CHAPTER THIRTEEN #2
Liam watches me as Wells breezes past us without a word, the air growing thick. I feel his attention on me, but I can’t take mine off the gorgeous, half-naked man in the kitchen. Or the tattoo on his spine—a sword with an intricate handle, the blade piercing a stone.
The Sword in the Stone.
He’s absolutely captivating. My whole being is held hostage by this magnetic pull he has over me.
It’s pathetic really—the way my eyes glue to every stretch and pull and flex of his muscles.
Every twitch of his rosebud-pink lips and crinkle around his emerald eyes.
The way his hair is damp and mussed yet still somehow impeccably styled.
I should just let my jaw drop to the floor in a pool of my drool.
My ogling is mortifying—far worse than my typical drifting.
Wells busies himself, filling a water bottle and sauntering back past us without sparing us a glance.
He’s almost at his bedroom door when his chilling rasp shatters the stale air without him turning around.
“Liam, I love you like a brother, but if you value your life, you’d be wise to keep your fucking hands off my wife. ”
What in the ever-loving hell? Is he jealous ?
He slams his door with a force that rattles the windows, and my head whips toward Liam, who’s laughing.
“Told ya,” he says.
“What was that? And why do I feel guilty and pissed and baffled as to why you didn’t move if you knew he’d react that way?”
His lips twitch, attempting to snuff out the last drops of his humor until they spread into a wily grin.
“Never back down, or it’s an admission of guilt.
He’d already seen us. My only argument was to willingly hold my position, own it and whatever else came from it.
Anything else is cowardly. I really do wish I could claim you.
You’re a … rare gift. But the truth—a truth your eyes just screamed—is that you don’t belong to me.
There are only three people in this world I won’t steal from.
Four now, I suppose. And you belong to one of them.
” He stands, folding his laptop under his arm, and plants a chaste kiss in my hair. “Good night, Ivy. Go get what’s yours.”
After Liam disappears up the grand stairway, my guilt diminishes, and my fury spikes.
I rush to open Wells’s door without a knock, slamming it behind me like he did moments ago.
His bedroom is both stark and luxurious, draped in satiny blacks and grays and creams, but I can’t focus on his decor now.
He’s in his leather chair, heated eyes boring into me.
“What the hell was that?” I shout.
“Are you not my wife, Ivanna?”
“You know that’s beside the point. Since when am I your wife like that ?
If I remember correctly, you weren’t interested in fucking me!
” The realization of those words strikes me at my core, my broken heart gaining purchase.
His rejection has crippled me more than I realized.
My stomach flips, hands shaking. But the thought of how I would react if I glimpsed Wells with his hand in Celeste’s hair is sobering.
It wouldn’t be pretty. “I’m sure that was uncomfortable because it was Liam.
Nothing was happening. Look, we’ve got five years of this, so we need some rules. ”
His face is so drawn, so tight. He’s never looked this irate in front of me. He jumps up from his desk chair, pacing with unsteady breaths. “Rules. Fine. They”—he circles his index finger to the rest of the house—“are off-limits.”
My heart crumbles a little more when I realize this is more about some pissing contest with his crew than about me. He doesn’t want me. He just doesn’t want any of them to feast on me. That surge of hope from what appeared to be jealousy fizzles.
“Okay,” I say, spinning toward the door. I can’t have this conversation now. My throat is dry, and my eyes sting with unshed hurt.
“And as long as we’re married,” he goes on, “we will be faithful, as should be expected in any marital union.”
The cool doorknob is in my palm, and yet my hand is instantly clammy. Again, what the hell? I twist to face him, summoning as much tranquility as I can muster in spite of my urge to spit fire.
“Let me get this straight. For the next five years, you want me to be celibate for our fake arrangement? I’ll be a twenty-eight-year-old virgin.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but …
” I’m not exactly sure why I felt inclined to share that tidbit, but I need to steamroll on past it before we stick there.
“You’re insane—you know that? You don’t want me, but you don’t want anyone else to touch me. Fuck that.”
His fingers dive into his hair. “Maybe I am, Ivanna.” Those inky strands cavort wildly as he yanks on them with a grunt. “You make me so fucking crazy .”
“The feeling is mutual,” I hiss. “Is that why you nearly choked me at the hotel? So unhappy with our arrangement that you thought about ending me?” I don’t know why that flew out of my mouth. What the hell is wrong with me right now?
The truth is, I love that side of him because even though it produces a bit of fear, I know in my bones that he’d never hurt me. And the adrenaline from weaseling under his skin excites me like nothing else ever has.
His eyes widen, as though I offended him. “No. Fuck. I would never. You said you like that, and I—”
“When did I say that? ”
“When you were drugged.” He halts there, both of us suspended, taking each other in.
God, how embarrassing. What else did I tell him when I was drugged?
His smoldering gaze is searing me, but there are no words, just the rise and fall of his corded chest muscles, golden skin stretched taut and glistening.
He struts slowly toward me, erasing the few yards between us, shrinking the space until he’s right in front of me.
My back thumps against the door as his forearms meet it, caging me in.
And like a lightning bolt, his words wallop me.
“You said we,” I whisper. “ We will be faithful.”
“Yes,” he rasps. “We.”
The air is so soupy now that my lungs can’t seem to consume it.
“I don’t understand. Why? Why would you … you keep hurting me, Wells. All these mixed signals.”
He drops his forehead to my shoulder. “That’s the last thing I want, Ivy. I never want to hurt you.”
I soak in his scent of sugar and scotch and his rugged citrus cologne, terrified the answer to my next question could rip me to pieces. “What do you want then?”
“I want my wife.”
A single tear spills down my cheek. “Like you …” I squeak. “You want me for real?”
His nose brushes against mine as he lifts his face to answer, “Yes, Little Storm. I want you in every imaginable way.”
“Oh fuck.” I turn my head, wiping the tear and trying to capture my racing thoughts. They’re slipping through like grains of sand, impossible to catch. “Okay then. Not how I saw this night going.”
A sort of growl thrums from the depths of his chest. “Did you see it going somewhere with Liam?”
It was jealousy. He’s hurt. As much as that delights me, I hate it too.
“No,” I breathe, the erratic drumbeat of my heart drowning out my timorous voice. “That’s not what I wanted … not what I want.”
“Which is? ”
With a deep breath, I lock my eyes on his. “You, Wells. I’ve wanted you all along, since the first day we met, but you … I didn’t think you felt the same.”
He moves his arms off the door, one hand grazing the strip of skin above my hip with a wispy buffing, fingers on the other threading through my hair.
His lips are so close to mine that I can taste the air between us.
“It was vital that I waited until you knew what you wanted. There has never been anything mixed about how I feel for you. Only challenging situations. But you need to understand what this means. Once you give yourself to me, Ivy, there’s no going back. Not in five years. Not ever.”
Good God, that escalated quickly. We may be married, but we haven’t known each other long enough for that level of declaration.
Maybe it’s simply foreplay. Although there’s this inkling frolicking inside me, whispering that he’s always been with me, only just out of reach, which makes no sense at all.
It’s the same inkling that knows he’s it for me, no matter how absurd this situation has been.
“Okay.” I nod, somewhat in a dream state. None of this seems real.
A butterfly’s kiss.
“Tell me,” he says as his teeth latch on to the lip I’m currently biting, tugging it free and soothing it with an enrapturing lick, rendering the rest of me completely boneless. “Tell me you’re mine, Ivanna.”
For the love of all the pretty holy things, what is he doing to me?
“I’m yours, Wells. Only yours.”
He lets a heavy breath tumble out with my vow. “That’s my good girl.”
And his lips crash into mine as I whimper at his praise, my head bouncing off the door from the force, but I don’t care.
He tastes of strawberry candy, safety, and dominance.
The blurring of right and wrong. I think he could make the depths of Hell feel like paradise.
My legs climb to his waist. His erection presses against my core as my hips grind and my nails cut into the solid, flexed muscles of his back, gripping and scratching. Needing more .
He chuckles softly into my mouth. “So fucking greedy, Little Storm.”
His hand fists in my hair, yanking it with a sting that jolts a wave of pleasure down my spine. I moan, and he peppers kisses over the column of my throat, his fingers digging into the notch below my ribs. His intensity suggests he’s no less greedy, but I don’t have the wherewithal to argue.
His mouth abruptly abandons this sensual ambush, hands cradling my face, his hips gluing me to the door, both of us panting. “You’re so goddamn addictive. Lemon and raspberry. Vanilla. Everything I crave.” Our lips touch for another gentle taste before his face grows more serious. “Clothes off.”