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I move around my desk to sit before I surprise her with more than she’s ready for.
“You want—you mean—” She shakes her head dumbly, like the motion just might rattle sense into this senseless situation she’s found herself. Then she murmurs softly, “I don’t understand.”
I lean into the desk, holding her honey eyes with my much darker ones. Her breath snags in her chest. I want to force that trapped breath from her chest and swallow it into my own lungs. I’d bet it tastes a lot like deliverance. Sweet, stolen deliverance.
I hold her gaze. “When I said I wanted you to agree to be mine, I meant completely. Entirely. Mine.”
“But marriage…” she sputters.
“Marriage would ensure that you remain safe. There are very few men who would dare take what is mine.”
“A marriage in—in name—only?”
Oh, my hopeful little captive. I ask, “Do you not understand the meaning of mine, Ruby?”
“I—”
“You will be my wife in every sense of the word.”
“But…” She’s on the edge of panic now.
I stand and round the desk again. She watches, frozen, as I stalk toward her. For the second time tonight, I bracket her small body in the chair, leaning down to position myself above her. Slowly, firmly, I say, “You will be my wife. You will take my last name. You will sleep next to me in my bed.” I don’t know where the demand comes from. I’d always intended for my wife to sleep in her own room, accessible to me, of course. But not in my space. That’s why I have the adjoined rooms.
I’d also intended to propose to Anya. But that was before Ruby.
I continue. “I will taste your lips.” I let my gaze trail down the length of her body. “And every inch of your delectable body.” She shivers, but stays silent. I’m not certain she’s even breathing. “You will take my cock and bear my children. You will remain loyal to me until your dying breath, and you will honor me with obedience and submission. You will keep my secrets, and bare your own to me. In return, you will have my protection.”
Surprising me, she tips her little chin up in defiance. “And what of your loyalty?”
I’ve never intended to be loyal to the woman I took as my wife. But again, I’d thought that woman would be Anya. And she’d never minded my straying, so long as I always came back to her. Her goal had been my name and money. Never me.
“You want my loyalty?” I don’t know why this surprises me. I don’t know why she would care.
“I don’t want a husband who shames me with infidelity. I don’t want a husband who betrays my trust and faith—who?—”
I cut her off. “Give me something worth my loyalty, and you will have it.”
Her mouth snaps shut. “Are you saying you would agree to be loyal? To me? Completely?”
I dip lower, so low I can taste the short puffs of her sweet breath.
I want to kiss her. It would be nothing to close the distance now, to claim her as I’d ached to claim her these last two months. I bet I could have her panting and bent over my desk in—no. Not yet. I might get her to pant for it, but she’d hate me after.
“Like I said, if you give yourself to me completely, and willingly, I will honor my vows.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I’m a man. I like to fuck, and I fuck often.” She flinches at my words. So sweet. “Taking a woman against her will has never been a kink of mine.”
Her face flares with heat and her pretty eyes bulge.
I’d bet money her definition of a kink is to fuck from behind with the lights on. She’s probably only been fucked in the dark, soft and slow, by the two-pump twenty-something who jacks off to thoughts of her sitting in the church pew beside him.
The idea has something foreign and unpleasant rearing in my gut, burning a path into my chest. Jealousy.
I’m jealous of the two-pump twenty-something from her church. Miles, I’d discovered from my investigations into her life.
But Miles won’t be an issue now. Because now, her life belongs to me.
