Chapter 36
Jasmina
CALLAHAN DIDN’T SEEM TO want to be at the wedding reception at all, and he made it clear after about an hour of dancing that he was done.
He cut in while I was dancing with Rafe and whispered to me that a car was waiting out front, then he was pulling me through the crowd and hustling me into it.
I didn’t really fight him on it. Not even to stop and say bye to Monte and Perla. I hadn’t talked to them after Perla had given me her lecture, and I knew I had to patch things over with them eventually, but tonight didn’t seem like the best time to do it.
“We’re leaving our own wedding?” I asked him. “I didn’t say bye to anyone.”
“We’ve got a flight to catch,” he told me.
“Don’t you own the jet?”
“I do, but I’m using it as an excuse to leave anyway, because I’m ready for our honeymoon to start. Aren’t you?” He gave me a look, and then that man kissed me over and over again in the back of the SUV, and I didn’t complain.
I wanted to be with him always rather than with others.
It was a problem when I wasn’t sure where this marriage was headed. But I let him take the reins for the night.
We flew through the stars, and when he took me to the back of the jet to lie down, I told him it was the perfect time to join the Mile High Club. But he told me no, that he had better plans for the first time with his wife.
So I slept next to my husband, curled against him as he whispered nonsense to me about all the people we’d seen dancing at our estate. I didn’t think about what our lives would look like later, and I didn’t consider what I was hiding in my suitcase or my stomach.
It could all wait.
We landed in the early morning, and he took me to a beach—a beautiful beach of white sand and a dock that had a yacht the size of a whole house. I saw painted along its side was a breathtaking blue snake, coiling beneath the title: Viper’s Lair. “Shall we see if the Viper’s Lair is suitable?”
“Is that her name?” I wide-eyed it, and then him. “After me?”
“Named and bought just for you, wifey. Get your ass on it.”
I stepped onto the beautiful slab of sleek Italian engineering and bit my lip as I looked back at Callahan one step behind me. “I’m already in love with her.”
“As you should be.”
I flicked my gaze at the men starting to file onto the yacht with us and glanced at my husband. “I only want the necessary ones on here with us. I want it private.”
He nodded without hesitation this time and went back to discuss it with his men.
From there, he let the captain walk us around for the tour before he told him to disappear back to the wheelhouse.
“Settle in. Clothing for you is in the closet. Then come out to the deck with me?”
I wasn’t sure why he wasn’t jumping my bones yet.
I wanted him more than ever before, but I waved him on and went to find a bright bikini I could slide on.
It was white, like he’d made a decision that I was still his bride.
I smiled at the thought as I slipped it on, and then my hands slid over my stomach once.
Then twice, thinking of all I’d been through, thinking of what my aunt had said, thinking that if I was pregnant with Callahan’s baby, I was prepared to fight a whole war to raise that child with him.
I realized how much I’d changed in two months, and I knew that after our honeymoon, a lot more would change too.
Yet, I went upstairs, focused on having just this moment with him. I stepped out onto the deck in my bikini to soak up the sun … and my husband.
He stood with his tattooed back to me, the scar I’d given him still quite prominent. I walked up to run a finger over it, and then I wrapped my arms around his bare chest and felt the marks I’d made on his abs too. “I’ve been sort of rough with you.”
He hummed as he stared out at the sea, watching the coast get smaller and smaller.
“I enjoy whatever you are with me, Jasmina Knight.” He turned in my arm and stared down at me, the sun shining around his head like an actual halo.
“Well, then.” I couldn’t hold back anymore. “Want to enjoy me the way a husband does his wife on their first morning of marriage together?”
His eyes were serious as he searched mine. “We don’t have to do anything at all. You get that, right?”
“What do you mean?”
He rubbed down my bare back and then up it again. “I don’t need you to sleep with me because of a contract. I don’t want a kid with you because of that, Jas.”
Right. I think I just heard the I don’t want a kid with you, and my heart fluttered as my gut twisted. “But you were all interested in the chance of a trust—”
He gave a blue streak in my hair a gentle tug. “Doesn’t matter to me.”
“But the doctor said I was clear, and—”
“And you’ll be able to have children with whoever you want.”
Was he serious? I took a step back and glared at him. “Well, what if I want that person to be you?” I planted my hands on my hips. “Are you acting chivalrous all of a sudden?”
“I’m just giving you a way out if you want one.” I saw a small smirk starting on his face.
This man. “I don’t want a way out. I want my husband to stop being nice and take me like only he knows how.” I threw my hands up at him and instantly he was on me, his mouth and body colliding with me on the deck.
“Thank fuck, because I was about to jump in the water to cool the hell off if you agreed with my dumbass proposition.”
“What insanity,” I mumbled through kissing him.
Clawing at his back wildly, I dug my nails into his shoulders so I had leverage enough to hop up and wrap my legs around him.
His cock was a thick, solid spear that my pussy could rub against as I kissed him, rocking my hips so that the friction of our swimsuits gave us a little bit of relief.
“Damn. I’m not gonna last one single minute after watching you walk around in this bikini.”
I hummed. “You did good picking it out for me, then.”
“Damn right I did.” He walked us backward to a bench along the railing and sat us down on the smooth white leather so I could straddle him.
I didn’t waste time with much foreplay. I couldn’t. I bit his ear and told him, “I want my husband’s cock.” And he groaned as he watched me untie my bikini bottom. His hands went to the top, and he effortlessly loosened the ties so that it fell from my body.
I loved that his head dropped to taste my breasts immediately, that he grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked it so I had to arch and give him better access.
He hadn’t even touched my center yet, but I knew I was dripping onto his black swim trunks. “Let me have you, Callahan. Give me you.”
“You want it, Viper?” he asked me like he could hear me say it again and again all day. But then he grabbed my hips and said, “Get up and turn around. Bend over that railing. Let’s see you face the ocean.”
I bit my lip and glanced around but figured we were pretty far from the coast already. And what did I care if someone saw me? This was our time, our honeymoon, our love for one another.
I bent over the metal railing and whipped my hair over my shoulder so I could look at him once.
He groaned and swore before he walked up to massage my thighs. Then my ass. Then his cock was right against it as he asked me, “Remember how you fought me in that water?”
His hand slid down to my calf and then up to the apex of my thighs, where he slid his finger over my arousal. I arched at feeling him against my sensitive walls. But then he moved my arousal up to my puckered ass.
He massaged the hole as he asked, “You wanted to be rid of me, huh?”
“Yes,” I moaned.
“And what do you feel now when you’re with me? When your husband touches you like this?”
The pressure of his fingers was agonizingly slow as I rolled my hips back into him. He kept the pace, though, wanting an answer. “I feel good, Callahan. I feel like I want more. I feel like I need you.”
“Need me instead of need to get rid of me, huh?”
“Yes. Please.”
He chuckled. “Haven’t you learned yet, Mrs. Knight? I like to play with your pussy before I fuck it.” He slid two fingers into my cunt, but he built pressure with his thumb in my ass. And I lost it for him right there. I was wound up from waiting for him; my body was addicted to him.
I clenched around his fingers and cried out his name as I rode out my orgasm.
Callahan seemed to be just as into it as me, because he lowered his trunks and lined his cock up to thrust into me even before I could catch my breath.
I moaned a “yes,” and he pulled out to thrust in again, his length stretching me like I belonged to him.
Like I was his wife.
Like he knew how to make himself fit just right.
Like he belonged there, because my man did.
I met him thrust for thrust. Faster and faster as the ocean gleamed in the sunlight.
I cried out his name as his hand smacked my ass. “Say it again. Say I’m your husband while I take you over this railing, Jas. Scream.”
I did as I came undone, and he did too.
Fast. Raw. And completely unrestrained in the middle of the ocean.
We’d put our swimsuits back in place and were lying out on the deck.
I lifted my left hand, letting the ten-carat, princess-cut diamond catch the midday sun. The light fractured into a thousand blinding prisms, dancing across the white leather of the sun pad.
“This is grotesque,” I announced, feeling the heat of the sun sink into my skin.
“The boat or the ring?” Callahan’s voice was a low, honeyed rasp, his body next to mine on the teak deck. I held my hand out toward him, trying to catch the glare and blind him.
“This,” I said, wiggling my fingers.
He hummed. “Well, I might have met you in the dark, my love, but I want the world to know you’re mine in the light too.”
“You made it very known.”
Then I waved a hand at the sprawling top deck—the glass-bottomed jacuzzi, the hidden bar, the crew who disappeared like ghosts the moment we wanted privacy.
“And you’re grotesque too,” I pointed out.
He was wearing nothing but dark swim trunks that hung dangerously low on his hips.
His skin was bronzed, glistening with a light sheen of sweat and sea spray.
His chest was an expanse of hard, sculpted muscle—a landscape of scars and strength that I knew the map of by heart now.
His abs were a sharp, deep-cut testament to his discipline.
I let out a low, frustrated moan. “Can you be less appealing, please? You actually look like you belong on this ridiculous yacht. It’s offensive.”
He laughed a loud, unrestrained laugh that echoed over the water. It was a rare, beautiful sound, and I felt my heart do a slow, traitorous roll in my chest. I was falling. No, I was already gone.
“Offensive, am I?” He moved then, crawling onto the sun pad with a predatory grace. He didn’t stop until he was hovering over me, casting a shadow that cooled my heated skin. The scent of him—expensive sunblock, saltwater, and pure, unadulterated man—clogged my senses.
“Visually aggressive,” I whispered, my breath hitching as his gaze dropped to my mouth.
His eyes were dark, swirling with the kind of intent that made my thighs ache. He reached out, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw before dipping down to the pulse point at the base of my throat. He could feel it. He knew my heart was racing for him.
“I’m just getting started, Viper,” he murmured, his voice vibrating against my lips. “If you think the ring is grotesque, wait until you see what our life will look like together.”
I put my hands on his chest and stopped him before it was too late. I had to.
Because I needed to know what he meant. “When this is over—”
“This between us?” He frowned and stopped.
“Well, if you don’t want children with me—”
“I never said that, Jas. I said I don’t want children because of that contract, which I’m ripping up.”
“Cal—”
“We’ll protect who you want at all costs, because your family is mine now, but I’m not holding you to a single damn thing other than being my wife.”
“And a child?”
He touched my stomach. “That, I’ll try to have with you for the rest of your life if you want, but it won’t be because of a trust.”
Then I whispered the words I had been scared to tell him. “What if we already have one?”
“What?” His blue-green gaze seemed confused, then he said louder, “What? Are you …” He rubbed my belly once and then again. “Baby, are you serious?”
“I don’t know. I just …” I shrugged, tears starting to stream down my face. “I think it might have happened. I’m late, but I didn’t get a test.”
He jumped up.
Then he crouched down like he didn’t want to forget to tell me as he took my face in his hands. “I’m going to be the best dad and husband for this family, baby in you or not … but I hope she or he is in there. I’ll get a test, okay?”
“We’re out at sea, Cal.” I chuckled at him. He’d lost his mind.
But in the best way.
He wanted this. He wanted it like I wanted it.
And within ten minutes, I heard a helicopter flying in and a man rappelled from it like we were in Black Hawk Down.
“Are you serious?”
The man didn’t look especially happy to be delivering the bag, and I can imagine he didn’t think his mission should include grabbing pregnancy tests and flying them to a yacht.
Callahan didn’t waste any time telling him “thank you,” either.
He rushed us inside and had me peeing on the stick as he asked question after question. The man didn’t even let me close the door. “Do you want me to hold it?”
“No! I’ll pee on you.”
“You could pee on my face, and I wouldn’t give a damn,” he grumbled as he knelt down between my legs.
Oh my God.
“Callahan, I can do this, okay?” I told him slowly, and then I motioned for him to take a deep breath.
He finally took a step back and combed a hand through his hair. “Of course. I know you can do anything. I’m just here … you know … if you need me.”
I chuckled and peed on the stick.
We waited and stared at it together.
When the lines turned the exact color they needed to be to show I was pregnant, my husband whooped and carried me off to bed.
We were going to be parents, and I think it was all I needed to know that we’d be fine, no matter what happened when we got back from sea.
But we didn’t have to go back to reality for it to find us.
When I woke and found Callahan gone, I got up from the bed and grabbed my bikini and one of his button-down shirts to go search for him.
But as I started toward the door, I jumped when I saw a figure in the shadows.
“Monte? Jesus. What are you doing here? Did Callahan call you to tell you the news?”