Page 113 of Wife Number One

The feeling was wholly unsettling. I wanted to deny it. Put on the fake bravado I used as a shield because it stopped this feeling. This feeling I fucking hated.

It felt a lot like having something to lose, and in this world, that was a liability I didn’t want to have.

And yet I couldn’t lie to her. I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t been terrified.

I was still terrified, and she was right here. Right in my arms.

I was terrified she didn’t want me the same way I wanted her.

I took a step back, but nothing had changed. She still had those huge eyes that just quietly took in the world. She still had those curves I’d wanted to run my hands all over since the very first day I’d met her five years ago. She still had lips so damn kissable I hadn’t let myself near them for fear of getting so attached I’d never stop.

I breathed hard, fighting the damn ache in my chest that reminded me over and over that some other man had put his hands on her tonight.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered again.

I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to kiss her so fucking bad my lips ached. My fingers shook with the need to reach out, shove my fingers into the back of her hair and draw her in. Put my mouth on hers. Taste her, and not in the dirty, filthy way I’d taunted her with earlier.

Kiss her slow and deep. Trace her lips with my tongue. Suck on her until she moaned into my mouth.

I couldn’t do any of that. I didn’t know how to be gentle. Didn’t know how to kiss her like I wanted to. All I knew was fucking. Slamming my cock inside a woman’s body, making her tits bounce and her pussy clench until she didn’t care I hadn’t kissed her. Didn’t care about anything other than the orgasm ripping through her body.

I couldn’t be like that with Kara.

She was my Little Mouse.

I would be the trap that broke her.

I wrenched myself away, needing to put distance between us. I went into the bedroom and yanked open the window, needing the evening air to wash over the heat emanating from my body before I set the entire room on fire.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, following me in. “Please, Hawk… I need you to…”

I turned around. “Look me in the eye and tell me what you need, Little Mouse. Give me some sort of direction here, because damned if I’d know what you need. Or what I need. Or what the hell we’re doing. I don’t know anything, so just tell me what you need.”

She stared me in the eye and sucked in a breath. “I need you to punish me. I want your forgiveness. I don’t deserve that until you punish me.”

I blinked. That had been the last fucking thing I’d expected to hear from her lips.

But there was nothing but sincerity in her words.

She thought she’d disappointed me. She thought she was the one who’d done wrong. Again. She always blamed herself, and one day, I’d put a bullet through Josiah’s skull for conditioning her to feel like that.

She couldn’t have been further from the truth.

But she was removing her shoes. Lifting her skirt and sliding off her panties. Crawling across the bed like she had the last time we’d been in this room. Settling herself on all fours, and then raising her skirt to reveal her perfect, rounded ass.

My dick went hard. So damn hard it ached behind the denim of my jeans.

She was expecting me to take her, the way that fucking asshole Josiah had.

I wouldn’t do it.

I refused to make her feel better by hurting her.

I got on the bed behind her, trailing my fingers up the backs of her thighs and over the rounded globes of her ass. I kept going, skimming the sides of her body, until I got to her tits where I scooped my hands around, taking two indecent handfuls of her and drawing her up so she was off her hands and kneeling.

With my chest to her back, I massaged her tits through her clothes and spoke into her ear. “I want you naked. Every scrap of clothing off. Now.”

She drew in a sharp intake of air as I fit my fingers to the hem of her long-sleeved shirt and lifted it, exposing her stomach.

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