LAST NIGHT.

Fuck, I shouldn’t have gotten that drunk. I shouldn’t have come home with frustration in my heart. I had no control over the bastard inside when I did.

I rolled over in bed, drinking in Tess’s sleepy form. Her skin glowed with a mixture of marks and bruises, but as she roused beneath my gaze, her smile was sleepy and sexy as she stretched like a well-petted cat. The two small cuts on her breast and belly mocked me.

I daren’t look between her legs where I’d bitten her hard enough to break her delicate skin.

“Morning.”

I grunted in response, nursing a headache and the awful taste of regret. Swinging my legs out of bed, I massaged my temples. “If I hurt you in the pool, I’m sorry.”

Sheets rustled as she crawled toward me. Her warm nakedness draped over my back as she looped her arms around my chest. Her lips landed on my cheek. “Q…I thought we’d discussed this way before we got married. You can’t hurt me. I have a safe word if it ever gets too much and I trust you to stop if I ever say it.” Her arms banded tighter. “Nothing you did last night was too much. I loved every second of it.”

I did my best to shrug her off, standing naked over her. “And what of the other thing we discussed.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, doing my best to get my wayward emotions under control. “What of that?”

Tess stood on her knees, proudly displaying the body that I’d coveted, claimed, and ultimately couldn’t get pregnant.

Two months.

That was my dirty fucking secret. For two months, I’d slept with my wife, all the while knowing she wasn’t on contraception.

Every time I came inside her, I thought she’d come to me with the shy but happy news.

I begged for that day.

I dreamed of her telling me she carried my baby.

But her period kept fucking coming, renouncing me as a man, proving I didn’t have what it took to knock her up.

She sighed. “I want a child, too. And I’m willing to do what it takes to make that happen.”

A huge gust of relief filled me. Relief that was so fucking opposite to my normal opinion of families and offspring. But with her…everything about me had changed. She’d tamed me but unleashed me. She’d cured me but ruined me. How could I compete with a woman who had the power to kill me if anything ever happened to her?

I paced away, digging at my pounding head. “That’s the fucking thing. I want you pregnant, Tess. I want a child with you. But I hate the thought of you in pain. I already want to slaughter the kid for hurting you in childbirth. If I can’t handle that shit now, how the fuck will I handle it when it happens?”

If it ever happens.

Tess gathered the sheet and scrambled off the bed. The white simplicity looked like a shroud around her delicious shoulders. “Tell me what you want, Q. You can’t have it both ways. You want me pregnant…fine. We’ll work together to make it happen. You don’t want me pregnant? Also, fine. We can adopt or do any other number of things. You just need to be honest about what you need.”

What did I need?

I didn’t fucking know.

But I knew what I needed to do. “I want your child. Our child. I do enough for orphans and survivors of the world. I’ve dedicated my life to supporting those in need and abandoned. Is it so wrong of me to want something of my own?” Rage howled in my chest. I had everything I could ever want. I was being so damn selfish. But the beast inside craved ownership on this one thing. I didn’t want to settle. If that made me an asshole, then so be it.

I already knew I was one.

My hands shook as I muttered, “I don’t want to adopt. That isn’t what this is about.”

Tess nodded. “Okay, I get that.” She looked at the carpet, hugging the sheet tighter. “In that case, we should go and get checked out. Make sure we’re both fit and able to get preg—”

I sliced my hand through the air. “No. No doctors or tests. Not until we have to. We give it a little longer before we consider that.”

I couldn’t stomach her being touched by a stranger or me being told I wasn’t able to do this. If I was the problem…then it was my issue, and I would bear it on my own.

Tess scowled. “But you said I’ve been off contraception for two months. Perhaps it’s a good time to see—”

“Two months is nothing. That damn chemical you injected yourself with should be almost gone.”

“That damn chemical was what I thought we needed to have a happy marriage.”

I snarled. “That was before, all right?”

Pinpricks of anger painted her cheeks. “I know, and I accept that. This is as scary for you as it is for me. We’ve gone from never discussing this to fighting about making it happen tomorrow.” She sighed, doing her best to rid her frustration. “Q, these things take time. You just—you can’t get stressed about it. And you can’t impose stupid conditions on our sex life just because you think it makes you unworthy of becoming a father.”

I laughed coldly. “That condition is non-negotiable.” Moving toward her, I seethed. “I’m not going to touch you like I did last night. Got it? Not because it makes me unworthy. But because you ought to be fucking adored rather than cut by some sick fuck with issues. ”

Her eyebrow rose. “Take that back. You aren’t that at all.”

“You don’t know what goes on inside my head, Tess.”

“So you said last night. But I don’t need to. I know you, Q. And I love you.” She grabbed my balled fist, holding on as I tried to shake her off. “Besides, I think you’re misunderstanding how making a baby works.” She giggled softly, doing her best to rid the argument brewing. “You have to do a lot more of what we did last night to make that happen.”

I paced away, cursing the heat in my skin from her touch and the beg in my cock to do exactly what I just vowed I wouldn’t. I wanted to hurt her constantly. My thoughts were dripping with black. But there was also light in there, too. A light that hadn’t existed until Tess.

I would do everything in my power to make that light win over the blackness inside. If I couldn’t keep her safe from me now, how the hell would I be able to keep any child of ours protected?

Tess chased me, wrapping her arms around me again and kissing my sparrow tattoo. “Promise me you’ll keep doing what we have since we met. It’s us. Ours. You can’t stop it.”

“Wrong.” I stepped back again, breaking her hold. I couldn’t have her touch me while we fought. I didn’t trust myself not to lash out in anger or grab her to make violent love to her. “What we did—what we do—it’s the reason you can’t get pregnant.”

“Not this again.” She moaned. “Q…it’s not. Don’t torture yourself—”

“I’m not torturing myself. Or you for the considerable future. From now on…we’re strictly vanilla.”

“Vanilla?” Her eyes popped wide. “Oh, no. No way. Don’t you dare do that to me, Q.”

“Do you think I want that, either?” The idea was abhorrent to the madness living inside me. The thought of chaste kisses and no passion. The idea of simple positions with no toys. It well and truly muzzled me. But it was what had to happen. I wasn’t worthy of getting her pregnant. But if I treated her better, perhaps I would be. “I won’t change my mind, Tess.”

Challenge fired in her gaze. “You want to bet?”

“I want you to obey.” Wrapping dangerous arms around her, I forced myself for the first time to touch her as if she’d break. I hugged her gently rather than fiercely. I kissed her sweetly rather than viciously, and I made a vow to keep myself caged until she was pregnant.

And then…once she was? Once she swelled with my unborn baby, would I be allowed to ruin her again?

Fuck, no.

Fear cloaked me. This was it. I’d had her to myself for so many precious years. I’d done everything I wanted, all that I pleased. If only that had remained enough for me. Because now I would turn my esclave from my naughty, kinky wife into the mother of my child.

I could never touch her the way I wanted again.

Is it worth destroying what you have?

I had no answer to that.

I had no idea what I needed or wanted anymore, and it pissed me off.

I supposed I’d have to remain chained to keep her safe because no way in fucking hell would I hurt her while she carried our unborn son or daughter.

I shivered at those two titles.

Me.

With a son or daughter.

It was laughable. Suicidal.

But it was also what I wanted most in the motherfucking world.

Moving with her in my embrace, I murmured, “Let’s go for a shower together. A nice vanilla shower.”

Tess frowned. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, I’m deadly serious. And nothing you can say will tempt me otherwise.”

She grumbled but obeyed as I pulled her gently toward the bathroom. “We’ll see about that, maître. I give you a day before you snap.”

I hated her pessimism and my internal agreement.

Not taking her the way I needed would be the hardest damn thing I’d ever done.

But I was committed.

And I wouldn’t falter.

“I love you, Tess. And that is why I’m doing this.”

As I stripped her of the bed sheet and turned on the shower where I’d broken her awful memories of rape and kidnapping, I refused to think about what my self-imposed damnation would do to her. She was as twisted as me. Sex had always been our safe place. Now, it was unknown. Forbidden.

But for this to work, we would have to give up a piece of ourselves.

For however long we needed.