Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 60711 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 304(@200wpm)___ 243(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60711 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 304(@200wpm)___ 243(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
‘You choose then,’ he had offered.
And that was how they had ended up playing Snakes and Ladders, and although she was the one who by this time had prayed out loud for God to help her win—
He was the one who ended up rolling mostly sixes and landing on ladders while his wife, well...the snakes seemed to find her as adorable as he did, and when she had realized he had won by a wide, wide margin—
Paul pressed his lips together, but it was no use. The mere memory of how Andromeda had actually growled in frustrated defeat had him smiling, and when his mind then insisted on recalling other and much, much cuter memories, such as all the times they had enjoyed a meal together—
Too, too cute, dammit.
She would close her eyes to savor her first bite if she was trying something new, and most times, she would do this wriggly little dance in her seat, sometimes with her fork up, other times with her head also bobbing left and right like she was one of those battery-powered toys.
She was so damn easy to please.
So damn different from everyone else.
And that was why the last three days had been their own particular brand of torture.
Her period, as it turned out, came with a sensitivity to touch that bordered on painful. The slightest brush of contact—his hand on her arm, her shoulder against his chest—would make her wince. She’d tried to hide it at first, tried to push through, but he’d seen the way her face tightened when he pulled her close.
So he’d stopped.
Stopped reaching for her. Stopped pulling her into his arms. Stopped all the casual touches that had become as necessary to him as breathing.
It was driving him slowly insane.
What made it worse—infinitely, torturously worse—were her shy offers to pleasure him instead.
“I could...” She’d trailed off that first night, her cheeks flaming, her eyes fixed somewhere around his collarbone. “I mean, just because I can’t... doesn’t mean you have to...”
“No.”
“But—”
“I said no, Andromeda.”
He wasn’t going to be a boy who couldn’t control his hormones. Wasn’t going to use his wife like some kind of service while she lay there in pain. Wasn’t going to let her think for a single moment that he’d married her for her body alone.
Even if there were moments—many moments, constant moments—when he wanted her so badly his teeth ached with it.
Cold showers had become his closest companion.
He’d taken seven in the past three days.
Sometimes two in a single night.
And still, lying here next to her, watching the morning light paint gold across her sleeping face, he wanted nothing more than to wake her with his mouth on her skin.
But that wasn’t what haunted him most.
What haunted him was how many times she’d tried to tell him something—something about the money, he was almost certain—and how many times he’d changed the subject before she could finish.
“Paul, about the fifty-five thousand...”
“I was wondering if we could talk...”
“So, do you think...”
She had done her best to open up to him, but each time she did, he had stopped her by steering the conversation somewhere else—anywhere was fine, really.
Anything under the sun but that.
Because as much as it killed him still to admit this—
The truth was that he was a fucking coward when it came to his wife.
The billionaire who made everyone in Wall Street look the other way, not wanting to attract his attention to their companies and have them targeted for acquistions—
He had always been that kind of guy, but here he was, unable to handle even the possibility of hearing his wife confess that she was only with him for—
A slight movement caught his gaze, his wife stirring in her sleep. The welcomed distraction gave Paul the chance to mentally regroup. Refocus. And eventually extract himself from the bed as he came to a decision.
He needed to talk to someone who’d been where he was and survived.
Paul grabbed his phone from the nightstand and stepped out onto the balcony, the December mountain air sharp enough to make his lungs ache. The Rockies spread before him in snow-capped majesty, but he barely saw them.
He pulled up Wynd’s number and hit Call.
It rang three times before his friend answered, his voice rough with sleep. “If you’re calling me on your honeymoon, you’ve already messed things up...or you’re afraid of messing up.”
“The latter.”
“Which means you finally saw the forest for the trees.”
“Or I just lost my mind.”
“It will feel a lot like that on some days.” Something shifted on Wynd’s end—sheets rustling, a soft murmur that might have been Star asking who was calling. “But most other days... you’ll wish time would stop because everything feels impossibly good.”
Paul’s grip tightened on the phone. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Philippians—”
“Who’s that?” Paul genuinely didn’t know, and his puzzlement only grew when his friend chuckled.