Page 31 of Crying Wolfe
“Wrong?” he thundered before pressing his lips in a hard line and checking over his shoulder for eavesdroppers. “No, goddammit, how could you not tell that I was one more moan away from making a woman out of you right there on the table? I was little better than a predator with a hard pecker, and I was liable to toss your schoolmarm skirt over your pretty head and plow right into you. That would have made me the worst sort of monster. So, I removed all temptation because I had all this shit to do, and I can’t very wellthinkif I’m constantly faced with what I want the most.”
Agape, Rosaline stared up at his scowl, her heart lifting as if someone had forgotten to tie it down. “The most?” she echoed in disbelief.
He made a gesture of his own incredulity. “Oh, don’t go acting like you don’t know you’re the prettiest girl in the room. That people don’t see my ornery, uncivilized, work-weathered hide and pity you for having to put up with me until I die.”
Jaw still slack, Rosaline shook her head in abject rejection of his every word. “Not two minutes ago, I listened to three women plan to compete for the position of your mistress once you’ve thrown me over.”
His brows slammed together. “Say what, now?”
“They gave all sorts of salacious speculations regarding how you would treat them. How rough you would be with them. I believe the word they used was…pounding.”
A sound between a gasp, a cough, and a chuckle depressed his ribs as he came to stand directly over her. Some of the tension in his shoulders abated, and his hard features softened as his fingers hovered somewhere below her jaw and above her shoulder, as if unsure of where to land. “I’m not the kind of man to break our vows unless you release me from them, you understand?”
She nodded, mollified. “That’s why you wanted the day to be over, because you think these people are judging you?”
“I know they are, but I don’t give a dusty fuck about that.”
“Then why—”
“Because I don’t like having to talk to all these people I don’t know. And the people I do know are men like Crompton who want to discuss business at my wedding without discussing money and I can’t stand all these godforsaken rules I keep breaking before I learn them. On top of that, everyone keeps asking me why I haven’t waltzed with you.”
Before she thought better of it, she asked, “Why haven’t you waltzed with me?”
“Because I never did such a thing my whole life, I’m not about to start now, what with you looking so expensive and wearing heels high enough to snap your ankle if I trip you. I’d hang myself with this fucking awful tie before I’d let that happen.”
Rosaline knew she shouldn’t be smiling, but she couldn’t seem to wipe the pleasure from her expression. Gruff and enigmatic as her husband could be…he was rather sweet in his own way.
His thumb stroked over her jaw. “I want this to be over, so we can be alone.”
“Because…pounding?” Her smile died, trying to assign any sort of good connotation to that word.
His own lip twitched, haunted by the ghost of a smile. “Those women scared you a little, didn’t they?”
“Perhaps.” She swallowed, turning her jaw into the cup of his palm. “But also, their voices were so…” The words hovered out of reach, nothing truly touching it until she found one that worked. “Hungry. They said they wanted you to treat them like an animal…and if that is what you want to do, then I want it too.”
Though his eyes flared at her words, he didn’t exactly seem pleased with the comparison.
“Honey…a wedding night is no time for a pounding,” he crooned with a depth that vibrated deep, deep into her bones, landing with a slick warmth in the very center of her. “And a man should leash his animal for a virgin. Tonight, we take it slow and soft. We have the rest of our lives for anything else.”
As the rough pad of his thumb traced a gentle caress up her jaw, Rosaline decided that suddenly, the rest of her life didn’t seem so terrible after all.
CHAPTER7
An animal.
Eli stood at the bedroom door not allowing himself to reach for the latch.
Goddamn right, an animal. His lust was a fucking beast with teeth and claws intent on tearing into his flesh and ripping him open.
The tragedy of it all, was that he was everything those women said about him in the bedroom. Just a creature, generally in search of a good pounding. A hard and dirty fuck, one without shame or scruples. Though pride wouldn’t allow him to leave a woman unsatisfied, he’d sometimes leave them marked a little, too.
His hands were rough and strong, often pressing fingerprints into feminine flesh while they fucked. He loved to put his mouth on a woman, and sometimes his teeth, too.
If she returned the favor, even better.
God. He couldn’t think like that right now. Not about his tiny, doe-eyed wife.
Instead of teeth and claws, she used guileless resourcefulness to get what she wanted today, and it had impressed the hell out of him.
