The devil.
He’d been inside Cassandra, for God’s sake. He’d kissed her soundly, he’d held her hand, but they hadn’t, to his recollection, simply embraced. If they had, he would have remembered the way her body fit to his—not when lying on a bed, but when standing, as they were now.
Everything between them had been backwards from the start. He intended to reverse course.
Now.
“I’m taking you to bed.”
Not a stated desire, as inyou’re the one I want. Right now. In that bed. Nor a question, but a statement of unambiguous intent.
A fact.
He bent down, cupped the back of her already bended knees and then lifted her from the floor. She wasn’t heavy, and yet every one of his muscles strained.
Anticipation left him taut. Taut and yet vibrating everywhere, allat once. If he were a string, he’d be emitting a low, clear, and soulful sound, much like he was humming a growl of possession.
She crossed her ankles, stroking one of her calves with the other while flexing her toes. The bedframe squeaked in protest beneath his knee. His ears pricked, praying the sound had not disturbed the pup.
All he heard was Cassandra’s heartfelt sigh.
Gently, he released her onto the bed. As her head sank into the pillow, he followed her single, dark braid’s line as the weave snaked around her neck and then down into the valley between her breasts. Even wretched with need, he could still derive profound pleasure from simply gazing at his wife.
He settled by her side, crooked his elbow over the pillow, and rested his cheek on his fist. Her breath was light and fast, her upper arms covered in gooseflesh. Her flushed skin betrayed her hunger for his touch.
He wondered how he could have ever thought her unresponsive. Then, he remembered.
The last time they’d lain thusly, she’d been hesitant and still, meeting his gaze either to then quickly close her eyes or to turn away. This time, she was gazing at him as if he had the answers to every possible question in the universe.
Her confidence gave him a sense of pride—false pride. He didn’t have any answers.
Where bedding was concerned, he hardly knew more than she did. He’d been so inept at seduction on their wedding night, when she’d reached out to him, he’d kissed her and told her he washonored.
He suppressed a snort.
Excellent way to express yourself, Lothario.
This time he intended to keep theintimateinintimacy. To do so, however, he’d need to take a risk. And he’d need to keep her connected to him, verbally, physically, imaginatively.
“Touch me again,” he urged. “Anywhere.”
Her thickly lashed eyes closed, briefly, only to reopen, focused on his throat.
“That is,” he amended, “if you’d like.”
“Wouldn’t my touching you be strange?” She raised her gaze. “For you?”
“Not strange.” He paused. “Erotic.” His groin tightened with anticipation “Exciting.”New. “Go ahead…”
With hesitant, feather-soft fingers, she traced from his cheekbones, up his nose, over his eyebrows, then down past his ear. Finally, her hand rested against his jaw. She touched him as if she couldn’t see him at all. In truth, he was revealing more to her than he’d ever expected to show anyone ever again.
He offered himself purposely, shielding nothing, leaving every emotion billowing up plain on his face. Not just his needs—carnal and those even deeper—but also raw, unbidden frailty spiking up from hidden, empty places, empty places he had once believed could only be filled by someone else.
Only Viv had seen those wounds.
The vulnerabilities he’d revealed to her, however, had been unintentional. He simply hadn’t yet learned to fully hide weakness from a woman he loved. Not, at least, in the way he’d been trained to hide his furious, pained reactions to his father’s thrashings.
He must have flinched because Cassandra frowned.
