21. ABRAHAM
AbrAHAM
IWANTED INSIDE HER.
It was a reckless, disgusting thought given the state of her body, but I didn’t give a fuck.
My shit pulsed like she’d just asked to suck it and my head was spun the fuck up, all because she didn’t know that everything about her from her smart ass mouth to those eyes made me want to drag her across my lap and spank her fat pussy while she screamed.
The fact that she was sitting there, lecturing me on avoidance was fucking rich and if my hunger for this bitch wasn’t as fresh as the first time I’d tasted her, I’d have probably given some of that smug self-righteousness back.
Instead, I was hard, irate, and fucking miserable because she wasn’t two inches in front of me and I couldn’t touch her.
Hold her. Send the fear away until she looked at me like I made everything right in her world.
I hated that I was no longer entitled to any part of this woman. That just the sight of her drove that painful reminder through my chest over and over until I was forced to cauterize the bleeding.
“Because,” I said, finally. “You are my wife. And regardless of what you remember, I found you, I took you home, I took care of you. That’s your answer.”
Her huge, princess eyes blinked. “That tells me nothing. People marry for all kinds of reasons. Men marry for all kinds of reasons, and rarely because they actually want to settle with one woman.”
“I couldn’t handle two of you if there were two of me.”
Her mouth twitched at the corner. “Not really much to handle.”
“Don’t do that,” I warned. “You’ve always been the most beautiful woman to me.”
Her lips parted in surprise and in that split second she reminded me of my woman. Free. Assured. Hungry for my validation.
“Always?” she whispered.
This conversation was moving so far off course, I should’ve been slamming on the brakes. Instead, I was staring at her mouth.
Following your first instinct applied to life or death situations, not when I had half my blood supply in my dick and the woman in front of me was unconsciously arching her breasts into the back of her chair.
I’d clearly learned none of my lessons and was interested in burning my life to the ground a second time because against my better judgment, I grasped her slender waist in both hands and lifted, then settled into her chair with her on my lap.
Nineah hesitated, but only briefly, bracing her hands against my shoulders, close enough that I could feel the gentle rise of her chest.
This was the woman I remembered. Reaper of chaos by day, hungry for reassurance when she was in my hands. “Yes,” I said.
It wouldn’t last.
We’d been through too much. Seen too much of one another, said shit neither of us could take back.
But I’d accepted a long time ago that you didn’t choose your vulnerabilities and mine let her hands move timidly from my shoulders to my chest, her fingers tracing the raised skin over my T-shirt.
She licked her dick-sucking mouth. “Tell me.”
“Hm?” My dick hardened against her spandex-covered pussy.
“We’re married but you don’t act like my husband,” she murmured. “You act like… my superior. Is it wrong that I want to know what you actually like about me?”
I didn’t answer her.
There was no way to begin to describe the shitstorm of poor luck that’d wreaked havoc on our lives, our marriage.
No way to reconcile the three different men I’d become in the five short years I’d known this woman.
I couldn’t, wouldn’t whittle her down to a mere list of qualifying attributes.
Without context and established trust, I’d sound like a psychopath at worst, a creep at best. Besides, I didn’t need reasons to want her, I just did.
I knew it in my bones. My blood. As long as I lived, I’d never get over her. I could add it to the growing list of ways life continued to fuck me.
Repositioning my hands until they gripped her hips instead, I ignored the way her nipples poked through her sports bra.
“If you don’t tell me, I will just have to make up my own assumptions and they’re usually not—
“Your smell,” I said, finally. “I didn’t know your perfume was custom made the first time we met. I probably searched for that candy sugar shit for weeks. It’s how I know you’re nearby. How I knew you were missing. The air was too stale.”
Her eyes reflected that familiar hunger for information. “What else?”
I raised a brow. Waiting expectantly, she didn’t back down.
Reaching for a curl, careful not to disturb its shape, I held it before letting it fall.
“Your hair. How protective you are of it. How you never let me touch it, save for today… Your eyes. You give them to me when you feel safe, you hide them when you’re upset.
So many little boundaries that remind me you are yours and not mine. ”
She smirked. “How frustrating.”
“It is.”
“All those years spent throwing yourself into high-adrenaline situations, not knowing if the next op would be your last, and you really thought you’d be content with a boring little subordinate?” she teased.
“No. I never expected to marry,” I admitted. “Not after…”
Nineah rolled her eyes. “S’il te plait.”
I frowned.
“Abraham, if you’re seriously about to admit that the only reason you married me is because I was your only option, you should know that that’s not only untrue, it’s the opposite of flattering.”
I didn’t know whether or not she was my only option.
Options insinuated you were looking and I hadn’t been.
I’d been trying to piece my life back together after a series of immature life choices and the abrupt end of the only career I’d ever known.
All I knew was, women took one look at me and had two reactions—they either ran the opposite direction or fetishized the challenge.
The only woman who’d ever attempted to humanize me was a five-foot computer nerd with a chaotic brain and eyes that’d begged me to like her.
Meeting her stare, I recklessly gave her another piece of intel. “I married you because you needed a home and I needed you.”