Page 40 of Keeping Ruby

“I suggest you start looking at life with me at a different angle, wife. Because you are mine, and I’m never letting you go. No matter how you want to fight me. No matter the way you try to hurt me. And I’m done letting you hold walls between us.” There’s no mistaking the threat in my words as I speak them against her lips. “You are mine, and I am yours.”

“You’re a monster,” she hisses. “I don’t want you.”

Fuck, but that hurts. “Want me or not, you have me. I’m yours.”

My eyes drop to her trembling lips again, and the urge to claim that mouth flares inside me once again. I refrain, as I’ve been refraining since I made her mine.

She thinks I’m a barbarian, taking all I want at will. But I haven’t even come close to taking all I want from her.

I slide off her body, doing my best to ignore the hard throb of my arousal. I’d taken care of myself in the shower, as I’ve been doing every day since I decided to keep Ruby, but it’s no matter. I could spend myself a thousand times, and all I’d have to do is touch my lips to hers—smell the lovely rose of her skin—and I’m hard again. Aching for her. Needing her.

Not allowing her to don her clothes, I tug her back into my front. She gasps at the feel of my arousal against her lovely ass but says nothing in protest. She doesn’t want to draw attention to it, I’m sure.

The thought makes me smile as I lean my body into hers, pinning her to the bed.

I don’t miss the tiny sigh that slips from her some long minutes later, or the way her tense body relaxes in the bed, or the way, for the first time since I claimed her as my wife, she falls asleep before she thinks I have.

I don’t miss the wick of hope that ignites in my chest.

Seventeen

Ruby

Pushing thoughts of my husband from my mind grows harder and harder with every night I spend wrapped up in his arms.

After last night, however, pushing him from my mind is almost impossible.

So many firsts happened last night. I orgasmed for the first time in twenty-three years. I slept naked in a man’s arms. I had a man’s mouth on my—I can’t even say it. I blush just thinking of what he’d done to me.

“So, you’re Leonid’s son?” I ask Maxim. “And he oversees security on the property?”

“Da.” Yes.

I’ve asked Maxim to teach me Russian, and he’s taken his job as my teacher quite seriously.

“But Dimitri is Kirill’s personal guard? Like you’re mine?”

“Da.”

“And Leonid is Dimitri’s uncle, so you’re cousins?”

“Da. And Tatiana is Dimitri’s mother. Her brother is my father.”

“Are you related to Kirill, as well?”

Maxim shakes his head. “Not by blood.”

“So, it’s all your family here, then?”

“Much of my family works for Kirill,” Maxim admits with a nod. “We are close like family.”

I consider for a moment, my hand stroking Simba’s head where he sits on the floor next to where I’ve curled up on the couch, sitting sideways with my legs lifted and crossed, angled to face Maxim. I ask hesitantly, “What about Kirill’s family?”

Maxim looks at me, his blue eyes seeing more than I think he likes to let on. I fight the urge to shift under his scrutiny. “What about Kirill’s family?”

“Is he close to them?”

He rolls his lips. “Why don’t you let Kirill tell you about himself?”

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