Chapter 27 #2
It’s fucking with me. I’m only getting a taste of my own medicine, but I want it to stop. Maybe the time to talk is now.
“Lamb,” I mutter, getting her attention.
Elodie meets my gaze with a flash of irritation in hers. “What is it?”
“What’s with you?”
“Nothing.” She looks me up and down as if I said something wrong. “Why are you asking?”
“Really?”
She rolls her eyes, groans, then returns to packing her things.
“You’re acting strange,” I point out.
“I assure you I’m not.” She frowns. “Then again, maybe you would think that. How would you know what I’m like when you don’t really know me?”
Her comeback is honey laced with venom. But coming from the sweet-tempered schoolteacher, it sounds wrong.
“You’re mad at me.”
“Nope.” Her tone says she doesn’t care one way or the other, but her eyes tell a different story.
“Let’s talk about it.” She doesn’t realize I’m offering her a rare chance few have ever seen.
She whirls around to face me, brows raised. “Talk about what?”
“Whatever you want. You can start with why you’re mad at me.”
She lets out a soft laugh rimmed with sarcasm. “You’re mistaken.”
“I’m not mistaken. Your actions say enough.”
“I think you must be bored or something, in which case you’d be better off with Susan, or Grace, or one of your other women. I’m sure they’ll gladly keep you company.”
Finally, we are getting somewhere. I should set her straight about Susan. Keeping my silence is another asshole move, but if I explained myself, where would that leave me?
That would erase the line I drew when I said we’d live separate lives. The whole point of the separate lives clause was so that neither of us would have to explain anything to the other.
“Is that what this is about?” I try for a different tactic.
“I don’t think we should be having this conversation, so please, let’s drop it.”
She couldn’t be more right. I should drop it. But I’m not going to. “No, clearly, you have shit on your mind, so let’s deal with it.”
“No. There is nothing to deal with. I just want to get back to your place so I can go to bed. I have things to do in the morning.”
“You mean our place.”
She hits me with an incredulous glare. “No, I don’t mean our place. It’s your house. I’m just a guest there.”
“Lamb, stop fucking around.”
“I’m not. Let’s just go, Dorian.”
“We’re not going anywhere until we talk.” I’m getting heated by the second, hating her resistance more and more.
“What the hell is wrong with you? This makes no sense.”
“It makes sense to me.”
“Of course, it does,” she sneers, her pretty face twisting with frustration. “Okay, if it makes so much sense, tell me what you want. Because I surely don’t know. From where I’m standing, I did everything I was supposed to do. I’m your wife.”
She’s right again. Except…
The problem we’re having is that she’s not supposed to be mad at me if she thinks I’m seeing another woman. And I’m not supposed to fucking want her.
We stare at each other, and I realize I don’t know what the fuck to say.
But…I do know what I want.
Her.
I want her. Not having her is eating me alive.
I’ve wanted her since I saw her on the auction block, selling her body to the highest bidder. And I wanted her long before that.
I was never supposed to want my former best friend’s little sister. But I do. And I’m done pretending I don’t.
Fuck my rules and reasoning.
I march right up to her, jarring her enough that she flinches. I don’t give her the chance to back away. I grab her arm and pull her flush against me.
She tries to break free, but I hold her in place.
“What are you doing, Dorian? I—”
I crush my lips to hers and kiss her, swallowing her protest. She goes still in my arms, and I take the chance to find the real Elodie beneath the coldness.
I kiss her, searching, waiting, but she’s still lost to me.
I cup the back of her head and deepen the kiss. Only then does her body loosen. Her guard seems to crack, and suddenly, she’s there, kissing me back like she did weeks ago.
But then she shoves me hard in the chest and pulls away.
It barely moves me. I let her go anyway, because the fury in her eyes is worse than before.
“No.” She shakes her head violently.
“No, what?”
“You’re not going to do this to me again.”
“Elodie.”
She steps away from me. “You with your stupid mind games and mindfuck kisses. Not tonight.”
I hold her gaze, savoring the one thing that stands out to me in that whole rant. “You chose the third kind.”
She glares at me as if I just spat in her food. “What are you talking about?”
“The mindfuck kiss.”
She falters, just for a second, but it’s enough. Like she’s been caught. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I want you, Elodie.”
She stills, her face trapped in confusion. Her breath quickens, and she tries to compose herself, but it doesn’t quite work. “No. You don’t.”
“I do.” The words sound no different from how they did when I took my vows.
I step back into her space before she can move away again. She tilts her head slightly, and I reach for her again.
My fucking cock hardens when she doesn’t resist and moves to me willingly like the good little lamb she is.
I claim her mouth again, and her lips part for me. I feel her—the real her. She’s back, and I want her more than I ever did before.
I deepen the kiss, my mind already mapping out all the dirty things I want to do to her.
Every mistake I’m about to make with my little wife will be worth it.
And I’ll have no regrets.