Page 6 of Marrying the Gardener (The Bachelor Brothers #3)

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I’m not sure how I’ll survive one week of… this .

Kaleb

Crimson likes to bite . Before I so much as get her front door open, she’s nipped me seven times, and, no, I am not okay.

Thanks for asking. My legs are threatening to give out, and all I want to do is get her in her bedroom so I can fall to my knees and beg her to have her way with me, beg her to make this marriage of ours truly real .

Swinging her front door closed behind me, I offer a gruff, “Which way, baby? Which way to our room?”

Perfectly—in a way that undoes perhaps the last shred of my sanity—she matches me for breathiness. “Up the stairs.” A soft sound leaves her. “Last door on the right. Hurry, Kaleb. Please”

My heart launches itself outside my chest as my name on her tongue in this tone echoes in my skull, rewriting DNA, undoing me at the seams. When her fist finds my hair, I am not well . Not even a little bit.

“Ms. Nightingale?” an older woman’s voice reaches me.

I turn sharply toward it, finding a gray-haired lady wiping her hands on her crisp white apron as she emerges from what appears to be an elegant kitchen far brighter than the one at the Bachelor mansion.

The woman’s eyes flick between her mistress and me.

“Lunch should be ready in about thirty minutes… I wasn’t told to expect… anyone else.”

Right now, I fear my face screams blindly, unquestionably, categorically in love with the woman in my arms more so than it can even hope to whisper using her for her status and money , so I steel myself.

Letting my lips graze Crimson’s beautiful face when she lifts her head, I embrace the arrogance of already giving Crimson’s staff demands.

“Have lunch brought to our bedroom. Leave it outside and knock once. Don’t interrupt us.

” With that, I head toward the stairs, before I collapse.

Looking much too adoring for my heart to handle, Crimson smiles blissfully up at me and says, “Thank you, Ava. I’ll explain things later, okay?”

Ava’s brows knit. “Now, just hold on one—”

I ignore her, steadily climbing the flight of stairs dead ahead. Following Crimson’s instructions, I reach her bedroom, locate her bed, and place her on the comforter. Then, I step back. I swallow. I stare.

Hair mussed, she breathes deep, elbows planted behind her, propping her up. Her fingers tremble as her chest rises and falls and…I need to cool down.

Dragging my eyes off her, I take in the room. Elegant. Regal. Devoid of character.

The costly real wood furniture exists without blemish or trinket to mar it.

Perfectly white, it soaks in the sunlight streaming from the sliding glass doors across from the double-door entrance.

They lead onto a balcony, so I send myself outside.

Filling my lungs with air, I soak in the balmy summer breeze and settle my rampaging heart.

In the sprawling green yard below, a doberman pinscher takes note of me, stands at attention, ears alert, and pulls its lips back off its teeth.

Reentering the room once the fire beneath my skin has calmed some, I pull the rouge curtains closed behind me and say, “You have a dog?”

Crimson’s eyes find me as she pulls her fingers through her hair, tidying it. “Yes. His name’s General.”

Why does that not surprise me?

“He hates men, so don’t expect him to warm up to you.”

Like mistress, like pet, I suppose. “I won’t.” Animals don’t much care for me. I’ve spent years trying to get our house cat, Ender, to let me pet him to no avail. Only my koi fish have ever tolerated me, and it took less than a day for them to prefer Crisis feeding them.

I’ve concluded that I traded all my animal potential in for plant and people skills, and that’s just fine with me.

Clenching her fist, Crimson stands to face me as though she’s a general herself.

Posture militant, she says, “I’d like to familiarize myself with the physical expectations going forward.

I can’t expect that we’ll always have the luxury of a crash course from now on.

Since we’ll be stuck in here for at least a few… ”

“Hours,” I say, tugging on my collar, which is suddenly choking.

“Hours,” she confirms. “Since we’ll be stuck in here for at least a few hours, we might as well make good use of our time.”

The very idea that I may be able to seduce my wife in the next few hours sends a tingle down my spine.

I subdue it. Flexing my fingers in the red-tinted light that shines through the curtains behind me, I approach my wife and spread my arms. “I’m yours, Ms. Nightingale, to do with as you please.

Direct me on how I might best be of use to you. ”

She scans me, wary. “You’re sure you never toyed with the illegal side of escorting ?”

“Positive.”

“Aren’t you a little too good at this, then?”

I lift a shoulder.

She follows the motion with her eyes, then she hardens. “Don’t call me Ms. Nightingale anymore. I’m worried you’ll slip up when it matters. Crimson is fine. And I actually need to get used to baby , too, because I hate it.”

“As you wish.”

Her eyes trace my arms, then she reaches for me, setting her fingers against mine. While she studies the touch as though I’m an agent in a test tube, I marvel at how small and slender her fingers look against mine.

They’re just…

Perfect.

Speckled.

I want to leave them with a thousand kisses and beg for the time to keep them through a thousand more.

Audibly, breath fills her, then she’s dragging my hand toward her—

I cuss and rip my wrist from her grasp. “What are you doing?”

Confusion, irritation, and disgust muddle her features. “What do you mean what am I doing ?”

My lips part. I comb my fingers through my hair, keeping them firmly away from her. “I do believe my question was fairly self-explicit.”

“We’re practicing revolting things now so I don’t hit you later . That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it?”

Heat floods up my neck. “I’m not going to, at any point ever, cop a feel like that in public, Crimson.”

She blinks, lips pinched. “That’s fairly standard, isn’t it?”

“No, and I thought you told me that public displays of assault were off the table?”

Her gaze lowers in a way that makes my stomach knot, and I don’t want to think about the kind of men she’s been around if she thinks that grabbing someone in public like that is normal. She crosses her arms. “Well? What do I need to prepare myself for?”

A whole lot less than what I’m just beginning to understand I’ll need to prepare myself for. Blowing out a breath, I attempt to manage my expectations. “Have you ever been kissed?”

Dry as the Sahara desert, she says, “No.”

“Maybe we should start there?”

Somehow more disgust wrinkles her nose. “There’s less shared saliva involved in copped feels.”

A fair point, surely, and—yet—one is first base and the other is second. So. She’ll have to pardon me for not charging through the pitcher’s mound.

“I could start at your neck,” I murmur, planting my hand over the sting of where her teeth got me, repeatedly, just minutes ago. “Leaving a few scattered marks wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

Her hands ball into fists. “Right.”

“We don’t have to rush anything you aren’t comfortable with, Crimson.”

The edge of a pointed smile lifts one corner of her mouth.

“I am afraid that sentiment defeats the entire purpose of why you’re here, Kaleb.

” She composes herself, managing to appear regal and tortured.

“Thank you for your discretion, patience, and caution. It does not go unnoticed, and it is far more consideration than I anticipated.”

Very little could have sobered me more effectively than words like those.

Lifting two fingers, I set her hair back behind her ear and bare her throat to me. “May I?”

Her eyes fall closed, resignation in her every inch.

When I lean in, freckles fill my vision. So many. Everywhere.

Prying my attention off them, I look at her face, her puckered brows, her clenched jaw. Disgust remains etched into her flesh, quieter, as though she’s taken great effort to shove it below the surface of her skin.

“You’re sure you want to do this, Rose-red?” I murmur.

“Bit late now, isn’t it? We’re already married.”

“I signed papers that make becoming unmarried rather painless for you. It’s far more important to me that you’re okay.”

Her eyes open, skepticism writhing in their depths. “You’re being awfully hesitant given how many times you’ve asked to bed me in the past two days.”

“Some men do prefer willing partners. I’m one of them.”

“What a bare minimum concept.”

Truly. It frightens me that she seems unfamiliar with it.

“Please hurry up,” she says, as gently as I believe she can manage right now, so I obey.

Dipping my face, I kiss her neck, feel her shudder against my mouth. I lift a hand to brace her waist before I go deeper.

She tenses beneath my fingers.

“All good?” I ask.

“Can’t you go faster?”

“I said I’d be gentle.”

“Just bite me and get it over with.”

I kiss again. “Respectfully, no.”

She grips my wrist, digging her nails into me.

Cautiously, I walk her back toward her dresser, brace myself against the smooth white surface, and cage her in. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this exactly the sort of thing we’re practicing for you to get used to?”

“You’re not wrong,” she hisses.

I hum. “So?”

I think her nails strike blood as she swears right beside my ear. “Did I do okay earlier?”

“You did beautifully.” Phenomenally. I’m never going to get earlier out of my head again. “You’re doing less beautifully right now.”

Shaking breath enters her body as she removes her nails from my wrist, slips her touch up my arm, around my shoulder, and into my hair. Her grip tugs the follicles, and it takes everything in me not to groan.

“Is this better?” she asks.

It’s perfect . “Yes.” Controlling myself, I delicately bruise her throat while she brands my mind.

Once I pull back, I catch a glimpse of the mark beneath the spattering of stars on her flesh, and it undoes me in ways that nearly cripple my senses.

“I’m going lower,” I whisper, dazed. “Stop me if it’s too much.

Don’t push yourself. I want you to trust me.

I need you to be comfortable around me. You need to be in love with me. That’s the point.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Her breath hitches when I press my mouth to the space several inches below her collarbone, to the soft rise of her chest. Her inhale rocks against my lips, trembling, and I grip the wood of her dresser, battling for sanity.

It’s not my fault she wears low cut clothing.

It’s not my fault she’s asked for this.

It is my fault when I flick my tongue out to taste her. It is my fault that I am—so thoroughly—enjoying her…while she suffers.

Sometimes I really, truly, hate myself.

Despite the constant undercurrent of self-loathing, I dapple her shoulders and neck before leaving a few stray kiss marks on her wrist and in the crook of her elbow. Once I’m finished, I draw back, scan her, forget how to breathe.

“Am I done?” she asks. The words leave her reedy and thin.

I force my attention to her eyes. They’re as determined as they are broken, and it hurts.

It just… hurts .

I say, “Yeah.”

“Your turn?”

Stretching my fingers, I reach for the top buttons of my polo and pull them loose, confirming, “Yeah, baby. My turn.”