Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 70097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
“You’re a pretty liar, wife.”
“Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“Being so flirtatious. It doesn’t work on me, Adrian.”
My husband’s lips curled. “You speak such sweet lies, but they are getting less convincing,” he said, and I could hear the amusement in his voice, the quiet satisfaction that he could read me so easily.
“You’ve been lying here in this bed for hours,” Adrian continued. “Your breathing hasn’t changed once. You haven’t moved. You can’t sleep.”
“Maybe I’m just not tired.”
“Maybe you’re full of shit.”
The corner of my mouth twitched against my will. I pressed it flat, but the damage was done. He’d seen it, that involuntary crack in the carefully composed armor I had built around me.
“There it is,” he murmured. “I knew she was still in there somewhere.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
I made a frustrated sound in the back of my throat. “Don’t act like you know me.”
“I know enough.” His voice dropped lower, losing the teasing edge, replaced with a more serious cadence. “I know you’re drowning in your own head, and I know you won’t ask for help because asking for help means admitting you need it, and you’d rather chew glass than admit you need anyone.”
My throat tightened.
The accuracy of his deduction was offensive.
“I don’t need help,” I said.
“You need to feel something that isn’t fear.” He paused. “Or anger.”
God, I needed him to stop talking. “Shut up.”
Adrian shifted on the bed, the leather belt creaking softly as he adjusted his bound wrists. “Make me.”
I turned my head and found him watching me with an expression I couldn’t fully understand.
“You don’t have to keep doing this to yourself,” he said. “Torturing yourself. Replaying whatever memory you can’t seem to escape in your mind. You’re letting it eat you alive.”
I opened my mouth to deny his words, but he cut me off.
“I can see it.” His gaze traveled over my face, lingering around my eyes and then to my tightened jaw. “You’re wound so tight you’re going to snap, and when you do, it won’t be pretty.”
“I’m fine,” I said, scoffing a little.
I really was a liar…
He clocked me so well.
“You’re not fine. You haven’t been fine since the night you pulled that trigger.” He said the words without any accusation, without any true anger. He was just simply stating a fact. “You need to feel something else, Serafina. Something that isn’t the wound festering inside you.”
“How about you stop psychoanalyzing me?” I rolled my eyes. “You seem to be interested in a change of career. Is ‘therapist’ your new job description?”
“I’m not psychoanalyzing. I’m offering.” The faintest smile touched his lips. “Let me help you forget. Just for tonight. Let me give you something to feel that isn’t the memories that haunt you.”
My jaw loosened, and I blinked.
Did he mean what I thought he meant?
Was he… offering… sex? Pleasure?
God, he really was maddening.
How could he so easily offer sex in the middle of what would have been a normal conversation until now…
Well, nothing was normal about Adrian.
About our circumstances.
But now that he offered, my mind started to dwell on the idea.
And it happened to… like it very much.
No.
I couldn’t…
We could not.
“I don’t want that,” I said, but the words came out breathless and unconvincing even to my own ears.
“Liar.”
I hissed in response. “Stop calling me a liar.”
“Your pupils are dilated. Your breathing changed thirty seconds ago. And you’ve been staring at my mouth for the last ten seconds.” That infuriating half-smile again. “You want it. You’re just too stubborn to admit it.”
“Even if I did…” I said carefully, eyes roving over his body, lingering on his wide chest for a little too long. “It wouldn’t change anything between us.”
“I don’t expect it to.” His wrists shifted against the leather. “I’ll remain bound. You have all the control. Everything happens at your pace, on your terms.”
Control.
It was the one thing I had been denied, the one thing I had fought for and lost and clawed back in fragments.
Adrian was offering it to me freely, wrapped in leather and the weight of his own restraint, at the cost of his control.
My body made the decision before my mind could intervene.
I sat up.
The comforter pooled around my waist, the nightgown slipping off one shoulder, and I didn’t bother adjusting it.
Adrian watched me move closer to his side as I closed the distance between us.
His eyes darkened, the dark blue going nearly black in the dim light, and I watched his throat work as he swallowed.
Even bound, even deliberately vulnerable, he radiated with a contained energy that made the air between us crackle with his authority.
I slowly climbed onto him. He tensed as I straddled his waist, my knees pressing into the mattress on either side of his hips.
My spine tingled when I felt the hard line of him through the thin fabric of his sweatpants, the evidence of his need pressed against me.