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He reached behind him, patting the pillow bearer. “Do it right,” he growled, and Aimee stared at him indignantly.

“You want me to – ?”

“You know what I want,” he insisted.

With a smothered exclamation of annoyance, Aimee held the bag over the bed next to him and upended it. The silly, flashy little tin medallions spilled out onto the coverlet, as humiliating as an unsolicited confession of love.

Her husband’s gaze was riveted to the fall of shiny discs. The last one that fell was stamped crudely with the image of a heart. As if things could not get any more embarrassing.

“There,” she said, a betraying wobble in her voice.

Wordlessly, he reached down and spread the tokens with the flat of his hand, his gaze roaming over them as though they were runes to be read. Aimee looked at the silly jumble of animal shapes and love symbols and inwardly quaked. Slowly, he dragged his gaze up to look at her. “Is that all of them?” he countered.

She thought of the second unopened bag and tried to brazen it out. “Just how many do you think I purchased?” she answered with a shrug but could not hold his gaze. She saw the flare of realization in his eye and felt her heart thud.

“All of them belong to me, Aimee,” he repeated slowly. “Go and fetch them to me now.”

Aimee huffed out a frustrated breath. “I hope you realize it was the principle of thrift alone that prompted me to buy so many!” she flung over her shoulder as she returned to the wedding chest and seized the second pouch. She marched them back to him. Her cheeks were scalded with humiliation.

“Here!” she said, holding out the bag. He patted the bed, and Aimee ground her teeth as her fingers fumbled with the strings to open it.

“Is that the last of them?” he asked in a low voice.

“Yes, of course! I only bought a hundred.” Her words were ridiculous. Only a hundred. She was such an idiot.

Biting her lip, Aimee opened the bag and tipped the contents practically into Lord Kentigern’s lap. It was only at that point that she realized how aroused he was. The drying cloth did very little to conceal the fact his manhood was curved straight up from his thighs, full and angry looking. It jerked as the metal disks fell about his lap, and he shivered slightly.

The bag slipped through Aimee’s nerveless fingers and fell at her feet. “That’s all of them,” she uttered.

“You’re sure of that?” His voice was so low and gravelly that she had to think a moment to translate his words.

She nodded. “Isn’t it enough?” she pushed, feeling mortified, feeling reckless. “I bet you wish they were gold coins,” she observed, lifting her chin. “You’d have a king’s ransom.”

He barely seemed to register her words, and when he reached for her, dragging her down to him, she went with a faint cry. She was half disappointed when he did not roll her under him or bear her down to the mattress at once.

Instead, he held her gripped firmly in his lap, one hand clasped vicelike to her hip, the other wrapped in her hair, dragging her face to his.

“Aimee,” he breathed deeply. “Ask me what I want.”

She swallowed. “I already know what you want, Konrad. You want me to stop being so damned managing. And … and you want me to stop trying to force your hand to make you love me.” Her voice broke over the last few words, and she tried to look away, but his hand tightened in her hair preventing it.

“No,” he corrected her. “That’s not it at all.” He breathed deeply a moment as though gathering his thoughts. “It is strange, wife, that you are so bad at guessing this time when you always anticipated my needs so well previously.”

That caught her attention. “What needs?”

“Number one, my need for a wife,” he answered promptly. “You saw that long before I did.”

Aimee regarded him doubtfully. “Konrad …”

“Number two, my need for companionship,” he continued calmly. “Yours most of all, and to a lesser degree, that of others.” He shrugged. “Family, friends ...”

Aimee caught her breath. “You do?”

“Apparently so.”

“Oh.”

“Number three, my need for your love,” he stated in so matter-of-fact a tone, that she would very likely have fallen off his lap if his grip on her had not been so tight. A shadow passed over his face. “Sadly, I did not realize how badly I needed that, until you withdrew it from me.” He glanced away a moment as Aimee stared.