Chapter 14 Octavia #3
I’m used to people looking at me. I dress like a creepy goth doll, but with my hand in Knight’s, it feels like everyone in the store turns and stares at me.
We don’t spend long in Walmart as they don’t have what I want, so we end up in Costco with a cart full of a hundred things I had no idea I needed until I saw them.
By the time we get to the checkout, I’m already regretting my enthusiastic shopping and cringing at the idea of putting yet another charge on my credit card.
When we get to the register, Knight whips out his wallet and pays for everything before I have a chance.
When I start to protest, he silently turns the card around to face me, and I see my name on the front.
Mrs. Octavia Taylor.
“Where did that come from?” I ask, reaching out to take the card from him.
“I ordered it for you.”
“What account is this linked to?” I ask, still staring at the name, like it’s just dawned on me that it’s my name now.
“I ordered it the day I flew to Rapid City to collect you.”
“We weren’t even married then,” I say a little too loudly as Knight takes my hand, pushing the cart with his other, and glancing at his watch before he steers me toward the food outlet.
“No. But I knew we would be.”
Why does he make all this craziness seem so normal?
Along with a smaller version of the studio’s date book, Knight picked up a wall-mounted interactive electronic calendar, which is sort of like a huge tablet that shows all of your appointments for each day.
Honestly, it feels a little extra, and the price tag was insane, but the moment he saw it, Knight put it straight in the cart with half a smile twisting at the edges of his lips.
We picked up some groceries, but he insisted on browsing the homeware aisles, and even though I tried to resist, I ended up choosing lots of cute bits of decor, along with more towels, a new bed set, and a huge new rug for the living room floor.
“Oh, we should get pizza,” I say excitedly when we get to the front of the line for the food outlet.
“One pepperoni and one barbecue chicken pizza, please,” Knight tells the server brusquely.
Pulling out an identical card to the one I’m still clutching in my hand, he pays for our food and some drinks, then balances the pizza boxes on the cart and guides me away from the food outlet and toward the exit.
“You don’t want to sit?” I question, pointing to an empty table that just opened up.
“Let’s put this stuff in the car, then we can sit on one of the benches outside.”
Pressing the button to open the car, Knight loads our haul into the trunk, not allowing me to help. Once he’s finished, he carries our food in one hand, then reaches for me with the other.
I fall asleep in the car on the way back home, and Knight wakes me up when he lifts me out of my seat. “I can walk,” I protest.
“You’re tired. I’ll carry you.”
“What time is it?”
“Twenty-one thirty-five hours,” he says, his voice soft.
“I don’t know why I’m so tired,” I say on a yawn, snuggling into his chest as he carries me through the house and up the stairs.
“You could be pregnant.”
“No, I couldn’t,” I protest weakly.
“Your first appointment is at 1100 hours tomorrow?” he questions.
“Yep, my client, Camden, lives about an hour away and is driving in. She was very excited to find out she didn’t have to fly out to get tattooed by me anymore,” I tell him sleepily.
“Do you want me to run you a bath?” he asks.
“No. I just want to sleep.”
Nodding, he lowers me to my feet long enough to strip me of my clothes, unbraid my hair, and use a cleanser wipe to remove my makeup. I don’t try to stop him or do it myself. I just let him take control, knowing he’ll take care of me.
When he pulls back the comforter, I crawl naked toward the pillow, then look up expectantly at him. It’s early, and I doubt he’s ready to go to sleep yet, but without question, he strips out of his clothes, folds them neatly, then crawls in beside me.
I wake up to the sound of metal clanging, and when I open my eyes, I find myself wrapped in a soft blanket, beneath the comforter in the bed that Knight put in the gym so I could carry on sleeping under his watchful eye while he works out.
The first day I woke up down here, I was annoyed, but today, waking up to the view of my husband, bare-chested and sweaty, isn’t the worst way to start the day. Not moving, I watch him work out, attacking each exercise with an intensity that makes me clench my thighs together.
I’m not someone who enjoys exercise, but watching him lift and lower his huge body weight into increasingly impressive poses might have just become my new favorite sport.
His eyes glide over to me every few moments, like he’s checking that I’m still here, even though if I were to sit up, he’d be able to see the second I moved.
The light reflecting off the water in the pool behind the gym catches my eye, and I decide to take a quick swim while he works out. His head snaps in my direction the moment I push the comforter off me and sit up, naked beneath the layers he’s cocooned me in.
“Are you okay?” he asks, his voice etched with concern as he strides across the basement toward me.
“Good morning, baby. I’m fine, but I think I might go for a swim while you work out.”
“I’ll come with you,” he says quickly, glancing back at the gym equipment before turning back to me again.
“You should finish what you’re doing first,” I tell him, feeling the bristling tension pouring off him.
“No…I—”
Interrupting him, I lift my hand and place it flat on his chest. “You can see me through the glass, baby.”
In the short amount of time I’ve known Knight, I’ve started to realize that he freaks out when he can’t see me.
I don’t entirely know where he thinks I’m going to go, but I’ve discovered that if he has to leave the room and go far enough away that I’m not in his direct line of sight anymore, he pulls up the internal security camera feed on his cell phone and watches me, only turning it off when he can see me again.
A part of me thinks I should probably be upset about him watching me like that, but oddly, it doesn’t bother me. He warned me that he intended to be with me all the time, so I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise to learn he actually meant it.
Instead of letting me claw my way out of the blanket he wrapped me in, Knight effortlessly extracts me, then carries me across the basement to the glass door leading to the swimming pool.
The moment he opens it, the humid, chlorinated air hits me.
“Do you want me to go and get you a suit?” Knight asks.
“Do I need one?” I ask, smiling coquettishly at him.
His dick visibly hardens, but Knight does nothing to either hide or display it. He just stands there, sweaty and hard and completely unashamed.
“I’ll leave the door open,” he says, watching me with stern eyes as I step down into the water and start to swim.
Despite my bravado, I’ve never swum naked before, but the water is warm and feels amazing against my skin. Not feeling the resistance of a bathing suit is almost as exhilarating as feeling his eyes on me from the other side of the basement.
Dipping my head beneath the water, I glide across the pool. After a few lazy laps, I lift my feet off the bottom and allow my legs to rise to the top, floating on the water, my ears listening to the muffled sound of nothing.
I close my eyes and slow my breathing, making each inhale and exhale intentional as my body and mind settle into perfect stillness.
I’m not sure how long I float for, but eventually, the sound of the water moving around me alerts me that Knight has stepped into the pool.
Not moving, I wait for him to come to me, because I know he will.
The closer he gets, the faster my heart beats, and it’s lurching excitedly in my chest when his hands slip beneath my back, towing me across the water and into his arms.
“You distract me,” he growls.
“You’re the one who brought me down here. I wouldn’t be a distraction upstairs.”
“I need you near me.”
“Then it’s hardly my fault if you’re distracted.”
“My wife is naked, floating in the pool. There’s not a man alive who wouldn’t be distracted by that.”
“What about all the gay men?” I snark with a smile.
“Even them.”
Turning me in his arms, he positions me so I’m facing him, my arms around his neck, my legs hooked behind his back. Reaching between us, he fists his cock and guides it to my entrance, pushing me down onto his hard dick.
“Jesus,” I gasp, feeling so full.
Burying his face in my neck, he slides me slowly up and down his dick, making sure he’s as deep as he can get each time.
“Oh god,” I moan.
“Not god, just yours,” he rasps into my throat, finding my clit with his thumb and rubbing in firm circles.
The sex isn’t fast or rough. I don’t come eight times in a row and see stars, but somehow, wrapped together in the water while his dick is buried deep inside of me feels more intense than anything else we’ve done together.
When I come, all I want is to be closer to him, to never be forced to ever let him go, and it’s… perfect.
After breakfast and a bath, Knight solemnly leads me through the garage and into the car.
I love my job, but I’ve never been more tempted to say fuck it and take my husband back to bed.
Instead, I let him do his thing, carefully securing my seat belt into place before he climbs into the driver’s seat and drives us to work.
Unlike yesterday, the shutter is open, and the lights are all on when Knight parks his car outside the store. When we step through the glass door, a girl with bright red hair greets us, her lips stained almost as brightly as her hair.
“Welcome to Mountain Ink. Do you have an appointment?”
“That’s Octy,” Betty calls, walking toward me from the back of the studio.
“Oh shit, my bad,” the girl says, jumping out of her seat and striding toward me.