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“Give is a rather nice word.” He laughs. “Don’t you remember how hard you struggled to force it onto my finger?”
I grimace. That doesn’t sound familiar, yet it sounds sadly believable, given the state I was in. “Sorry. Clearly I couldn’t afford actual gold.” I hold out a hand and he lets me take his hand, tracing my fingers over the metal. I glance up at him, my cheeks bright red again, for reasons I can’t quite put a name to now. “You don’t have to wear it, you know,” I say.
“I know,” he replies, those dark eyes fixed on mine, inscrutable, impossible to tear my gaze away from. “But I want to,” he says, so simply that it feels like a bolt to my chest, a spark of sheer desire that ignites me.
He wants to. This wealthy as hell billionaire businessman, who could have anyone and anything in the world he wanted, wants to wear the shitty, green ring that I bought him in a pawn shop.
“Where did you get this one?” I ask, with a smile, fingering the ring on my own hand next. “The same shop, or did we do a pawn shop hop all down the strip searching?”
Something flashes across his face. Hesitation? But it’s gone the moment I glimpse it. “That was my mother’s ring,” he says, and whatever answer I expected, it isn’t that.
My stomach does a strange little flip of desire, and my thighs tighten, as I consider the ring in a whole new light. “But…”
He shakes his head. “She gave it to me years ago. Family heirloom. I usually carry it with me as a sort of good luck token, but after we met, well… it seemed like the right moment to part with it.”
My throat works tightly when I swallow. “How does your mother feel about it?” I ask, not sure whether I want to know the answer just yet. Did he tell her about us? “About you giving this to someone you barely know, I mean.”
“I didn’t tell her yet,” he answers, simply as that, his gaze still fixed on mine.
It’s the yet that catches me. “Why not?”
“I want you to meet her.”
I snort. He just stares at me, and I realize he wasn’t kidding. “Meet her? What, like this is an actual…” I shake my head. “We barely know each other, John. And now, you’re my boss, it’s not proper, there’s—”
“We were married before you started working for me.” He waves a hand, as if that wave can make all the worries fade away. “And I don’t give a damn about propriety. I know what I want. Do you?”
“I…” I clamp my mouth shut. No. I have no idea. That’s what I want to say, but I stop myself.
It doesn’t seem to matter. He can read it all over my face, just like he can read everything. All my moods, as easily as if I were a neon sign. His expression shifts, hurt flashing across his face briefly, and it settles in my gut like a stone.
I hurt him. Why does it feel so terrible? Why do I wish I could just reach across the table between us and wipe the frown off his face?
But I can’t. Because I don’t know what I want yet. An annulment or… No. That’s the only choice. The only option. The only sane thing I can want is an annulment, just like we said from the start.
Luckily, I’m temporarily saved from replying as the waiter stops by our table with another course, followed quickly by the bartender asking our opinion on the new cocktails. It temporarily saves me from having to think about that brief flash of hurt on John’s face. From wondering why, deep down, a little part of me is starting to question… What if we didn’t fix this?
But that’s crazy talk. Isn’t it?
7
John
I wait until our audience clears out again before I reach back beneath the table to cup Mara’s knee again. She feels so soft beneath my touch, even through the fabric of her jeans—such a contrast to her hands, which, like mine, are rough with callouses. I love those contrasts in her. Smooth and hard, soft and stubborn. She’s like no one I’ve ever met, except for maybe myself.
She’ll see that soon. She’ll realize this is meant to be.
I just have to make her see it.
Even now, as I caress her leg, my fingers slowly inching upward, she doesn’t pull away from me like she would have before. She goes still, and lets me touch her, hand wandering higher, higher.
“I don’t want to hide this, Mara,” I say softly, and she leans toward me, her body responding even when her mind tries to refuse.
“Hide what?” she murmurs, her gaze distracted, her eyes half focused on the table, her mind surely stuck underneath it, where my fingers have reached almost the top of her inner thigh, the fabric warm from her skin, searing hot against my palm. I dig my fingers in a little harder, make her lips part in an almost gasp, before I let my fingertips rest along the crease of her jeans, ever so lightly.
She shifts in her seat, pushing a little toward my hand, even as she tries to hold herself back.
“I want the world to know you’re my wife,” I say, and at that moment, I give her what she wants. I press down harder, my fingertips rubbing against the denim, sending friction straight to her clit.
She gasps, and clutches at the edge of the tablecloth, pulling it over her lap even further, as if that will make it less obvious what’s happening here.
It makes me grin. She can be so naïve at times. So worldly at others. Full of contradictions, my wife.
“Why?” she breathes, her voice coming quick and low. “Why would you want that?” Her gaze finds mine, her eyes wide and blue and filled with questions. Questions, and something else. A searing heat that I recognize from our wedding night together.
She wants me, just as badly as I want her.
Which is going to make this all the more fun. I smile. “Because I’m selfish,” I tell her. “When I decide I want something, I can’t bear the thought of losing it. And when it comes to you, well…” I shift my fingers against her, three of them now, rubbing her through the fabric of her pants. “I don’t want anyone even thinking they can take you from me. You’re mine, Mara.”
She arches up in her seat, pushing against me in spite of herself, her breath coming faster, her face and her chest both flushed that lovely shade of crimson I so enjoy drawing out of her. “But… Aren’t you worried it will be… embarrassing? If we… if it… if the marriage fails…” Her breath starts to stutter as I continue to stroke her, slow and steady, never enough to take her all the way to orgasm. Just enough to edge her closer and closer to the peak.
“It won’t fail,” I reply simply. “You’re my wife. Now. Forever. That’s how marriage works, isn’t it?”
“But this… but we…” She can’t muster up the argument. Not with how dizzy she is from what I’m doing to her under this table right now.
What I don’t expect, however, is for her to turn the tables on me. The next thing I know, her palm is flat against my lap, her fingers tracing the hard, thick bulge against the seam of my jeans, where I’m already hard just from thinking about her, sitting across from her, watching her lick a drop of her cocktail from her upper lip.
Everything about this woman drives me wild, in the best possible way. And I don’t want it to stop.
I don’t want any of this to stop.
So as her fingers inch around me, stroking me hesitantly at first, then more firmly, I stretch out my free hand to flag the waitstaff casually.
I pay, even as I reach over to catch the back of Mara’s chair and slide her close to me. “I can’t wait any longer,” I whisper against her neck, my lips finding her skin, tasting her, touching her. I trail my tongue up along the crease of her neck, up to her ear, which makes her whole body shiver deliciously against mine. “I need to have you again, wife.”
Another shiver, this time elicited by that one word alone. It thrills me, how much power I have over her, just from that simple term. It makes me want to get her out of here, into my car, somewhere where I can call her that again and again until she’s screaming “husband” in return.
The very thought makes my grin turn wolfish.
I sign the bill in a heartbeat, and in the next, I pull us both up out of our seats. I scoop her into my arms once more, against her protests and groans about embarrassment. But this time, I need to carry her in order to hide the raging hard-on she’s given me, so she can hardly complain. I tell her so and enjoy the new flush on her cheeks as she bows her head against my chest, giving up, at least for the moment.
