Inhaling slowly, he presses his lips into a hard line, but he doesn’t tell me that it’s okay. Instead, he grabs my hips and pushes back inside of me. His dick is still rock-hard as he fucks me in short, angry thrusts that hurtle me toward a release that I already know will feel bittersweet. But my body doesn’t care that the air has turned cold between us. My body doesn’t care that guilt has already settled like a rock in my stomach.
My body doesn’t care that I might have just ruined things as I orgasm, squeezing my eyes tightly shut and hiding from the factthat I can’t give the man who has made it his mission to give me everything the one thing that he needs.
I feel his dick harden right before he comes, his hot release flooding my sex. “I need to get cleaned up before work,” he says, pressing a kiss to the middle of my back before he slides his dick out of me and shuffles off the bed, leaving me alone.
We’ve had a lot of sex in the last four days, and this is the first time he’s ever left me like this. I know I deserve it, but tears still fill my eyes and slide down my cheeks. Quickly wiping them away, I roll over and sit up against the pillow, pulling my knees into my chest and wrapping my arms around them.
When the shower starts running, I know I should get up and go to him, but I don’t know if he’ll welcome me or tell me to leave. He’s asked so little of me since we met, that refusing to do as he wants, makes me feel like the user I was worried I’d become after he took my last first.
He’s given me a home, money, clothes…love…and asked for nothing but my trust, and now this in return. He wants us to get married. That’s not a bad thing. I’ve lost count of the number of times he’s called me his and told me this is forever, but marriage is permanent and real.
Truthfully, I had no idea I cared this much about wedding vows. But the moment he told me we were getting married; I realized that I do care. I care a lot, and I don’t want to agree to marry him on a whim. I want to say yes to him when I know with absolute certainty that he won’t change his mind, and that I won’t change mine.
Everything that’s happened between us so far has all been instinctual for him, or at least that’s what he told me. He said the moment he saw me, he knew I was his, but how could he possibly know? Love at first sight isn’t real, and I want us to be real.
I want us to know everything about each other. I want us to plan a life together and have known each other long enough tounderstand how that life will look. I’m a result of a whim. My parents met at a bar and had a one-night stand that ended with a baby. They thought they were in love, but it turns out they were barely in like, and a month after I was born, my mom left, and neither of us ever saw her again.
My dad felt nothing for her, and I’m not sure he ever felt anything for me either. I might have been his child, but I was a throwaway kid, from a throwaway woman, after a throwaway night. I don’t want that.
I want a real relationship and a real life, and I want Warrick, but if I’m not brave enough to tell him that I love him, then I know I’m not brave enough to know for sure that I should marry him.
When the water in the shower cuts off, I turn to the door and wait, bracing myself for his anger. But instead when he passes the bed, he leans down and kisses me, then heads to the closet to get dressed in his uniform. His Rockhead Peak Rural Firefighters T-shirt is just a hint too small, the fabric clinging to his enormous biceps and stretching temptingly across his chest. His cargo pants and work boots are far sexier than they should be, and fresh tears pool in my eyes, because I love this kind, sweet, sexy man, and I hurt him and hate myself for it.
“Warrick,” I whisper.
“Yeah, amore mio,” he says, picking up the bag he packed last night from the floor and striding over to me.
“I—”
Cupping my cheek, he leans down and kisses me, silencing what I’d planned to say. “We’ll talk about it when I get home in a few days.”
“Okay,” I say weakly.
“I meal prepped all of your meals, so all you have to do is warm them up in the oven or the microwave, okay?”
I nod.
“Make sure you eat, Verity. I want the refrigerator empty when I get home.”
“I’ll eat.”
“I love you, amore mio. Promise me you’ll be here when I get home,” he demands, his words sounding almost desperate.
“I promise,” I say, and I mean it. I won’t leave. Maybe I should. Maybe the best thing for him would be if we’d never met, but it’s too late for that, and I refuse to do anything that would hurt him any more than I already have.
“Promise me,” he says emphatically.
“I promise,” I tell him, locking my gaze with his so he can see the truth in my eyes.
“You’ll eat, rest, watch hockey, hang out with the Barnetts and the other wives, and you’ll sleep in our bed, wearing my shirt.”
“Okay.”
“But you won’t make yourself come.”
“Okay,” I agree easily.
“I don’t care how needy you get; you won’t touch yourself.”
