Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
I love the way his warm, hot hands wrap around my lower back as if to anchor me in place while he draws me closer to him, so he can kiss my cheek, my chin, my forehead. My mouth is slightly parted, waiting for his kiss.
“You’re mine,” he whispers in my ear.
I feel a smile spread across my face. “Thought we covered that.”
That earns me a pinch to my ass. “We have. What we haven’t covered is what I expect from you as mine.” His mouth is at my ear, hot and insistent, before he laps the shell and nips the lobe. “You took your vow to me.”
I nod. “Yep.”
His grip on my waist tightens. “You vowed to obey me.”
“Right, about that…” I gasp when he tugs my hair.
“Don’t you ever talk back to me in front of my brothers again. Do you understand me?”
I nod. “But why…why is it so important to you?” I don’t understand his archaic adherence to these tenets.
He massages my ass with hard, firm strokes. Priming me? I shift on his lap, and he groans.
“Every single fucking day you’re with me, you’re in danger. Do you understand that?”
I nod. I do. I really do. I don’t miss the guards stationed at every door and entrance, the harnesses they wear laden with heavy weapons, and I saw what happened today. But he’s the man who walks with near impunity, who does what he thinks no matter what anyone else says to him. He’s the most dangerous of all.
“Yeah,” I breathe. I want his mouth on me again. My body remembers the feel of him on me, in me. I’m already starting to crave his possessive grip, the firm feel of ownership. In the dark corners of my mind, a warning bell clangs.
I shut the door on it and revel in this.
“When I give you a command, I want you obeying on fucking instinct. I want you to do exactly what I say, because a split second could mean the difference between life and death.” His voice grows deeper, heated. “And if you can’t obey me in the smallest things, how can I expect you to obey me when it really matters?”
I don’t respond. My mouth is dry, and something tells me this is a rhetorical question anyway.
“In the presence of my men, you are the first and primary example of submission and duty. If I don’t have the respect of my wife, why would they respect me?”
I nod. Alright, that makes sense. Again, a rhetorical question.
“That’s the only explanation you’ll get.” He grips my hair and pulls it, painfully. My mouth falls open on a gasp when his eyes narrow on me, his voice a low growl of warning. “Don’t you ever fucking do that again.”
“Yep,” I say, and my ass clenches because I know I’m toast. I’m married to an overbearing beast of a man and can only hope after he does whatever he’s going to do, he might make it better.
But the truth is, I don’t care what he does. I don’t care what happens next. I want to know where my friend is, if she’s okay. I need the assurance. Everything else fades in the face of what matters most. I’ll grin and bear it or grimace and bear it as the case may be.
I have to get in touch with Elise.
Holding me to his chest with one hand, he lifts the silk tie with his free hand.
“Open up, buttercup,” he says without a trace of humor. I blink, then part my lips. What is he doing?
With a fierce look of concentration, he winds the tie around my mouth, the fabric silky on my lips and tongue. When he leans in to tie it at the back of my head, I’m momentarily consumed with the masculine scent of raw spice and a hint of vanilla, and something else I can’t put my finger on. It smells of luxury, whiskey, and cigars, the scent one might find in the recesses of a man’s study. My pulse races.
His mouth at my ear, he commands, “Close your eyes.”
I do what he says, closing my eyes, and in the next second I’m plunged into darkness with the same silky fabric.
“Hands, piccola.”
I’d ask him what that meant, but I can’t talk. Obediently, I offer him my wrists.
The phone buzzes insistently in the bedside table.
I go completely still. I don’t breathe or move. Even my heartbeats seem to still.
“You hear that?”
I shake my head.
“That buzzing sound.”
I shrug and gesture to the box, as if to remind him he has a bunch of things in that box that could be going haywire. I feel like a total jerk. I don’t like lying. I’ve never been one to lie before, and now it feels as if my very being is a lie.