Page 58 of Ruthless God

A startled gasp penetrated through the fog of lust in my mind, but it still took me a moment to realize it was my wife and that her eyes were opened, the gray irises bright with awareness.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice soft with sleep. She wiggled, shifting the position of my hand so that my fingers moved further down the swell of her breast, near her nipple. The image of her naked and squirming beneath me on our wedding night had been imprinted in my mind since that night.

“Still sore?” I asked, my voice gruff. It had been over a week. I knew she was sore from our first night, but fuck if I was going to let her keep using that excuse. At times, it felt like the only thing strong enough to keep the monster I could feel clawing inside me away from her.

She blinked at me. Her mouth opened, but when nothing came out, she closed it. I pulled my hand away from her, nodding. Fuck, what was I doing?

I shouldn’t even have been touching her in the first place.

I turned and moved to walk away when I felt her hands around my forearm, halting me. I turned around and took her in, not saying anything.

Neither did she. Not at first.

Then—

“Still sore,” she whispered, her voice quiet and sweet in the cool morning air surrounding us, each syllable echoing off my skin. “But not so much. Not…” She took a deep breath. “Not at all.”

Did she even know what she was saying? Fuck, I didn’t know, but I wasn’t sure I could hold back anymore.

I moved toward her, pulling the blanket away from her body and taking her in.

My wife.

Mine to protect. To hold. Topleasure.

Just…

Fucking mine.

I crawled back into the bed, resting most of my weight on her. She unconsciously spread her legs apart, leaving room for me.

“Your injury?—”

I shook my head. “I’m feeling much better now.”

She didn’t look like she believed me. Not that I blamed her. I might have overdone it, milking my injury.

I grabbed the edge of her shirt and pulled it up. Her breath caught and froze, my eyes roaming over her face, checking for distress.

She nodded.

I felt that fucking nod all the way to the very core of me. Something primal andunthinkableroared inside of me, incessant and loud.

“Baby,” I whispered against her soft skin, feeling something inside me soften as well. Not enough for me to distinguish between the man and the monster I could feel vying for control inside me on a daily basis, but enough that perhapsIcould be soft for her, as both the man and the monster.

She ran her fingers through my hair, tugging it and grabbing my attention. I looked up and met her eyes, watching as the black in her gray irises grew, watching the flush on her skin that I had been fascinated by since day one.

“Are you sore?” she asked in that sweet guilelessness that Iknew—justfuckingknew—I would kill to keep.

“The last thing I am is sore,” I found myself answering her, my voice unnaturally gruff for some fucking reason.

She nodded and offered me a tentative smile, making me feel as if I had won over all the territory of the world.

I leaned down and took her lips in a hard kiss. She hummed against my lips and wrapped her arms around my neck, pulling me in closer to her as if she couldn’t stand even the idea of a single space between us.

I fucking liked that. Liked the idea that she wanted to be as close to me as much as I wanted to be with her. I kissed her harder, hoping this would, somehow, ease away all the confusion I had toward her since the first moment I laid eyes on her.

It didn’t work. If anything, that confusion grew, and with it, my desire to take as much of her as I could until there was no denying just who owned her, body and soul.