Page 40 of Coercion

Christ, how can one woman have such an effect on me? Me?

“Eleri…”

“Don’t you fucking dare.” She hisses. “You’re going to go home right now and explain yourself.”

“I can’t do that.” I state.

“Why not?”

I glance at Blaine, who any minute now, is going to pop out a load of snacks over the front row show he’s getting. “Get out.”

Blaine tilts his head, eyeballing both of us, no doubt trying to gauge how far he can push this.

Eleri shoves her hands on her hips and tells him to clear off and thankfully he has enough sense to listen to her.

Once he’s gone she fixes her gaze back on me. “Speak, Preston.”

I’ll admit my lips curl at the way she’s gotten so haughty. Five years ago she’d never have dared speak to me like this. Five years ago she’d never have looked any of us in the face. I guess Nico really did mould her into a queen.

“I want to keep her safe. To protect her.”

“How does locking her in your house and ignoring her do that?” She snarls.

“It protects her from me.” I say coldly.

“Excuse me?”

“Christ, Eleri,” I growl. “She’s already offered herself up to me. She’s already acting like she won’t even put a fight up if I decide to fuck her.”

“But you won’t.” She says pointedly.

I glare back because this is weird enough as it is. Like I want to be having any such discussion with her of all people. Like I want to be talking about this to anyone. I’m a grown man for Christ sake, I don’t need to justify myself to anyone.

“Preston, have you touched her?” She asks.

“No.” I lie and for a second she looks relieved before I admit a tiny part of what I have done. “I kissed her.”

“Excuse me?”

“The cameras where on us. It was in the honeymoon suite. I wanted Levi to think that we were having sex. I wasn’t thinking straight.” Christ, now I’m rambling, like a teenager.

“But you didn’t have sex?”

“No.” I growl more forcefully, like that’s not what I want, like my mind is constantly imagining how it would feel to sink my cock into her, like I’m not continuously imagining what she’d feel like, how she’d moan, if she’d enjoy it, but then I’d make sure she enjoyed it, I’d dedicate hours to just that.

I’d break my young wife in all the best ways, mould her to me, train her…

“If Nico finds out you’ve kissed her…” She says make those thoughts jar in my head and she runs her eyes over me with disgust.

“I know.” I say. “But that’s not what I’m concerned about.”

“What are you concerned about?”

I turn my back on her. A vision of Ruby as she was, in that suite, as her dress fell away, flashes before my eyes and it’s all I can do not to groan as I fight the way my body wants to respond.

“Oh fuck off,” Eleri hisses. “You want her, that’s it, isn’t it?”

I stiffen more, fighting the urge to tell her where she can shove it.