Page 95 of Marrying the Savage

Wanting a woman is simple. Taking a woman who wants me is simpler. I’m not a boy, not a saint, not a man who has ever confused desire with patience. If a woman is mine, and she wants my mouth, my hands, my body, I don’t stand in cold rooms manufacturing reasons to stop.

I don’t stop with my fingers. I don’t send her back to her room. I don’t spend the rest of the night hard and restless because the sound she made when she came keeps returning to me like a curse.

But Sofia is different.

That is the most inconvenient truth in the house.

She wants me. I know that.

I felt it on my hand. Saw it in her eyes. Heard it in every breath she tried to swallow. Whatever fear and fury live in her, desire lives there too, hot and reckless and unwilling to be polite.

But wanting is not the same as being ready.

And Sofia, with all her sharp teeth and louder-than-safe courage, is almost certainly untouched by a man.

I knew the moment I slid my finger inside her. The way she froze. The way her body clenched around one finger like it didn’t know whether to welcome or fight the intrusion. The way she answered my question without answering it.

Has no one touched you like this?

She looked away.

There it was. A small, silent confession.

She’s not the sort of woman who would say it outright. She would rather make a joke, call me impossible, threaten to search my locked rooms, and pretend none of it matters. But it matters.

I wrap my hand around my cock and exhale through my teeth.

This is ridiculous.

I am forty-six years old. I control territories, men, money, weapons, ports, bloodlines, and more secrets than a priest could survive hearing. I have taken wives from enemies, sons from fathers, lives from men who thought loyalty could be purchased twice.

And now I stand alone in my shower, hard and half-mad because I chose not to fuck my own wife against a study wall.

I stroke myself slowly at first, jaw tight, water running down my chest, my other hand flat against the tile. Sofia’s face appears immediately behind my eyes.

Not the painted bride from the church. Not the furious woman demanding answers in my study. This is Sofia undone, flushed and panting, one breast exposed, nipple wet from my mouth, dress torn around her waist. Her fingers in my hair. Her body trembling against mine. Her eyes wide with shock when she realized I could make her come.

I tighten my grip. My breath turns rough.

In my mind, I don’t stop.

In my mind, I lift her onto the desk, sweep every file onto the floor, and push Sofia’s dress higher around her hips. She fights me with words because she can’t help herself, because her mouth is a weapon even when the rest of her is opening for me.

I imagine spreading her thighs. I imagine seeing her properly, wet and swollen from my fingers, still pulsing from the orgasm I pulled out of her. I imagine lowering my mouth between her legs and making her come again until that sharp tongue of hers forgets every insult except my name.

My hand moves faster. Water runs into my mouth, over my jaw, down my throat. I barely feel it.

I imagine her hands braced behind her on the desk, eyes furious and frightened and desperate not to show either. I imagine dragging my cock through the slick heat of her, letting her feel the size of me, letting her understand exactly what it means to be my wife.

Teasing, then taking it all.

Punishing both of us.

She would glare at me. She would call me smug. She would tell me to get on with it because patience is not one of her virtues, and I would have to kiss her just to stop myself from laughing.

Then I would push inside her slowly. Carefully.

That thought makes my hand falter.