Chapter Seven
Tabitha
“We could wait,” Marshall offers. His meaning is clear. Before I can find the words to tell him that I don’t want to wait to have sex he continues, “But I don’t want to.”
We’re home now. The rustic cabin tucked high up on the mountain with two large fields on either side of the winding dirt driveway. The pang of longing that hit me square in the chest when I saw my new home took my breath away. Everywhere I looked was evidence of what my future holds.
An orchard with never-ending rows of fruit trees that I will see grow taller as the years pass.
The vegetable garden that takes up one entire field.
At a glance it has everything we would need for dinner.
Sun ripened tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, and snap peas, among so many other plants.
One day our children will help us tend that garden.
They’ll learn firsthand how to grow their own food and how to barter with their dad down at the farmer’s market.
Knowing that I picked the right man, that fate brought me all the way to Crescent Ridge to marry Marshall makes my chest light. Science can only go so far to explain this connection between us. That immediate spark.
The elevation in my body’s core temperature and the pounding of my heart signal arousal. His dilated pupils reveal the same need.
But it’s so much more.
It’s the light touch of his hand to my lower back as he guided me around the cabin.
The easy way he introduced me to his friends and took their teasing.
It's the vulnerable honesty when he confessed that he didn't expect to bring home a wife today. It’s the sharp unyielding tone of his voice when he corrected the judge. I’ve never had someone looking out for me like that.
And it’s the way his dark eyes fixate on my face, searching for any sign of uncertainty or dismay.
“I don’t want to wait either.”
He steps into my space, the sheer size of him making me feel like one of Jupiter’s tiny moons orbiting in his massive gravitational pull.
“I’ll be gentle,” he promises.
A rebellious part of me hopes he won’t.
Marshall’s kisses start gentle, his lips light on mine. It feels like fireflies buzzing through my veins. Light electricity with a little bit of heat. It’s a nice kiss. A good kiss. But it’s not what I need.
The need clawing at my spine. At my throat. It demands more.
“Marshall,” I plead.
“Don’t,” he growls. “You’re asking for more than you realize with that breathy little tone.”
He might believe otherwise but I do know what I’m asking for. I want it all. All his rough edges and scars. I want him just as grumpy and surly as he was at the airport.
“Yes, I do.”
His fingers tighten at my waist, hard enough to leave a mark, and I know he’s at the breaking point.
“Please.”
The grump doesn’t bother responding to my plea.
Not verbally, at least. His next kiss is fierce.
Overwhelming in intensity. It’s everything I want.
His lips slide across mine with delicious warmth as his tongue strokes mine.
This is what I need. A man who craves my touch and isn’t afraid to show it.
He’s not cowled by my intellect or by my career. He sees me as a woman.
His woman.
“Bed,” he mutters.
I’m still dazed from the kiss. Knees weak with tingling toes I don’t move fast enough for him. He scoops me up and tosses me over his shoulder before I realize his intention.
“ Marshall .” His name comes out in a whisper. I’m not sure whether I’m bothered by his impatience or thrilled by the greedy way his hands roam over my ass.
“I’m not fucking you on the couch, Tabitha,” he says sternly. “And if I don’t get you into the bedroom that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
My thighs clamp together as the evidence of my arousal soaks my panties.
It’s such a foreign feeling. When I’ve touched myself, it’s taken several glasses of wine, a carefully chosen romantic movie, and a vivid fantasy to get this level of pulsating desire.
I try to be discreet, but my squirming draws Marshall’s attention as he strides through the cabin.
His hand shifts lower edging up my skirt until his seeking fingers find the damp spot at my center. One finger strokes my seam confidently, the pressure teasingly light.
“Fucking hell,” he groans. “You don’t play fair, clever girl.”
His voice is so deep, so guttural, that it makes me shiver as a bolt of heat runs down my spine.
“You’re gonna kill me,” he says under his breath as he opens the bedroom door.
“I’m loving this house tour,” I tease him. “Are the hardwood floors original?”
He slaps my ass, chuckling when I yelp.
“Keep it up.”
Emboldened by his touch I don’t heed the edge of warning in his tone.
“I was hoping for a different kind of wood, but I guess—”
My words die abruptly as he drops me onto the bed.
It’s a rare luxury compared to what I’ve seen of his cabin so far.
The house is rustic with rough but functional wooden furniture that clearly came straight from the surrounding forest. The bed?
A glorious four poster king with smooth edges, a dark varnish, and a mattress soft enough to float.
He settles over me, the bed dipping under his weight. The room is quiet except for our mingled breath, and the muffled sound of wind whispering through the pine trees just on the other side of the cabin walls. I reach for him, and he catches my wrist, desire blazing in his dark eyes.
We linger in that suspended moment. Marshall brushes a stray lock of hair from my cheek, his thumb tracing my jaw with aching tenderness. I thought myself well-prepared for this marriage. Now, as his hands drift down my body helping me out of my clothes, I realize how silly that was.
The realistic expectations I set? Gone.
I don’t know why I believed this would be a marriage of contentment. Or respect.
His touch is a match lighting my body on fire. His kiss is a silent promise of more than respect. More than mere contentment.
It’s passion. It’s desire. It’s something fragile and new, but undeniable.
Fate brought me to Marshall. All the way across the country to this grumpy man who sees more than a brilliant scientist when he looks at me.
My hands slide down his bare stomach, moving over his muscles like surfers riding a wave.
“Tabitha,” he moans when my fingers reach the waistband of his jeans.
He doesn’t protest when I unzip his pants or pull down his boxers. His dark brown eyes just watch me in heavy silence as I look my fill.
Longer than the length of my hand, his cock stands proud with skin a hair lighter than the bronze shade of his stomach.
It’s warm to the touch, and as I run a curious hand down the shaft it hardens further stretching the skin taunt.
Rubbing a thumb over the rounded pink tip, I giggle when Marshall shivers.
“Should have known you would tease me.”
Looking up at him from under my eyelashes I’m surprised to find him tense. His neck vein visibly pulses, and he breathes heavily.
For a moment I consider his leg as the reason for his exertion, but he removed his prosthetic before climbing into bed. He supports most of his weight with his arms, biceps bulging beside my head. The muscles of his arms and shoulders seem steady, unbothered by our position.
Testing a hypothesis, I run my hand up and down his length, watching his eyebrows scrunch and listening to his gasping breath.
Oh.
I suppose I am teasing him.
“Enjoying yourself?” he asks.
So much. A quantifiable limit does not exist.
He leans down trapping my arm between our bodies, and effectively halting my movement. His lips hover over mine, less than a breath’s width away.
“You know physics,” he whispers.
I nod, unsure of why we’re talking about physics when biology should be our primary focus at this exact moment.
“That guy who had an apple fall on his head—”
“Sir Isaac Newton,” I interrupt. “Many scientists suspect that anecdote to be a myth.”
Marshall grins.
“I hated school but even I know that third law of his.”
What an odd conversation to have—
“Oh.”
His grin widens.
“That’s right my clever girl. For every action,” he pauses to shoot a meaningful look to where my hand was teasing his cock. “There is an equal and opposite reaction.”
His words are a playful warning, and my nerve receptors light up in response.
“For every teasing touch,” he whispers against my lips. “I’m going to keep you on edge. You won’t come until I let you. Until you beg me.”
“Marshall,” I plead.
“No, clever girl. You’ve had your fun. Now I’ll have mine.”
He grips my arm, forcing it above my head, as I begin to realize just how exposed and at his mercy I truly am. Naked from head to toe, he can see every inch of my body. The freckles around my hip. The scar from a failed attempt at a self-pierced belly button. Every inch. Every flaw.
I’m helpless to cover any of it with my hands pinned above me. His eyes drift down, slowly appraising my curves. He stops at my stomach, his eyebrow raising as one side of his mouth tilts up in a wry smirk.
His lips follow the path his eyes traced.
Lingering kisses steal my breath, and make desire pool low and warm in my belly.
My underwear is long gone, and I can feel my arousal dripping from my core onto the bed sheets.
As his lips skim the column of my neck and down to the rise of my collarbone my body only grows hotter.
Marshall takes his time. I’m eager, my body ready to take his, to satisfy this aching need, but he doesn’t give into my selfish demands. His tongue toys with my nipples. It circles the stiff points, stroking them at leisure, as the need pulsing through my core echoes to the peaks.
He touches my body one piece at a time, exploring each methodically until he’s satisfied, but I feel the ghost imprints of his fingers and hands all over. He hasn’t touched my pussy since I was over his shoulder. Hasn’t slipped a finger inside or brushed my clit. And yet…I’m already on the edge.
This man might make me come before he fucks me.
But it isn’t just the heat of his touch or the teasing edge of anticipation that breaks me.
It’s the way Marshall looks at me, as if every part of me is worthy of adoration.
His hands slow and gentle, trace the lines of my body with reverence and hunger, making my heart ache with something deeper than simple desire.
“I want to taste you,” he says as he slides down the bed.
My thighs tremble with the self-conscious temptation to hide myself from him. But curiosity and burning desire give me the strength to remain still as Marshall settles between my legs.
His breath is warm on my wet slit. Chills race down my spine, and goosebumps break out along my legs and arms. I’m paralyzed by want. I need him to touch me.
I want him to lick me.
He doesn’t hesitate to lean in, his fingers parting my folds before his tongue curves through my arousal. Marshall makes a sound in the back of his throat that sounds like a grumpy bear awoken from hibernation early.
Warm and wet his tongue plunges inside me.
Thicker than a finger and slick with saliva, it stretches me with ease.
Soft and dexterous, its quick movements make me moan as one of his hands slides across my mons.
Pressing down gently he keeps my hips pinned to the bed as my back arches and I clutch the sheets in a white-knuckle fist.
He makes low timbered sounds of enjoyment that turns the desire burning my thighs up another notch. The feeling of his mouth on me? Amazing. The vocal proof he’s enjoying my taste? Pure decadence.
I’m hovering on the edge, tingles racing down my arms and neurons in my brain blasting with pleasure when he abruptly pulls away.
“Ah,” he murmurs, wiping his chin dry. “You forgot.”
If my nails were longer, they would rend the sheets. My frustration is palpable, and it only grows as Marshall laughs at my frown.
“Don’t worry,” he tells me.
As he grips my hips, worry is the last thing on my mind. He yanks me to the end of the bed, my legs sliding around him as he lines us up.
“Consider this a warning, wife. Next time you tease me I won’t be so quick to end your torment. We’ll stay on edge for hours until you’re a sweaty over-sensitized mess begging for my cock.”
Yes. So much yes. He leans forward, kissing me with a swift brutality that makes my nipples ache.
As his tongue slips into my mouth his hips punch forward, his cock slamming home. He swallows my gasp at the intrusion, pausing as I adjust to the new sensation. There is a fullness. A warmth. Only the slightest pinch of pain that fades almost immediately.
I’m no longer thinking in complete sentences. Instinct guides my body as I move beneath him, urging him to continue. His dark eyes never leave mine as he pulls back before hammering home.
That first thrust makes electricity pulse through my clit. It throbs as he begins to set a rhythm. Withdrawing and thrusting forward. The hard line of his cock slides against my walls making me writhe beneath him as pleasure bursts through my body with each press of his hips to mine.
“Look at me,” he orders, his voice haggard.
My eyes snap open. I didn't know they were closed. Staring up at Marshall I can’t look away. His dark eyes pin mine in place. The delicious slide of his body against mine is addictive. Each movement pushing me higher.
I’m close, dancing on a knife’s edge.
“Come for me, clever girl,” he whispers.
I don’t hear the words. I read his lips. My blood is rushing through my ears, washing away all other sound as I come with a scream that would make any scream queen proud.
“Good girl,” he mutters as his hips stutter against mine. “Good fucking girl. My perfect little wife. Fucking perfect.”
I’m floating on a wave of warm pleasure, tingles darting beneath my skin as he slams home one final time and coats my inner walls with warmth. It’s an alien feeling, but one I don’t mind.
He falls to the side, careful not to crush me with his weight, utterly exhausted. I’m ready for round two, but eyeing the way he stretches his leg, undoubtedly sore from the strenuous activity I make a mental note to try different positions. Cowgirl is supposed to be a crowd favorite.
Later, Marshall gathers me close, his voice rough with tenderness as he breathes promises into my hair.
There is no more doubt. Just honesty, laughter, and the kind of easy intimacy that comes when every wall is gone.
Wrapped in his arms, the world falls away, leaving only the two of us, tangled together in the afterglow of something both wild and profoundly gentle.
It's in this moment that the truth finds its home between us. As crazy and wild as it is.
“I don’t want you to leave,” he whispers, emotion choking his voice. “Never.”
“Are you sure?” I tease. “I might make a terrible wife.”
“I don’t care what terrible habits you have,” he mutters. “Leave your socks on the floor. Eat the last cookie. Burn the cabin down for all I care.”