Page 86 of Ruthless Commander

Heat closed around me as I sank into her, driving all the way inside. She let out a moan and closed her eyes. “Yes…” the word was a hiss.

I gripped her hip with one hand, and clasped her hand in my other. My fingers slipped against the band on her finger. I lifted my gaze, finding the gold. “Mine,” I growled, and drove my body into her, staring at the wedding band on her finger.

A month…

A month to become not just a man…

But a husband.

I lowered my gaze to hers. She was all I thought about, all I wanted.

She drove the darkness from my mind and let in the light.

“Yours,” she moaned, clenching her other hand around my ass cheek. “Now, fuck me harder. We’ve got a baby to make.”

I grinned at the words from her perfect potty mouth, and did exactly as she demanded…

After all…she was my wife.

35

Xael

“Shit.”

I stared at the two faint lines in front of me. They were barely there. I squinted, peering closer. Maybe they were too faint to be anything. I glanced at the stopwatch on my wrist, watching the numbers race. Too faint to be real. Too faint to be…

But as the seconds passed, those two red lines grew bolder. So bold, they were unmistakable.

I sat back.“Fuck.”

What was I going to say to him? Now of all times. It wasn’t the right moment. Not for a conversation like this.Ah, hey. You know a few weeks ago when you railed me all damn night in the middle of your quiet, moody, withdrawn moment. Well…surprise!

“No.” I whispered, grabbing the test and tossing it in the bin beside me. “Not a time for that conversation at all.”

I rose, buttoned up my jeans, met my stare in the mirror before I flushed the toilet, washed my hands and walked out. He was sitting in the study, his legs crossed and his focus on the laptop positioned on his knees. Christ, when he was like that, he looked so…

Old.

Too old to want to be a father.

“Everything okay?” He never once looked up. Still, he was as in tune to me as though I were under a microscope.

“Yeah.”

“Then why are you hovering?”

“I’m not…hovering.”

“Well, you’resomething.”He lifted his gaze from the screen, then closed the computer. “Talk to me.”

I almost said it. The words were there, caught in my throat, desperate to come out. But as I opened my mouth to speak, I saw the sadness in his eyes and the dark circles he tried to hide by not looking at me.

The last few weeks, he’d been getting up in the middle of the night. He tried to be quiet, his bare feet barely making a sound on the tiled floor. But I sensed him, cracking open my eyes the moment he left our bedroom.

He was a caged lion.

At first, I wanted to blame it on the aftereffects of that island and the terror we’d endured. God knows, I still had nightmares of that place. I still dreamed ofhim…the sick fuck who’d tried to end us all.