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I don’t recall him getting into bed. After two very intense orgasms, I’d been dead to the world the second my head hit the pillow. Funny, I’d figured the shame of them would eat me alive well into the night.
Now, I wish I could have stayed asleep all day, because my husband is looking at me over his cup of coffee while I clutch my tea, and his eyes tell me he isn’t willing to let me get away without answering his question.
And, boy, it’s a question I don’t want to answer.
“Ruby.” He sets his coffee on the table, leaning into it. He repeats his question, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I play dumb. “Tell you what?”
Maybe, if I put him on the spot, he won’t want to continue with this mortifying conversation.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were a virgin?”
Well, there goes that.
Does the man even know what it is to be embarrassed?
My cheeks are on fire. No, my entire body is on fire. And yet, I’m shivering. My shot nerves have been shot for so long, one would think I’d figure out how to live like this. Alas, I have not.
I wiggle under the pressure of his gaze. My lips part, close, and part again. Then, at a loss, I shrug.
“Ruby.” There is a warning in his voice I should heed. I don’t.
“Kirill.” I return his tone. And then I shake my head. “I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t know how.”
He raises a brow. “A simple ‘I’m a virgin’ would have sufficed.”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
He rubs his hand through his short beard. “Too bad. I do.”
Over my cup, I glare at him as I force myself to take a small sip of my tea.
He presses, “How is it that a twenty-three-year-old woman, raised in the most flippant society in the world, remained a virgin?”
There’s a lot to unpack in that question. I don’t bother. I just mutter, “It might seem archaic and anarchic, but I was raised that way. And—for me—it had meant something.” I stare down into my tea. “Once upon a time, anyway.”
His voice is thrown gravel, rough. “It means everything to me.”
I can’t help it; I roll my eyes. “You’re a man. Making a woman bleed when you shove it in the first time is always special.”
He responds to the bitter sarcasm in my voice with a hard, cool glare. I fight against the shiver that wants to break out over my body. I think, not for the first time, about abandoning the breakfast dishes and moving closer to the fireplace where Simba—the smarter of the three of us—is curled up.
“Knowing that I am the only man you have been with, or will ever be with, is what is special to me, Ruby.”
“Why?” I demand. “What does it matter if I’ve slept with a hundred men?”
Anger flashes in his eyes. “It matters because I would have a hundred men to hunt down and end.”
My jaw drops. I scoff, “You’re ridiculous.”
“I am obsessed,” he returns easily. “And you are mine. All the parts of you are mine, wife. One day you will come to accept that. Until then, the point of this conversation isn’t to argue.”
“What is the point, then?”
“The point, dear wife, is to tell you that I will not have you keeping secrets from me like the one you kept last night.”
“What does it matter, Kirill?”
