Carrie shrieked loudly in her frustration, her scream echoing off the bedroom walls even when Michael chose that moment to double his efforts, which was difficult for him since he was laughing with every stroke.
She grabbed two handfuls of his streaming long hair and pulled until Michael stopped moving to stare fiercely back at her while he throbbed inside her, knowing they were both moments away from the final pleasure.
“Carrie Addison Larson. Legally all mine at last,” Michael gloated, his gaze saying she could do what she wanted to him, hurt him or hold him.
That much at least was completely her choice.
Though Carrie knew what the look he gave her meant, she also knew she had a lot less choice than Michael realized.
“Yes—damn you. You can say that for now,” Carrie hissed, yanking his head down with one hand in his hair as she found his mouth with hers in a controlling kiss of her own.
When she freed his mouth, Michael put his forehead on hers. “Your irritation with me just makes me harder. Is that why you do it? Do you think I still don’t have enough enthusiasm for you, lady?”
“Aren’t you taking that for better or worse stuff a little too literally? Better shut up while you can. I’m so angry I could scream again—or do something to genuinely hurt you,” Carrie hissed.
“Want to spank me again?” Michael offered. “I kind of liked that before.”
Carrie was so appalled at his suggestion that she froze beneath him, and then hysterical laughter overcame her. “My God, I can’t believe I actually married you! You’re such an ass at times. You’re either being perfect or being a jerk. There is just no middle ground with you, is there?”
“Yeah. Too bad for you,” Michael said, looping his fingers with hers, just in case she got violent. “I definitely got the better end of the deal in this relationship. You got some horny guy-guy, and I got the hottest, most obedient woman on earth.”
Carrie twisted and swore as Michael’s body pinned hers effectively to the sheets. “Why are you torturing me with insults on our wedding night?”
“Oh, is that what this is?” Michael said sarcastically, slowly stroking inside her with his heart beating hard at the thrill of hearing Carrie admit the significance of this joining. “So you do think this is our wedding night. I wasn’t sure how you felt about it. Did you want romantic and smooth? I guess I can do that. All you had to do was ask.”
Carrie glared at him, speechless with rage.
Michael kissed her eyes, down her face, and the hollow of her neck. “You smell like vanilla ice cream and taste like dessert. I want to bury myself inside you and never come out. I want to ruin the sheets with you and make you call my name over and over all night.”
“Michael,” Carrie began, but an orgasm of biblical proportion stole her ability to hear him. “Michael—please.”
“Yes, just like that. You say my name and it sounds so right to me. I like knowing that I have a legal right to make love to you. So love me back, Carrie Larson,” Michael entreated, his body straining to give hers everything it sought.
“I already love you back, you moron,” Carrie said harshly as wave after wave of pleasure tossed her body around the bed. The rest of the vitriol she’d intended to heap on Michael was sucked out of her when his mouth ravished hers again.
“Say you’re my wife. Tell me you’re mine,” Michael ordered, moving Carrie so much with his thrusts that her body bowed in answer.
“Yes. I’m yours. I’m yours,” she chanted, her body arcing with his.
“Carrie—I love you so much,” Michael said, practically sobbing the declaration as his body found blessed release in the haven of hers.
After he had calmed, Michael lowered himself down on her, knowing full well he’d extorted with sex the commitment he’d been desperate to hear from her on their wedding day. Part of him knew that she likely hadn’t really meant anything she’d said. But his heart was a little appeased and his body sated. His wife was sighing beneath him.
He’d take what he could get today and pray to make it real later.
Michael felt Carrie’s trembling hands gathering his long hair and smiled as she pulled it to the side and smoothed it down over his shoulder to stroke it lovingly. It was her little after glow ritual. Understanding her need to pet him, he kissed her cheek, thinking he was never cutting his hair without her permission.
“Michael Larson, I loved you the first time I was ever intimate with you,” Carrie said quietly, her heart open to the truth even as painful as it was to her to admit it, but her therapist had convinced her that admitting it was a healthy step toward easing the pain that lived in her. There would probably never be a more important time where the truth needed to be said, no matter what the future held.
She stroked his long hair, satisfied to have the right to do it now, no matter how many women had come before her. “I even loved you two months ago when we made the baby, though I couldn’t deal with it then. In fact, there hasn’t been a single time we’ve ever been together sexually that I haven’t loved you whether I wanted to or not.”
Michael felt tears come and didn’t fight them. He could hear the despair in Carrie’s voice. “I know I don’t deserve it, but I still want you to love me. I’m crazy with the need to know you do. I get scared thinking we’re not going to work out this time.”
“Well, I get sacred thinking that I’m stuck in another bad situation I’m not going to be able to change. My whole life is like that,” Carrie said, sniffling herself. “And I hate crying about every single thing that happens!”
“If I promise to do all your crying for you for the rest of your life, will you stay with me after the baby comes?” Michael asked, kissing her neck.
“Michael, I can’t even think beyond surviving next week,” Carrie said quietly. “My life is totally out of control. I don’t know who I am anymore, much less who you married today.”
“Let me help you figure it out, okay?” Michael pleaded, kissing her eyes until they closed. He couldn’t stand seeing her distress.
“Is there any other choice?” she answered sadly, drifting off into sleep as Michael moved off her and gathered her close.
Michael held Carrie as she slept, and studied her face in the glow of the nightlight.
She loved him. Carrie Addison had said on their wedding night that she had always loved him.
Every instinct he’d possessed had known that, but it was damn relieving to finally hear the woman he loved admit that she loved him too.
But loving him obviously didn’t make her happy. Whatever else it did, love was supposed to make you happy.
When Michael really thought about it, he realized Carrie hadn’t been really happy for a single moment with him. Even now, instead of being satisfied and peaceful in his arms, she was sad and sleeping restlessly. Their relationship was just one more emotional burden for her to bear. A burden, Michael conceded, that in his desperation he had forced on a reluctant bride.
Yet reluctant or not, Carrie had given him all he’d asked.
Now Michael had her as his wife, her confession of love for him, and legal rights to his baby. He’d had a beautiful bride who’d kept her word to him and a wedding night that had exceeded his expectations.
What did Carrie have? Nothing she wanted. She didn’t want him. She didn’t want the baby. All she had was a reluctant love for a man who had embarrassed her at her wedding reception because she’d nicked his pride.
Michael had admitted he was no prize, but that might have been an understatement.
No matter how he spun it all in his head, the whole situation was completely unfair to Carrie from every angle.
Contemplating the similarity of his coercion of her to what her family had done to her all her life ending up keeping Michael awake for most of the night.
Unfortunately, the answer he finally came up with at three in the morning about how to fix things was going to be the biggest irony of his life.
No matter how much he
wanted Carrie for his wife, Michael was going to have to divorce her.
Chapter 22
Five days into her marriage, Carrie was back in the therapist’s office. Not because things were worse between Michael and her, but simply because she was afraid not to go. She was now living her fantasy life and pretending her marriage was normal. He had kissed her so sweetly in the kitchen she’d been tempted to coax him back to bed.
Before she’d acted on the impulse, he’d gotten a phone call from his father and gone to help move some furniture. Carrie had used the excuse of running errands to keep her appointment.
The days since their wedding had been companionable and fun. They had all been filled with laughter, making love, and dancing in his kitchen, for pity’s sake. It was like it really was their honeymoon or something.
And since their wedding night, Michael hadn’t started a single argument with her.
She now understood why Michael had been so freaked out by her being nice the night of their rehearsal dinner. That much politeness from someone so passionate and opinionated just wasn’t right.
The only place Michael had been bossy with her for the last five days had been bed.
Then again—she hadn’t been argumentative either. He’d given her nothing to complain about at all. Nothing.
He hadn’t even teased her about his forty-year-old neighbor flirting with her. The man was good looking and worked at a bank downtown. Michael had nodded at the two of them talking intimately, but Carrie had seen the quick flash of fury in his gaze.
Still he’d said nothing. He hadn’t demanded any details of their conversation, nor had he made any nasty insinuations. He’d just gone on in the house as if he trusted her completely.
Carrie looked at the smiling woman sitting behind the desk and sighed. There was no getting around telling Dr. Whitmore the truth. The woman was better at extracting information from her than even her God-fearing parents and their guilt trips.
“My father actually volunteered to help me leave,” Carrie admitted. “Michael—I don’t think he really meant it.” Carrie looked at her hands. “But I didn’t run. I married him.”
“So how are you feeling about that decision now?” Dr. Whitmore asked.
Carrie blew out a breath. “More confused than ever?” She grinned when Dr. Whitmore laughed. “I—it’s like I dreamed up all the things that were wrong between us. Suddenly I’m just a normal woman married to an incredible man who treats her like a queen. It’s not true, but sometimes it feels true.”
Dr. Whitmore nodded and leaned a chin into her hand to listen. “Sounds pretty good to me,” she said.
Carrie laughed. “You don’t get it. This is the same man who unrepentantly announced to everyone at our wedding reception that he intended to cover me with cake icing and lick it off on our wedding night. Then when I got embarrassed enough to blast him for it, he put his face in my lap and cried. He’s infuriating. He is irresistible. But he is NOT nice.”
Dr. Whitmore threw back her head and laughed. “No—he doesn’t sound like it. But he does sound fun.”
Carrie looked at her hands and sighed again. “One moment I want to kill him, and the next—,” she paused, and then finally met Dr. Whitmore’s gaze. “Sometimes I think it wouldn’t be so bad to be married to him for real.”
“It’s legally binding now Carrie. How much more real can it be?” Dr. Whitmore asked. “You’re legally wed. You’re living in the same house. You’re having consensual sex. What’s left?”
“I thought this was the part where you tell me the answer,” Carrie said carefully.
“That’s the funny thing about therapy,” Dr. Whitmore said. “The smarter a person is about life; the more rationalizations they come up with for their circumstances. We are socially trained to seek logical explanations. But what most of us want is rarely logical.”
“After all our history of hurting each other, wanting Michael is definitely not logical,” Carrie agreed.
“Yet you married him when you could have run. You could have broken your contract. Are you staying because of the baby?” Dr. Whitmore asked, tilting her head at Carrie, who squirmed in her seat and rubbed her stomach. “If you’re feeling sick, we can talk about this another time?”
“Low blood sugar,” Carrie said, fighting the dizziness that came more and more frequently lately. “I’m fine. And no—the baby is part of it, but it’s not all of it.”
Dr. Whitmore just raised her eyebrows and waited.
Carrie huffed out a breath and swore as the woman merely grinned at her rising anger. “I don’t want Michael to be with anyone else, okay? No more blondes. No more brunettes. Just me. I want to be the only woman in his life. Why does that make me feel so stupid?”
“You tell me,” Dr. Whitmore said softly. “Since you’ve already decided you love him, it all sounds fairly reasonable to me. I am still not seeing a problem with anything you’ve shared.”
“I don’t want him to hurt me again,” Carrie exclaimed, closing her eyes.
“Again—sounds perfectly reasonable,” Dr. Whitmore said very quietly.
“What if Michael just decides one day that I’m not all that great? Am I going to be one of those women who gets liposuction, facelifts, breast implants, and God knows what else to keep her husband faithful to her? My mother was great. It didn’t keep my father faithful,” Carrie said carefully.
Dr. Whitmore leaned on her desk and put her hands together in front of her. “I’m going to be honest with you, Carrie—all relationships have that kind of risk built into them. Yet plenty of couples have long term, happily monogamous relationships.”
Carrie nodded. “I don’t know all that many.”
“Let me ask you this,” Dr. Whitmore said carefully. “Is it that you’re worried about Michael losing interest in you or just that you will become uninteresting to him? Our relationships are sometimes a mirror of our fears. Consider that you might be afraid of both. However, you only have the power to control one of those.”
“You’re saying no matter what I can’t stop Michael from cheating if he decides to do so,” Carrie stated flatly.
Dr. Whitmore nodded. “I know that’s a hard truth. However, you can choose to make yourself interesting and to like yourself so much that if he betrays you, it won’t hurt as badly. In your case, you’re going to have to learn to like who you truly are. Since you’re an action person, we can make a list of tasks for you to work on one at a time. I have a simple one that might open the doors to others. Want to hear it?”
“Sure,” Carrie said sharply. “That’s why I’m paying for therapy in the first place.”
“I’m really hard to offend, but now and again I do beat up a client for insults,” Dr. Whitmore said lightly, grinning at the younger woman’s furious gaze. “Even clients I like. You remind me of several of my favorites.”
“Sorry. Crap, I’m really sorry that came out so bad,” Carrie said, mortified. “This is what I’m really like. I try so hard not to be snarky with people, but it just happens when I—when I—damn, I guess when I panic or feel pressured. Oh shit, I am like Michael. This is what he does. He panics and then goes for the emotional jugular.”
Dr. Whitmore laughed. “Well, that breakthrough happened quickly. You probably shaved five years off your treatment program.”
Carrie put her face in her hands. “Hell, I guess that’s why you get the big bucks.”
“I still haven’t told you my suggestion,” Dr. Whitmore laughed.
“Do you have to? I think I’ve had enough enlightenment for the week,” Carrie told her, smiling when the woman laughed.
“Go back to your natural hair color, Carrie. Get physically back in touch with the real you,” Dr. Whitmore recommended. “To like yourself, you’re first going to have to find out who you really are. I think that woman has been hiding for quite a while.”
Carrie stared at her and blinked. She stood, swayed, and fell back into the chair. “Whoa—dizzy. Not from your suggest
ion—just baby stuff,” she said, when the doctor rushed around to her chair. “I’m fine. Really. Just low blood sugar and my blood pressure was a bit high last week at my checkup. They told me I had to give up stress.”
“I see. So you got married to a man who you weren’t sure you loved instead of taking up meditation or yoga?” Dr. Whitmore asked gently, standing by Carrie as she stood slowly this time.
“Jessica said it took thirty years for her to change. Is it going to take me that much time too?” Carrie asked, actually liking that the doctor laughed at her question. It would probably help her to learn to laugh at herself more.
“Jessica Daniels is a special case. She’s one of a kind,” Dr. Whitmore joked, her smile the only indication of an answer to Carrie’s question.
Carrie nodded as she walked slowly to the door. “You really think dyeing my hair blonde will help?”
“Did it help to dye it brown when you were in college?” Dr. Whitmore asked.
Carrie nodded. “Yes. I guess it did. I wish I’d done it before I met Michael. He never would have looked at me.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Dr. Whitmore said. “I’ve heard too many people insist they really didn’t have much control over love. I’ve come to believe that certain people are just meant to meet.”
“Do you really believe that?” Carrie asked.
“Yes. But it doesn’t matter what I believe,” Dr. Whitmore said. “It only matters what my clients believe.”
Carrie walked out of the office, stopped to pay her bill and to make an appointment for the following week.
The thought of dyeing her hair back make her dizzier. Not to mention the fact that she’d likely get a chapter of her own in Shane’s book.
Carrie walked to her car in a daze of thought.
When the first cramp hit, she leaned on the car door and wondered what was wrong. Maybe she needed lunch, she thought.
When the second one came, it doubled her over. Carrie saw Dr. Whitmore rushing out of her office and running to her. The woman was speaking, but Carrie didn’t hear anything.
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