back against the tiled wall, wrapping my hand around my erection and trying to pull myself together. I ache for the feel of her warmth around me once again, the feel of her body against mine. The way she arched into me, the way she whimpered when I stroked deep inside of her. The way the two of us fit together like we were made for each other, like we had been designed to come together like that. Tearing the white lingerie from her pale skin and marking her with my hands, my kisses, in every way she wanted me to.

If she was here, I would pin her against the wall and fuck her beneath the running water. I’d wrap my arms around her, face in her neck, breathing in the scent of her. I begin to stroke myself as the fantasy deepens in my head, so vivid and so stark it’s almost as though she’s right here with me.

Fuck, I need her, want her, would do anything to have her, as wrong as I know it is.

I can almost hear her whines in my ear, the way her body rose and rose in tension until she crested over the edge and came crashing down into her release. I crave the feeling of her coming again, the sure sign that she wants me, needs me.

The look on her face when she came to my office to broach the subject again is burned into my mind, and I don’t know how the hell I resisted bending her over and fucking her again right then and there.

Maybe I should have.

Maybe I will…

I imagine her eyes growing hazy as she tries to keep her gaze on mine, her arms and legs wrapped around me, slick, soapy breasts pressed into my chest. Her folds spread around my cock, enveloping every inch of me, taking me in like there’s nothing she wants more in the world. Her nails rake down my back, her body bucking and moving against mine as she tries to take me deeper and deeper, until…

My cock twitches in my hand, and suddenly I come back to reality—the sound of the water rushing around me, the heat of the steam filling the shower. I spurt my seed down the drain, wishing more than anything that I could be finishing into her, taking her, taking my wife in the shower…

Fuck. My wife. It is the first time I’ve really thought of her in those terms, though I know, of course, that they are accurate. I’m married to her now, and that means that I owe her more than just the coldness I’ve been meeting her with since she arrived here.

It might not be how I imagined finding a wife, but hell, sometimes in this line of work, you have to accept there are things you could never have expected—shit that would never make sense if you heard it out of context, but you do what you have to in order to keep the people who matter safe.

I reach for the shampoo, still breathing hard, the remnants of my orgasm still coursing through my body. I hope to hell and back that this will have gotten Julia out of my system. But I have a bad feeling that it’s only going to burn the thought of her into me even deeper.

I think of the camera, watching over her, and wonder just how much that feed might let me see if I look again.

And how much I want it to be everything.

11

JULIA

I fluff my hand through my hair, putting on my best wide-eyed, innocent look. I have no idea if they’re going to buy it, but hell, I have to give it a try, right?

It has been four days—four days since that confrontation with Antonio in his office, when he made it clear that he wasn’t going to let me walk out of this place without a fight. No divorce, no calm breakup, no amicable release where I could just go back to the life I knew before. No, I’m in this for the long haul now. Which means I need to start testing the boundaries, figuring out exactly what I can and can’t get away with.

It feels like being a teenager again. Shit, it feels like being back with Andreo, though I’m trying not to grant that fucker too much room in my head.

Now that I have some distance from him, I can see all the ways he made my life hell, all the ways he closed in the walls around me and gave me no choice but to live by the rules he deemed right for me. Which just so happened to involve me staying in our apartment unless he was with me, and giving him blow-by-blow accounts of everything that happened on those rare occasions he granted me my freedom.

Because he was so sure I was going to run off and start cheating on him the first chance I got. Crazy, looking back, that I put up with that crap. He convinced me it was nothing but kindness on his part, that he wanted me to be safe, that he would provide everything I could possibly ask for so why would I need to go out alone, anyway? I didn’t need a job, or to study, or to worry about what I was going to do down the line, because he would always be there for me.

And look how that turned out.

I can see now that it kind of fits that my first real relationship would be with someone who matched so closely to the dynamic that my own parents put me through. Those closed doors, suffocating walls, screaming matches when I did anything wrong, that’s all I had known as a kid, so of course I went stumbling straight into it when I was old enough to make choices for myself.