AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I clear my throat. “What are you doing in my room?”
He cocks his head only slightly to the side. “Am I not to spend my wedding night with my wife?”
Oh God. He means to—to—I’m not ready.
Sucking in a deep breath for bravery, I skirt around him as I edge my way along the wall to the closet. I just need some clothes. Something more for this discussion. A shield.
I’m almost there when a big, hot, calloused hand closes around my arm. My heart lurches to a stop and I stumble, catching myself against the wall and him.
“Whoa,” he eases, stepping far too close. The scent of him swarms me, overpowering the calming scent of rose with cedar and flame. He tsks. “Don’t run from me, Ruby.”
“I—I need to get dressed.” I mean for the words to sound firm, but they fall on a barely audible whisper.
His jaw pulses. “I won’t take your body until you are ready.”
My glare snaps to his eyes. “I’ll never be ready for that.”
“You will,” he says assuredly. His confidence nearly floors me. “I won’t force you to fuck me, but you are my wife. As I explained before you agreed to be mine, I will sleep next to you each night.” His free hand lifts to snag my chin between thumb and finger, before his thumb slides firmly up over my chin to smooth over my lower lip. “I will kiss you, whenever, and wherever, I want.” From the depths of his dark eyes, I swear I see a spark of something, a flame, flare. “I will touch you and watch as you come apart beneath my hand, but I won’t put my body inside yours until,” he leans in to speak against my ear. He’s so close, I can feel the soft tickle of his lips against the delicate, sensitive skin. My breath shudders. My body, too. He finishes, “Until you beg me.”
I’m horrified.
I’m horrified by his words, by the vulgarity of them.
I’m horrified by him. But more, I’m horrified because, even as his words are vulgar and should fill me with disgust, that dangerous spark that flared in his dark eyes must have transferred to me somehow. Because way deep inside the core of me, something uncomfortable and hot grows. My belly is in knots, and even though my thighs are wet from the water of my shower, I feel a new kind of spilled heat between my legs. It assaults me with a shame unlike any I’ve ever known in my life.
I’ve always sought to be a good girl. To do the right thing by Mama and Daddy, to make them proud. I’ve tried to live true to my faith. To honor my body and this life I’ve been given with goodness.
But this doesn’t feel good.
It feels wrong. So, so wrong. And, yet, so right…
My mind fractures, thoughts fraying. My body quivers. My lungs seize as I try to suck in desperate breaths. To make sense of everything.
He steps in even closer, the scent of him—the heat radiating off his body—the mass of him—it’s all so much. I tremble, even as I glare up at him. I’m a doe caught between the deadly claws of a grizzly.
He’s going to shred me.
His voice pitches low. The darkness in his eyes flares with a hunger that terrifies and ignites me as they drop to my lips.
He wets his lips.
My core spasms.
I’m going to hell.
He curses low under his breath. When he speaks, there is spilled gravel in his tone. “Is a husband not entitled to taste his wife’s mouth on his wedding night?”
I sneer. I’m not sure if I’m angry at the audacity of this man, or at myself for the way my body betrays me so quickly for him.
“A husband is entitled to nothing. That doesn’t mean you won’t take it, anyway.”
His jaw hardens. His voice is smooth. “You’re right.”
I didn’t expect that reply, and for a moment, I’m speechless. Then fear quickens inside me. My fingers curl into useless fists. “I hate you.”
There’s a muscle ticking in his jaw now. He’s frustrated, but he only steps away from me. I watch, breaths falling heavily into the space he vacates as he moves to my bed. He claims the side closest to the door, to my escape.
I watch, unmoving, as he sheds his suit jacket and then his watch. When he moves thick fingers to the buttons of his black dress shirt, popping one and then two through the holes, I think I forget to breathe.
