Page 58

I shook my head and moaned as he pumped into my sex then, his finger moving slow and steady in deep thrusts. Not too hard. Clearly he feared being too rough, but the pace was agonizing, intensifying my torment, fueling my desire. I wanted it harder. My hands opened above me, grabbing fistfuls of the fur, hanging on as his hand worked between my legs.

He added a second finger and curled it inward, rubbing at some hidden patch of nerves I never knew existed. I started to shake. Tears seeped from the corners of my eyes.

“This is... comfortable?” he asked, turning his face to kiss the inside of my thigh.

Comfortable?Was he joking?

“Oh,” I cried out brokenly, my chest rising and falling. “It’s good.” My body moved against his hand, wild with need, eager and hungry, desperate for more pressure, more friction. “So... good.”

His thumb landed on a spot at the top of my sex, a little button tucked away that I had never known existed. He found it and pressed down, rubbing and rolling the swollen flesh.

“You like that?” he growled.

I arched my spine off the bed in response, bursting, comingapart into a thousand pieces. Moisture rushed from me, coating the fingers wedged inside me.

“Tamsyn,” he breathed against my skin, his mouth opening, teeth scoring gently, tongue laving my goose-pebbled skin. “My little lying wife.”

I fell back, overcome, dizzy and gasping for breath, not even caring that he’d called me a liar. It was true. Maybe I had been without a choice. Or maybe not. I didn’t know anymore. Either way, I had done it. I’d married him. Bedded him. Fooled him. And now I was here, stuck with the consequences... whatever he decided those to be.

He lowered my hem back down to my ankles and crawled up the bed, dropping down beside me with a grunt.

I sighed. Ripples of pleasure eddied through me, turning my body the consistency of pudding. His bare arm aligned with mine, radiating heat.

We didn’t have this the last time, this lingering in the bed, this closeness. The aftermath was shattered when my veil was yanked away, leaving only betrayal and fury in its place. I shivered at the memory.

“Cold?” he inquired, rolling to his side and draping an arm around my waist, pulling me close, spooning me flush against him.

On the contrary. Wrapped cozily in his arms, I felt warm and soothed.

And I felt his black opal necklace between us, a great buzzing current connecting us in a way something lifeless should not, burrowing past skin and muscle and bone.

My hand settled lightly on his corded forearm. His face nuzzled into the crook of my neck.

I swallowed, struggling to even my labored breathing and slow my violently pounding heart, trying to reclaim my composure and not get carried away with the hope that he was starting to care for me. I felt him, rock-hard against me, and I knew at least he desired me.

“Are you...?” I didn’t know how to ask what I was thinking. How to inquire if he wanted me. If he was interested in finding his own release.

“Go to sleep,” he instructed, his voice gruff.

“What about you?” Could I have been wrong? Perhaps he didn’t want me.

“I’ll sleep, too.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” I told myself it was my sense of duty as his wife that made me push the subject. But that wasn’t it. It was a lie I told myself. The pulsing throb between my legs was the truth. Maybe the most honest thing I had ever felt. As much as he’d satisfied me with his touch, I wanted more.

I wanted him inside me again.

“You’ve been through enough. I know they call me Beast, but I’m not such an animal that I will fall upon you in your condition. Rest now.”

So he was holding himself back out of concern for me? It seemed more likely that he held himself back because he couldn’t bring himself to bed me. The first time he had been compelled, required. No one was forcing him now.

“I’ve already slept,” I argued, wanting to add that I wasn’t saddle sore any longer. My earlier rest and Thora’s miracle remedy had done the trick.

“Stop talking and sleep again,” he responded firmly, his tone reminding me that this man was a warrior lord. He might be holding me in his arms, but he was not about niceties. I was his lying wife. He would never forget that. Never forget the ugliness of our beginning. It was chilly, and the ground was hard, so we were sharing a bed. This was about practicality. Nothing more. This was not a romantic honeymoon. He was not a tenderhearted lover. He was about giving orders and being obeyed.

I sighed, thinking sleep would never come while I was wrapped up in his arms like this, feeling his heartbeat through the carved X in his palm, the opal sparking and humming between us... my wanting him and enduring his nearness, his warmth while my chest pulled and tightened the way it did whenever he was close.

It was my last thought before I closed my eyes.