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Or rather, as it suited him.
“You?” his sister asked that first Christmas, when Conrad announced that he would be coming with a woman—but had announced upon arrival that, in fact, Rory was his wife. “Eloped?Has the world ended?”
Conrad opted not to analyze the look Dorian gave her, because it spoke of too many things he chose not to recognize. Especially when Erika flushed a little.
But Rory laughed, big and bright and entirely her.
“I’ve corrupted him,” she said. “Utterly.”
Dorian laughed. “At last.”
“I approve,” Erika said immediately from beside him, and when she smiled at Conrad, it was as if something else eased, then. Something he hadn’t known he’d held so tightly, until now.
He might have been a hard-ass. His sister might have been a problem. But maybe that had only mattered when neither of them were happy.
But now they both were almost too happy to bear. And the woman he’d almost married, Erika’s best friend, who he would have made utterly miserable, was happy, too. As if all those near misses and old resentments had been necessary to bring them all here.
Maybe that was hopelessly mawkish. But what could Conrad do? He was unduly influenced by his very own pet American.
In the new year Conrad bought her an art gallery so she could pursue the things that really mattered to her.
They thought she was a joke at first. They called her snide names and made insulting references to her social media presence, but underestimating Rory was always a bad idea.
She was a force to be reckoned with, as she proved, with hard work and what the snotty art magazines called hersurprisingly incisive eye for new and unexpected talent.
He loved her to distraction.
“I love you,” he told her one rainy, Parisian evening.
She’d come home late from her gallery, bubbling over with excitement at the painting she’d sold that day and buzzing around the kitchen as if she hardly noticed he was in it.
But that declaration stopped her, the way it always did. She smiled at him, that beautiful, melting smile that wrecked him, then made him, and that he never wished to do without.
“But you’re late,” Conrad pointed out, his voice taking on that edge they both loved. He watched her shift. He watched her body change, moving seamlessly from the high-powered gallery owner she’d become to the woman she would always be—his. “You know what tonight is.”
Her breath caught. Her eyes got that sheen.
“I know that it’s maintenance night,” she began. “But—”
“No excuses, please,” he said, quiet and implacable. “You know the rules. You were late. Twenty-three minutes late, by my count.”
Her eyes got wide. He saw that beautiful flush work its way over her skin.
“But I—”
Conrad only shook his head. And her words tapered off.
Rory took a ragged breath. Then, without having to be asked, she slowly, gracefully, sank down to her knees before him and held her arms behind her back.
His beautiful wife. This woman who took what he gave her and gave it back to him with her glorious and complete surrender, making them both whole.
“I will accept your apology with my cock in your mouth,” he told her. “But then, my beautiful Rory, you and I will go to chapel and talk about reparations.”
He watched her shiver, because both of them knew that the only kind of reparations she received on maintenance night involved a bright red ass and a distinct aversion to sitting down. For several days.
By now she knew better than to speak when she was on her knees. But she lifted her gaze to his, and all he saw was love.
And as he unzipped his trousers and let her see the cock that she wouldn’t be allowed to touch with her hands, only take in her mouth and down her throat, he thought that forever wasn’t nearly enough.
Because if he had his way, they would fuck each other, bright and hot and just like this, straight on into eternity.
Luckily, he was Conrad Vanderburg.
And he always got his way.
