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“Don’t make me say it again.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Somewhere between his mouth on my shoulder and that one word, I’ve stopped agreeing to things and started asking for them.
He starts moving again, harder now, and I stop thinking altogether. My body has figured out what it wants before the rest of me has caught up, meeting him more easily whenever he moves into me.
Heat pools low in my stomach until my breathing turns uneven. “Asher...”
“I know, puppy.”
His rhythm goes ragged behind me as he folds over my back, one arm wrapping around my chest while the other holds my bound wrists.
“Gonna fill my husband up,” he growls into my neck.
I close my eyes. The word is still strange enough to make something turn over inside me. Husband. But I push back into him anyway, and whatever control Asher has left goes with it.
He drives deep and holds there, shaking against me as he comes.
“That’s it,” he pants. “Take all of it.”
I’m wrung out beneath him, trembling and still aching for the release he hasn’t given me yet.
He pulls away and immediately reaches above my head for the belt. The knot comes loose, my arms dropping until he catches my wrists and rubs his thumbs over the marks.
“Over. Now.”
Asher rolls me onto my back like I weigh nothing, then disappears down my body, forcing my thighs apart with his shoulders. His mouth closes over my cock and takes me deep in one movement. My toes curl hard into the sheets, both hands flying into his hair as a moan tears out of me and my eyes roll shut.
“Asher... Light.”
I’m already too close. He knows it, taking me deeper as his hands hold my hips still and his throat works around me.
The orgasm hits before I can prepare for it. My vision whites at the edges, my whole body locking as I come down his throat with his name breaking apart in my mouth.
He stays there through the last pulse, swallowing before easing back. His tongue traces slowly over me, cleaning what he missed, and when I force my eyes open, I find him watching me while the little metal ball glides over the underside of my softening cock. Even now, my body tries to respond.
Giving the head one last lazy lick, he crawls back up my body and lowers his weight carefully over me, kissing me with the taste of both of us still in his mouth. “There,” he murmurs against my lips. “Now we’re married.”
For a while, neither of us moves. He lies half over me, one leg caught between mine, his head tucked beside my shoulder while my fingers stay loosely tangled in his hair. Rain drums harder against the roof, running from the eaves in sheets, and beyond the glass the river has disappeared into the dark. For the first time since the pines, my head is quiet.
Asher shifts beneath my hand. “Don’t move.” Then he gets up anyway.
I watch him cross the room naked, taking the champagne bottle from the table and drinking straight from it. Firelight moves across his back as he swallows, then sets the bottle down and disappears into the bathroom. Water runs for a moment, followed by the sound of a cupboard opening and closing.
He comes back carrying a warm cloth and a glass of water. “Drink this. All of it.”
I do, only realizing how thirsty I am when I don’t stop until the glass is empty.
“When did you last eat?” he asks, taking the glass from me and running the warm cloth over my stomach.
“I ate on the ship, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Of course you did.” He moves the cloth over my thighs, careful around the sore spots. “Ryven drags you onto a three-day crossing and remembers to feed you occasionally. Cousin of the year.”
“Technically, he didn’t abduct me.” I watch him turn one of my wrists beneath the light, his thumb passing over the red line left by the belt. “You did.”
His mouth twitches. “And now you’re married to me.”
