36. CHAPTER 33
Orion
I thought the dress might kill me.
By the time I walked into the kitchen, my temper had just about cooled from the bloodbath on the lawn.
Marcus calling me domesticated, Julian dissecting my sex life like it was a failing merger…
I’d tuned most of it out. Until her car pulled up, and the three most arrogant men I knew forgot how to breathe.
I watched them watch her. I saw the way Marcus’s eyes tracked the hem of that pink dress, and I felt a primitive, violent urge to reach out and wring his neck for daring to gaze at what was mine.
The six weeks I’d spent trying to maintain the facade of a stoic, unaffected husband felt useless.
And she had accomplished that with nothing more than the curve of a hip and the sight of that high ponytail.
By exposing the nape of her neck, she’d burned my entire kingdom to the ground.
The sound of the front door slamming behind me felt like a starting gun at a manhunt. I followed the scent of her—expensive perfume and the faint, domestic smell of something delicious—into the kitchen.
Now, here she was. Back to me. At the sink, washing a bowl she could’ve easily left for staff.
Pink hem skimming indecently high over her thighs.
Ponytail swinging between her shoulder blades.
Bare legs, bare arms, bare nape. Every inch of her was a deliberate test of how much self-control I actually had left.
None.
She didn’t turn when I came in.
The water ran. Ceramic clinked. The scent of dish soap mixed with the smell of the kitchen and her filled the space.
My wife.
“Enjoying the show?” she asked calmly, without looking over her shoulder.
“Very much,” I said, my voice sounding as if it had been dragged over gravel as I stepped closer. “Though you already knew that.”
My hand hovered for a second behind her waist. I could’ve walked away. I’d done it for weeks, walked away from anger and her silence, from the temptation to go knock on her door and drag the truth out of her.
But this…
The dress, the ponytail, the way she’d kissed me in front of my friends after weeks of pretending we were strangers—
Fuck it.
I slid my palm over her hip and pulled her back into me.
She let out a tiny breath, almost a sigh, and leaned. Actually leaned. Her back melted, her body fitting against mine like she’d been waiting for this too.
That was all I needed at this moment. Her. This.
My nose brushed the curve of her neck, the heat of her skin radiating into mine. I took in the smell of that damned floral perfume, the one that had haunted my sleep for six weeks and lingered in the hallways, making it hard to ignore her no matter how I had tried.
She knew. She was aware of exactly how this scent acted as a tether on my soul, pulling me back to her every time I tried to drift away. It was a curse, and she was the one who had cast it.
I inhaled deeply like a man possessed, my lungs aching with the need to fill myself with her.
“You smell so good,” I whispered near her ear. The words slipped out, unplanned and raw. I felt her freeze in my arms before her body gradually relaxed.
“Have your friends left?” she asked.
“Mmh.” I hummed a yes into her hair. My eyes drifting shut as I inhaled her again. I couldn’t get enough. I wanted to breathe her into my lungs until there was no oxygen left, only her.
Of course my friends were gone, or more accurately, I’d practically snarled at them to get off my property the second she disappeared into the house.
I couldn’t sit there for another thirty minutes pretending to care about their posturing or their Sanctum politics while my pulse thundered in my ears and my cock pressed against my zipper because my wife had decided to dress as sin incarnate and kissed me with the clear intention of tasting my soul.
“About time,” she said, still not turning. “I didn’t dress like this for them.”
Every rational part of me disintegrated.
I spun her gently, my hands on her hips, lifting her up onto the counter in one smooth movement. The dress rode up further, exposing more of her thighs. Lace peeked out—a matching soft pink.
My body reacted instantly, hot and hard and painfully aware.
Her palms pressed to the countertop behind her, bracing herself. Her knees brushed my sides. Those eyes wide, dark, and searching locked onto mine.
“About the other day,” she started.
“We’re past it, Léa.” I shook my head, not wanting to go back there. I finally had her in my hands again, nothing else mattered. “Let’s not…”
“I just wanted closure.” Her voice cut through me, determined. She lifted one hand and caught my jaw, her thumb brushing the corner of my mouth, forcing my gaze up to hers. “I needed to say it.”
I closed my eyes for a second.
“Say what?”
“I don’t love him.”
My eyes snapped open.
“I don’t hate you either,” she went on. “In fact, it’s quite the opposite.”
This was my girl in a nutshell. Honest, brave, reckless, so very her. She held my stare, looking almost surprised by her own confession, waiting to see what I'd do with the truth she'd just handed me.
Our eyes locked. The six weeks of distance, the fight that started it all, suddenly felt far away.
So I did the only thing that made sense—I leaned forward and kissed her.
My lips collided with hers.
Weeks of silence, and sleeping alone, of her scent holding me hostage, and her absence everywhere else—everything crashed into that kiss. Her mouth opened for me instantly, as though she'd been waiting for me to make the first move.
When I broke away, our foreheads touched, both our breaths uneven and fiery hot in the space between us.
“I love you,” I whispered.
She went absolutely still. The world stopped.
Fuck.
Her eyes instantly flew to mine, wide and searching, looking for the truth I wasn’t supposed to give her.
My heart collided with my ribs, too hard, too fast. I could feel the gravity of those three words sitting there, heavy and lethal, pressing against my teeth.
If I didn’t take them back, I was a dead man.
“—in that dress,” I finished, forcing the air out of my lungs in a rough save.
Relief loosened her shoulders; her mouth lifted, and a little “oh” slipped out, half laugh, half exhale.
“I was hoping you would,” she said, shy, almost teasing.
I huffed a mirthless laugh, the tension bleeding away for my brain to function again. But as I looked at her, I knew I was lying. The dress was just the spark. The fire had been burning for a long, long time.
“Then you won’t mind if I take it off.”
She shook her head, but glanced around the kitchen, nerves flickering in her eyes. “What if someone walks in?”
“No one will,” I said, absolutely certain. “And if they do, that’s their problem. Not mine.”
Because right now, there was only one problem I cared about, and it was the fact that my wife was sitting on my counter in a barely-there dress and I was still standing here talking.
I found the zipper at her side and eased it down, slowly, watching her face. The fabric loosened and slid, baring the delicate line of her collarbone, her nipples peaking behind a pink lace bra. I placed my hand over her breasts and kneaded gently. Her breath hitched into a stifled moan.
The urge to drop to my knees hit me so hard it almost staggered me.
“You make it very hard to be patient,” I muttered, more to myself than to her, as the dress pooled around her waist.
I sank without deciding to. One second I was standing; the next I was on the floor in front of her, exactly where I’d been starving to be for weeks.
My hands parted her thighs, firmly but carefully. I pressed a kiss to one knee, then down the smooth line of her calf as I slipped off her heel. The other shoe followed, my mouth trailing back up the inside of her leg, tasting her skin as I went higher.
By the time I reached the soft, sensitive place at the top of her thigh, her fingers had dug into the edge of the counter, her knuckles pulled tight, her chest rising and falling in short, shallow breaths.
I angled her panties aside and latched my mouth onto her clit, my tongue lapping flat and hard against the swollen nub, sucking it deep while her wetness smeared across my chin.
She shivered, and a low moan escaped her lips, trembling and fighting the rest of it.
“Don’t hide it,” I rasped. “I want to hear you.”
I eased one finger into her soaked pussy, and fuck, she gripped me instantly, tight as a fist. So fucking snug it made my cock jerk inside my trousers.
“Fuck, Léa,” I breathed, pushing in to the knuckle and pulling back, just to feel that drag again. “You’re still this tight for me?”
She gave a quick and desperate nod, unable to find the words.
I set a languid rhythm, thrusting my finger while my tongue circled her clit in relentless patterns. When her hips started chasing me, I added a second finger, stretching her gradually, feeling every inch of resistance as her body tried to accommodate me.
“You’re opening up so beautifully for me,” My voice barely surviving the sentence.
She moaned louder now, the sound raw and helpless, her thighs trembling around my head as I curled my fingers up, grinding against that spot inside her while my mouth worked her clit.
Wet sounds filled the kitchen of my fingers sliding in and out of her, the obscene slick of her arousal on my tongue. It was fucking addictive. I’d gone three weeks without touching her like this and my body felt half-feral, like I was making up for every second of deprivation.
I took my time. I wanted to relearn every reaction—Her breath stuttering when I flattened my tongue and dragged it slower. The sensual way her hips jerked when I sucked hard that made me harder. Her hands gripping the counter harder for support when I crooked my fingers just right.
Her composure began to fray. The soft moans leaving her mouth broke into desperate little cries pulled apart in pieces.
“Orion… oh… God—”
I tightened my grip on her thigh, keeping her exactly where I wanted her, pinning her to the counter with my mouth.