Page 18 of Four Calling Birds

I pulled away and looked down at her stormy eyes, filled with passion, and arousal. Then a tear slid down her cheek again. Why was she always crying? What was going through that mind that she kept locked away from me?

“You like this,” I whispered against her cheek, kissing the tear away. “You like my little bite. Youlovehow I can make you feel.” My hand slipped down between her thighs, lightly grazing those sweet, soaked lips. “So why are you crying?”

11. Husband Privileges

Lotte

“Youhavealifehere!” I gestured towards the room, the house, the street, the world he now inhabited. An entire life he had without me. “You have a girlfriend, a house, people… she can give you children. Everything I couldn’t!” I wiped at my cheek, practically slapping myself in my eagerness to wipe another fucking tear. “Your father would love that girl.” I pointed to myself, placing a hand over the palpitating heart that threatened to crawl out of my chest and break between us. “You deserve better than this.”

Better than me.

“Are you saying I don’t deserve you?” He still wouldn’t look at me, and I hated it.

“I’m saying you don’t deserve the burden of me.” I said the words slowly. Words I had thought to say to him a million times over. “And all the problems that come with me.” To explain. To admit why I decided to end our marriage. “You have nothing to lose in the divorce, and so much to gain.”

“And what about you, Lotte? Do you have anything to lose?”

I didn’t know what he was asking, or why. I wasn’t even sure if it mattered. All I knew was that he was slowly stepping toward me, crowding into my space. His scent, his presence, the sight of his massive arms, the forearms of his sleeves rolled up threatened to break my resolve.

“What about you, Lotte?” He asked again.

I couldn’t answer. The lump in my throat wouldn’t let me. I had everything to lose. A man. A lover. A person who could make the sun rise and fall based on his mood.

But I couldn’t quit now. I couldn’t turn back time and make myself fertile. To give us the family he had always wanted.

I touched his cheek, running my fingers through the thick, rough beard. I lifted myself up and I meant to just put a kiss on the corner or his lips. A kiss like Mellie had given him the first time she showed up. Sure, we were naked. But I could give him a goodbye. I could get up, and walk away. I could.

I could… Yes. I could!

I meant it to be a goodbye kiss. A simple, chaste meeting of the lips. But when I pulled away, his glassy eyes looked at me. Then he plunged back in, placing his weight on my shoulders to pin me to the bed, his thigh coming up to rub against my heated, needy core.

I whimpered, keeping my mouth closed to his invasion.

No, no, no! This was a terrible idea. I was doing so well. I was… I was…

“Open!” He commanded against my mouth. “Let me in, Lotte.” I refused. He pulled away and he growled, “Open!”

His hand cupped my jaw, his thumb pushing through my lips, pulling down my jaw by the teeth. Then his tongue went in. Then his breath. He tasted like hops. He deepened the kiss until I was moaning against his lips.

He growled at the sound of it, hitching my legs up around his waist.

“I still have my rights, wife,” he said against my lips, nipping at them, shooting electricity from my mouth straight to my pussy with every slight jolt of pain. “Who am I to you?”

“Mack, don’t,” I whined, unsure what I was begging for him not to do.

“Don’t what? Don’t fuck you? Don’t make you come on my mouth?” He kissed me again. “Don’t make you come on my fingers, and cock? Or don’t make you scream my name, Mrs. McClanahan?”

“I-I-I…”had no fucking clue what I was doing.So I turned it back to him. “You have a girlfriend.”

“How can I have a girlfriend, when I have a wife?” His head went down to the hollow of my throat, his teeth nipping at the tender flesh. “It’s now or never, Lotte. If you don’t stop me now, I will take you, and use every marital privilege I have. I will fuck my wife to within an inch of her life.”

“I couldn’t… I couldn't fight you off, even if I wanted to.”

“Bullshit,” he snorted. “You had a dagger tickling your lung, and you still walked miles until you could hotwire a car, and get to the rendezvous. Don’t tell me that these stitches are any deterrent if you really wanted to push me away from you.”

I whined, as he sucked my tender flesh in between his teeth. I wrapped my arms around his head, clutching him closer, wanting more of his mouth, his teeth, his bites. I wanted him to mark my skin. To leave scars that were as permanent as the knife wound on my abdomen, and the many knicks and scrapes that covered my body.

“You have three seconds,” he whispered. “Three.”

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