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He ignored me. “And as for us not being lovers, I assume you’re only talking in the emotional sense. If you think I’m going to be married to a woman and have her in my bed every night and not fuck her, then you really don’t know me at all.”
“I don’t know you.”
He flashed me a grin that made me think of a wolf.
“Isn’t that what this is all about? Us getting to know each other? I had no intention of marrying a woman I’d spent no time with, and there’s no better way to know someone than when you’re living with them.”
He hadn’t relaxed that wolfish grin, and he’d fixed me with an intense kind of gaze that I shrank beneath. But what he’d said made sense. Perhaps I’d been a little immature thinking it was a good idea to have a traditional wedding with Harvey and save myself until then. If we’d not been compatible in that way, it would have been awful to discover once we were already married. But still the idea of sex with Tam frightened me. I’d known it was most likely in my future—I wasn’t naïve enough to think I’d marry the man and remain a virgin—but having the reality of it standing right in front of me, next to the bed where it would happen, was downright terrifying.
“I hope they put you on some decent birth control before trying to marry you off to Harvey,” Tam continued.
Was he worried I’d end up pregnant if we had sex?
But then he finished, “I don’t want to be taking on not only you but my dead brother’s kid, too.”
Oh, no. He wasn’t worried about him getting me pregnant—he was concerned that Harvey might have already knocked me up before the wedding.
I blushed hard. “You don’t need to worry about that.”
“I think I do.”
I cringed inwardly as I tried to explain. “I am on birth control, but that’s not the reason I couldn’t be pregnant. Harvey and I never...you know.”
His eyes narrowed for a moment, and then understanding lit his face, quickly followed by disbelief. “Fucked? You and Harvey never fucked?”
I stared at the floor. “No, we didn’t. He was a gentleman, unlike you. We were waiting until the wedding night.”
Tam slapped his thigh and barked laughter. “You think Harvey was a gentleman? If Harvey wasn’t fucking you yet, it was because he was busy dipping his cock into every other woman before he became a married man. Not that being married would have stopped him.”
I blinked back tears. “No, you’re wrong.”
His tone hardened, and any joviality fled the conversation. “Are you actually trying to tell me you knew my little brother better than I did?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Let me tell you something about Harvey. He was a fucking criminal, just like the rest of us. He played on that public schoolboy bullshit, but he was no different than me, or our dad.”
Could he be right? I’d been imagining my life as being so different had Harvey lived through our wedding. I’d pictured romance and tenderness, and basically everything that was the total opposite of Tam. But I’d barely known Harvey. We’d spent time together, we’d dated, despite our marriage being arranged by our fathers. During our evenings together, he’d never made me think he was anything less than considerate of me. We’d shared a couple of heated kisses that could have easily gone further, but he’d always forced himself away, telling me that he didn’t want to get either of us in trouble with our parents. I’d gone up to bed on those evenings, my head crammed with thoughts of him, picturing what our life would be like together, and how incredible it would be once we were married and could do whatever we wanted. I’d always thought that Harvey had done the same, going home thinking about me, but suddenly I doubted that. What if Tam was telling the truth, and upon leaving me, Harvey had gone to one of their clubs and picked up a woman or two, and spent the rest of the night screwing them? Maybe it shouldn’t have upset me so much, but it did. Tears came to my eyes. What did it even matter? Harvey was dead.
I dared ask the question that had been bothering me the most. “Are...are you planning to have sex with me tonight?”
His tongue snuck out and touched his lower lip. “I haven’t decided yet. I thought I might taste you first.”
I drew in a breath. Taste me. Did that mean what I thought it did?
My face was burning up again. I wished I could figure out how to control my blood vessels.
“And if I refuse?”
“Then the alliance is broken. You’re to be my wife, Hallie, and husbands and wives have sex.”
“We’re not husband and wife yet, though.”
“Like I said, I won’t be marrying you unless I’ve tasted the goods first.”
God, what if he didn’t like having sex with me and sent me back to my father because of it? I didn’t even want to picture the level of humiliation I’d experience. But the prospect worried me, and not only because of Tam’s size or age, or cold, clinical view of what our marriage should be. It was because I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I’d had the occasional fumble with boys when I was younger, and I’d shared steamy kisses with Harvey, but that was as far as my experience went. I’d watched the occasional bit of porn with Layla as well, where we’d screamed and giggled at the Olympian displays on-screen, of long limbs and hairless bodies bent into impossible positions and multiple holes filled, but I highly doubted real sex was anything like that. I knew the mechanics of it, but the easy, natural workings of a male and female body coming together was foreign to me. I’d be awkward and clumsy, and not know how to touch him right.
I straightened my shoulders. I needed to be a grown up about this, mature. “Then I won’t say no. If you think it’s important for us to have sex, then that’s what we’ll do.”
