Page 101 of The Rancher's Wedding Deception

And that was why the last three days had been their own particular brand of torture.

Her period, as it turned out, came with a sensitivity to touch that bordered on painful. The slightest brush of contact—his hand on her arm, her shoulder against his chest—would make her wince. She’d tried to hide it at first, tried to push through, but he’d seen the way her face tightened when he pulled her close.

So he’d stopped.

Stopped reaching for her. Stopped pulling her into his arms. Stopped all the casual touches that had become as necessary to him as breathing.

It was driving him slowly insane.

What made it worse—infinitely, torturously worse—were her shy offers to pleasure him instead.

“I could...” She’d trailed off that first night, her cheeks flaming, her eyes fixed somewhere around his collarbone. “I mean, just because I can’t... doesn’t mean you have to...”

“No.”

“But—”

“I said no, Andromeda.”

He wasn’t going to be a boy who couldn’t control his hormones. Wasn’t going to use his wife like some kind of service while she lay there in pain. Wasn’t going to let her think for a single moment that he’d married her for her body alone.

Even if there were moments—many moments, constant moments—when he wanted her so badly his teeth ached with it.

Cold showers had become his closest companion.

He’d taken seven in the past three days.

Sometimes two in a single night.

And still, lying here next to her, watching the morning light paint gold across her sleeping face, he wanted nothing more than to wake her with his mouth on her skin.

But that wasn’t what haunted him most.

What haunted him was how many times she’d tried to tell him something—something about the money, he was almost certain—and how many times he’d changed the subject before she could finish.

“Paul, about the fifty-five thousand...”

“I was wondering if we could talk...”

“So, do you think...”

She had done her best to open up to him, but each time she did, he had stopped her by steering the conversation somewhere else—anywhere was fine, really.

Anything under the sun but that.

Because as much as it killed him still to admit this—

The truth was that he was a fucking coward when it came to his wife.

The billionaire who made everyone in Wall Street look the other way, not wanting to attract his attention to their companies and have them targeted for acquistions—

He had always been that kind of guy, but here he was, unable to handle even thepossibilityof hearing his wife confess that she was only with him for—

A slight movement caught his gaze, his wife stirring in her sleep. The welcomed distraction gave Paul the chance to mentally regroup. Refocus. And eventually extract himself from the bed as he came to a decision.

He needed to talk to someone who’d been where he was and survived.

Paul grabbed his phone from the nightstand and stepped out onto the balcony, the December mountain air sharp enough to make his lungs ache. The Rockies spread before him in snow-capped majesty, but he barely saw them.