Staring into his eyes and breathing hard, I whisper, “Yes. All of it. I want you to fuck me. I want you to kiss me everywhere. I want your hands and your mouth and every other part of you, and I honestly despise myself for wanting it, but I do. So please make me come now. I’ll get back to hating us both after.”
“You said you downgraded the hate to dislike.”
“That was before I married you. Now, all bets are off.”
When he grins, his smile victorious, I snap, “But no spanking. If you ever try to hit me, I’ll consider it a declaration of war, and that will be the end of you!”
He growls, “Fuck, it’s hot when you threaten to kill me.”
Then he crushes his mouth to mine and ravages it as he works his fingers in and out of me, thrusting them deep, moaning into my mouth when I spread my legs wider.
When I come, it’s with fireworks behind my eyelids and a full-body jerk that makes one of my shoes go flying. Quinn swallows my moan, humming his approval into my mouth and holding me against him, a Popsicle viper impaled on his huge hand.
I convulse and clench around his fingers until finally, I collapse backward, shaking and spent. He holds me up with that one strong arm around my back, slips his fingers out of me, and slides them into his mouth.
As I watch in dizzy, breathless astonishment, he lazily licks his slick fingers dry, savoring my taste.
Watching me with hooded eyes, he growls, “That’s my good girl.”
And oh, what that does to me. The golden shimmer of happiness that floods my cells. It’s ridiculous how soft and melting I become, as pliant as a green blade of grass under the spring sun.
But I’m not a blade of grass.
I’m a blade. Period.
I’m a strong, capable, grown-ass woman who intimidates Mafia men so much, they can’t even look me in the eye.
My voice shaking with emotion, I say, “I’m not good and I’m not a girl. I’m not yours, either.”
Chuckling softly, he presses a gentle kiss to my lips. “I’ll concede the first two. But you’re definitely mine.”
Just for an added little fuck-you to make his point, he drawls, “Mrs. Quinn.”
That right there tells me all I need to know about how this marriage is going to work.
I never knew before this moment that enemies with benefits is an actual thing.
22
Spider
I’m glad the hotel is close to the church, because with every mile we drive and minute that passes, Reyna gets closer to a full-blown freak out.
She wants to crawl off my lap, but I haven’t let her. Instead, I hold her firmly in place as she hyperventilates and looks around wildly like a caged animal desperate for a way out.
There’s no way out for her, though. I’m taking this till-death-do-us-part thing very fucking seriously.
Which means she’ll have to kill me to get away.
But I won’t give her a reason to. I’ll be the opposite of everything her last husband was. I want her to learn that marriage to me isn’t the end of her life.
It’s only the beginning.
“Where are we going?” she says, staring out the window in rising panic.
I’m going to have to make her come again soon. She needs to calm down.
“The Ritz. I booked the honeymoon suite.”
She swallows and moistens her lips. Then she blurts, “Do you snore?”
I have to suppress a laugh at that. “To be honest, I have no idea.”
“Nobody’s ever told you?”
“Who would tell me?”
“Any woman you’ve ever slept with.”
I quirk my lips. “I don’t spend the night.”
She looks startled by that. “What do you mean? You’ve never had a long-term relationship?”
“My relationships can best be described as speedy disasters. Those were few and far between. I haven’t been committed to a woman in more than ten years.”
She examines my face in silence for a moment. I can see the wheels turning and know she wants to grill me for more information, but she doesn’t.
She looks away instead, nervously chewing the inside of her cheek.
“You can ask me anything,” I say, stroking my hand up her arm.
“It might be insulting.”
“As if that would be new.”
“Suit yourself. Here’s the question: did you…” She pauses to rethink it. “How have you been taking care of your needs for the last decade?”
“How have you been taking care of yours?”
“Romance novels and battery-powered devices.”
Her bluntness makes me chuckle. “You can throw them all away. You won’t need them anymore.”
Her cheeks turn pink. She purses her lips.
I love it when she looks at me like she’s a prude old maid.
She says, “Let me just push your ego aside for a sec to mention you haven’t answered my question.”
I hesitate, because I know exactly how bad it will sound out loud. But she was honest with me, so the least I can do is return the favor.
“I paid for it.”
“For sex, you mean.”
“Aye.”
She sits with that in silence for a while, then nods. “Okay. Thank you for the candor. Can I ask a follow-up question?”
Impressed that she’s neither upset nor judging me, I incline my head.
“Do you have any viruses or infections I should know about?”
“No. I’m clean. I’ll get tested again so you’ll feel better, but in the meantime, we’ll use a condom.”
The pink in her cheeks deepens to red. “Now’s a good time to remind you that you promised I could say no if I wanted.”
I lean in to press a soft kiss to her luscious lips. “You don’t want to say no. And don’t bother denying it, because we both know it’s true.”
She sighs and mutters, “Part of me wants to say no, just not my vagina.”
I don’t know why having her so conflicted about her desire for me gets me so wound up, but if my cock gets any harder, it will split open the zipper on my trousers.
Cradling her face in my hand, I lean close to her ear and whisper, “Then let’s make a game of it, viper.”
After a beat of surprise, she says, “A game?”
“Aye. You can pretend you don’t want it, and I can pretend I don’t know you do.”
She squirms a little in my lap, pressing her thighs together.
She likes the idea.
But of course, she has to act like she doesn’t, because God forbid the woman would ever let me get the upper hand.
She says, “How would I know it was a game? It could just be you and your giant ego doing their usual thing.”
I kiss her softly under her ear, nuzzling her there, dragging her scent into my nose. She smells like nothing else in the world, no other fragrance or perfume. The scent isn’t flowery, cloying, or sweet, because her essence is none of those things.
She smells like some kind of dark, dangerous heaven made of female flesh and poisonous fruit and exotic spices. A garden of deadly delights that a man could wander into and get lost.
A place he could lose his mind along with his heart and soul.
I say, “We’d agree on it beforehand. For a set time in a set place, we’d pretend.”