I frown. There’s something familiar about that… Something that brings back a flash of fuzzy memory from the weekend, something I’d all but forgotten. A pawn shop, dingy lighting, but we were too drunkenly happy to care, laughing it all off. And… “Wait, did I give that to you?” I ask.
“Give is a rather nice word.” He laughs. “Don’t you remember how hard you struggled to force it onto my finger?”
I grimace. That doesn’t sound familiar, yet it sounds sadly believable, given the state I was in. “Sorry. Clearly I couldn’t afford actual gold.” I hold out a hand and he lets me take his hand, tracing my fingers over the metal. I glance up at him, my cheeks bright red again, for reasons I can’t quite put a name to now. “You don’t have to wear it, you know,” I say.
“I know,” he replies, those dark eyes fixed on mine, inscrutable, impossible to tear my gaze away from. “But I want to,” he says, so simply that it feels like a bolt to my chest, a spark of sheer desire that ignites me.
He wants to. This wealthy as hell billionaire businessman, who could have anyone and anything in the world he wanted, wants to wear the shitty, green ring that I bought him in a pawn shop.
“Where did you get this one?” I ask, with a smile, fingering the ring on my own hand next. “The same shop, or did we do a pawn shop hop all down the strip searching?”
Something flashes across his face. Hesitation? But it’s gone the moment I glimpse it. “That was my mother’s ring,” he says, and whatever answer I expected, it isn’t that.
My stomach does a strange little flip of desire, and my thighs tighten, as I consider the ring in a whole new light. “But…”
He shakes his head. “She gave it to me years ago. Family heirloom. I usually carry it with me as a sort of good luck token, but after we met, well… it seemed like the right moment to part with it.”
My throat works tightly when I swallow. “How does your mother feel about it?” I ask, not sure whether I want to know the answer just yet. Did he tell her about us? “About you giving this to someone you barely know, I mean.”
“I didn’t tell her yet,” he answers, simply as that, his gaze still fixed on mine.
It’s the yet that catches me. “Why not?”
“I want you to meet her.”
I snort. He just stares at me, and I realize he wasn’t kidding. “Meet her? What, like this is an actual…” I shake my head. “We barely know each other, John. And now, you’re my boss, it’s not proper, there’s—”
“We were married before you started working for me.” He waves a hand, as if that wave can make all the worries fade away. “And I don’t give a damn about propriety. I know what I want. Do you?”
“I…” I clamp my mouth shut. No. I have no idea. That’s what I want to say, but I stop myself.
It doesn’t seem to matter. He can read it all over my face, just like he can read everything. All my moods, as easily as if I were a neon sign. His expression shifts, hurt flashing across his face briefly, and it settles in my gut like a stone.
I hurt him. Why does it feel so terrible? Why do I wish I could just reach across the table between us and wipe the frown off his face?
But I can’t. Because I don’t know what I want yet. An annulment or… No. That’s the only choice. The only option. The only sane thing I can want is an annulment, just like we said from the start.
Luckily, I’m temporarily saved from replying as the waiter stops by our table with another course, followed quickly by the bartender asking our opinion on the new cocktails. It temporarily saves me from having to think about that brief flash of hurt on John’s face. From wondering why, deep down, a little part of me is starting to question… What if we didn’t fix this?
But that’s crazy talk. Isn’t it?
7
John
I wait until our audience clears out again before I reach back beneath the table to cup Mara’s knee again. She feels so soft beneath my touch, even through the fabric of her jeans—such a contrast to her hands, which, like mine, are rough with callouses. I love those contrasts in her. Smooth and hard, soft and stubborn. She’s like no one I’ve ever met, except for maybe myself.
She’ll see that soon. She’ll realize this is meant to be.
I just have to make her see it.
Even now, as I caress her leg, my fingers slowly inching upward, she doesn’t pull away from me like she would have before. She goes still, and lets me touch her, hand wandering higher, higher.
“I don’t want to hide this, Mara,” I say softly, and she leans toward me, her body responding even when her mind tries to refuse.
“Hide what?” she murmurs, her gaze distracted, her eyes half focused on the table, her mind surely stuck underneath it, where my fingers have reached almost the top of her inner thigh, the fabric warm from her skin, searing hot against my palm. I dig my fingers in a little harder, make her lips part in an almost gasp, before I let my fingertips rest along the crease of her jeans, ever so lightly.
She shifts in her seat, pushing a little toward my hand, even as she tries to hold herself back.
“I want the world to know you’re my wife,” I say, and at that moment, I give her what she wants. I press down harder, my fingertips rubbing against the denim, sending friction straight to her clit.
She gasps, and clutches at the edge of the tablecloth, pulling it over her lap even further, as if that will make it less obvious what’s happening here.
It makes me grin. She can be so naïve at times. So worldly at others. Full of contradictions, my wife.
“Why?” she breathes, her voice coming quick and low. “Why would you want that?” Her gaze finds mine, her eyes wide and blue and filled with questions. Questions, and something else. A searing heat that I recognize from our wedding night together.
She wants me, just as badly as I want her.
Which is going to make this all the more fun. I smile. “Because I’m selfish,” I tell her. “When I decide I want something, I can’t bear the thought of losing it. And when it comes to you, well…” I shift my fingers against her, three of them now, rubbing her through the fabric of her pants. “I don’t want anyone even thinking they can take you from me. You’re mine, Mara.”
She arches up in her seat, pushing against me in spite of herself, her breath coming faster, her face and her chest both flushed that lovely shade of crimson I so enjoy drawing out of her. “But… Aren’t you worried it will be… embarrassing? If we… if it… if the marriage fails…” Her breath starts to stutter as I continue to stroke her, slow and steady, never enough to take her all the way to orgasm. Just enough to edge her closer and closer to the peak.
“It won’t fail,” I reply simply. “You’re my wife. Now. Forever. That’s how marriage works, isn’t it?”
“But this… but we…” She can’t muster up the argument. Not with how dizzy she is from what I’m doing to her under this table right now.
What I don’t expect, however, is for her to turn the tables on me. The next thing I know, her palm is flat against my lap, her fingers tracing the hard, thick bulge against the seam of my jeans, where I’m already hard just from thinking about her, sitting across from her, watching her lick a drop of her cocktail from her upper lip.
Everything about this woman drives me wild, in the best possible way. And I don’t want it to stop.
I don’t want any of this to stop.
So as her fingers inch around me, stroking me hesitantly at first, then more firmly, I stretch out my free hand to flag the waitstaff casually.
I pay, even as I reach over to catch the back of Mara’s chair and slide her close to me. “I can’t wait any longer,” I whisper against her neck, my lips finding her skin, tasting her, touching her. I trail my tongue up along the crease of her neck, up to her ear, which makes her whole body shiver deliciously against mine. “I need to have you again, wife.”
Another shiver, this time elicited by that one word alone. It thrills me, how much power I have ove
r her, just from that simple term. It makes me want to get her out of here, into my car, somewhere where I can call her that again and again until she’s screaming “husband” in return.
The very thought makes my grin turn wolfish.
I sign the bill in a heartbeat, and in the next, I pull us both up out of our seats. I scoop her into my arms once more, against her protests and groans about embarrassment. But this time, I need to carry her in order to hide the raging hard-on she’s given me, so she can hardly complain. I tell her so and enjoy the new flush on her cheeks as she bows her head against my chest, giving up, at least for the moment.
It lasts until we’re outside. Only then do I let her down onto her own two feet, but only long enough so that I can pin her against the wall of the restaurant, and do what I’ve been hungry to do ever since I saw her this morning—ever since we were torn apart by that intrusion at work.
I kiss her, hard and deep, my tongue slipping between her lips, my hands circling her waist. She arches up against me, with a soft little sigh of relief that makes me growl in response, because fuck, I want her. I want to claim every inch of this gorgeous, sexy, hard as nails woman.
I push her against the wall, and she raises one leg, just far enough that I grab under her thigh and yank her against me. My cock is so hard I’m sure she can feel it, even through the thick fabric of both my jeans and her own. My mouth leaves hers to trail down her neck, kissing and sucking and nipping at her skin, savoring the taste of her, salty and sweet all at once, with a hint of something light and floral, not quite perfume. Maybe the scent of her shampoo? Whatever it is, I love it. I can’t get enough.
I drink her in, tracing my hands down her sides, over the smooth planes of her curves. She shivers under my hands, and I grin down at her.
“See? It’s not so bad going public, is it?”
Her breath hitches then, and she glances to one side, only just now noticing what I knew all along. We’ve got an audience. Several other diners from the restaurant, and a handful more who hadn’t entered yet, all staring open-mouthed. The stares only grow more pronounced when the valet responds and tosses me back the keys. I flash Mara a jaunty wink and head toward the car, leaving her to rearrange her shirt, which had ridden up far enough in all the fuss to show a thin line of her pale stomach.
When she manages, she jogs after me, still glaring as she climbs into the passenger seat beside mine. “You did that on purpose,” she mutters.
“I told you, I won’t hide you, or this marriage.”
“But why?”
I reach across to trace her knee again, and she shivers, even despite all her protesting. “Why do you keep fighting this, I think is the more interesting question, Mara.”
“I never thought about having a husband,” she replies. “I want a career, not… not marriage.”
“Why not have both?” I arch one eyebrow. “I fully intend to.”
Her breath catches again, but when I steal a glance at her, just as I start up the car and pull away from the curb, it doesn’t seem to be because she’s resisting. She honestly looks like she hadn’t considered the possibility.
“I… don’t know. It’s always been an either-or proposition,” she says. “Either a husband and family or a career. I want the career.”
“Don’t limit yourself like that.” I shrug. And the look on her face tells me she’s never considered that point of view, either.
I don’t drive us far. One exit away, and then I’m swinging off the highway already, aimed toward the nearest dark alley.
“Where are we going?” she asks, her hands still tracing my forearm absently, as if she wants to pull me toward her, make me start touching her again, but she doesn’t quite have the guts to go for what she wants yet.
I flash her another grin, sly this time. “I can’t wait,” I say. I put the car into park at the mouth of the first dark, empty alleyway I can find, and grab both her hips, drawing her toward me. “I need you. Now.”
She hesitates, but only long enough to undo her seatbelt. And then she’s swinging her free leg across mine, straddling my lap, and I reach up to cup her face between my palms and pull her down into another hard kiss. While she’s distracted, I reach down to undo the clasp on her jeans and push them down past her ass.
She gasps, glancing out and around the car, worried someone will see us. But I just chuckle and hit a button on the dash, making the windows instantly darken around us.
“Relax,” I tell her, eyes alight with amusement. “I don’t plan on sharing every aspect of our marriage with the world.”
She arches an eyebrow, amused. “Just the part where you touch me under the table in the nicest restaurant in the city?”
I scoff. “That hardly counted. I wasn’t about to make you come right there.”
“How do you know?” She tilts her head, frowning.
My smile widens. “Because, my darling, you not only have an incredibly sensitive, tight pussy.” I emphasize this by sliding one palm under her panties and cupping her bare, clean-shaven mound. “But you are so very easy to read, too.” I stroke her with my thumb, in slow circles, just above her clit, which I can already tell is aroused as hell thanks to my touching her earlier in the restaurant. “I know exactly how to get every response I want out of your body, if you let me,” I tell her.
At that, she arches into my palm, her hips twisting as she grinds against me, her breath coming shorter, faster.
I smile and slide my hand back out, making her twist to a halt, her lips still parted with frustration. Her throat works around a hard swallow, as she clearly bites back her instinctive response, to ask me to keep going.
Then she surprises me. She reaches down between us to cup the hard bulge in my jeans, her fingers digging into the seams a little, pressing around me. She shifts her palm back and forth, and I grit my teeth to stop a low, guttural sound from escaping.
The feel of her small hands on my cock only makes me harder. It makes me want to torment her more.
“Eager, are you, my darling?” I arch an eyebrow, and she pauses, her eyes narrowing.
“You’re the one who teased me throughout dinner.”
“Teased you?” I chuckle, completely unrepentant, and reach up to take her waist. In one swift move, I spin her around, leaning my seat back at the same time, so she’s pinned underneath me on the driver’s seat. “That was nothing.” I lean in to kiss my way down the side of her neck. When I reach the hem of her shirt, I slide one hand up underneath it, my fingertips tracing the warm plane of her stomach, up over her curves until they reach the underside of her breasts. Her bra is tight, but I trace around the back of it, my hands following the smooth, silky feeling fabric until I find the clasp.
“I know you know how to beg, my lovely wife.” I grin down at her. “I intend to hear you do it again.”
She breathes in sharply as I undo her bra clasp, tugging it off from beneath her shirt. Then, gently, I push her shirt up and out of the way, before my mouth continues its attack.
I trail my tongue down the center of her chest first, following the trail between her breasts, tasting her salty, sweet flavor. At the same time, I cup both her breasts in my hot palms, kneading them gently, her nipples beginning to harden against the flat of my palm.
When she starts to breathe a little faster, I run my thumbs across them, pressing down just hard enough to make the hard little nubs swell beneath the pads of my thumbs. I tilt my face to one side and gently nip at the soft, sensitive skin below her nipples.
She gasps, then sinks into a moan as I suck at the spot now, my lips soothing the bite before I nip her again, a little closer to the nipple.
Both her nipples are rock hard by the time I suck one into my mouth, my tongue toying with her sensitive bud, rolling back and forth across her until her back arches up off the seat.
At the same time, my hands slide down her waist, over the incline of her hips, my fingers digging in just enough to make her twist closer to me, pressing in, eage
r for the touch. My fingertips reach the hem of her jeans, and I slip beneath them again, toying with the edge of her panties as I shift my mouth to her other breast, licking and sucking until she’s moaning, her breath harder, faster.
I tilt my head back and grin up at her. “Tell me you want your husband to fuck you,” I say.
Her throat works hard with a tight gulp. “I… that’s not… fair,” she manages, her eyes darkening.
I tilt my head with a smirk and shrug one shoulder. “Your call. I’ll do it as soon as you ask me nicely.” My eyes flash when they meet hers, and I can see the resolve in her gaze, the tightening of her jaw as my stubborn, sexy as hell wife decides she’s going to fight me on this.
Just like I’d hoped.
In one smooth motion, I finish undoing the clasp of her jeans and push them down over the arch of her hips. I’m greeted by the sight of bright red panties, silky and thin. It makes me grin.
“Someone was hoping for a naughty encounter when she got dressed this morning,” I point out.
Mara’s face flushes, almost as red as her panties. “Not necessarily.”
I tilt my head, still grinning. “No?” I flatten my hand, slip it underneath her panties. My fingers inch closer and closer to her mound, to the tight little center between her luscious thighs. “So you wear sexy underwear every day then? Good to know…”
“It just helps me feel more confident,” she protests. “When I’m… doing something… new.” Her breath goes softer, hitching, as my fingertips reach the creases of her thighs. I trace one after the next, digging my finger in, pressing against the soft, sensitive skin there. She’s clean-shaven, which only makes my grin wider.
“Something new, hmm?” I arch an eyebrow. “We’ll have to get creative then, since we already did so much…”
Her cheeks flare again, but she arches her hips up to meet my hand, too. “That’s not what I meant.”
Marry Me Now: An Arranged Marriage Collection Page 29