She scowled at me silently for the entire twenty minutes it took to reach my house. When we arrived, I climbed out and extended my hand to help her, but she ignored it. So I let her stubborn ass wrangle free from the car all on her own.

She followed me to the outer door until I stopped. At least she didn’t turn around and call a cab.

“What?” she snapped, when I stopped and waited.

“I have to carry you inside.”

Another laser glare.

“Tradition. Do you want to miss out on this because you were angry with me? Even if you don’t want me to, I am picking you up and carrying you across the threshold.”

I didn’t wait for her reply. She took a step forward, and I swept her into my arms. One of the guards opened the door, and I carried her through. Another guard opened the inside door, and I hauled my new bride into our home against her will. My viking ancestors would be proud.

The second the door closed, she wriggled, and I stood her up as easily as I could with her fighting me. Once she found her footing, she pushed me back “Get off.”

“We are not going to fight on our wedding night.”

A high heel flew past my head, and I neatly leaned away. “Mature.”

Her face, makeup still flawless, flushed pink from her neck into her cheeks. She spun her back to me. “Help me get out of this damn dress,” she yelled.

I stepped forward cautiously, in case she used taking her clothes off as a ruse to ambush me. The buttons were delicate, and it took me awhile to free them all so she could peel the bodice from her body.

The creamy white corset underneath was laced up with silk ribbon from hip to shoulder blades. And under that, a thong and thigh high stockings in the same colors. “I’m not taking you to bed until you calm down,” I teased her.

She glared again. “I’ll sleep on the fucking couch until I can get out of here.”

We couldn’t even spend one damn day together without a fight. I tried not to groan my frustration out loud. “Why are you being so difficult.”

She straightened from stepping out of the mass of silk and beadwork with her hands on her waist. “Because we’ve been married for five fucking minutes, and you’re already talking to me like I belong to you.”

I stepped forward, crowding her. She didn’t retreat, but met me chest-to-chest. “You do belong to me.”

She swallowed once but remained. “I do not.”

“Yes, you do,” I fairly growled, my voice pitched dark and deep. “Just like I belong to you.”

She blinked once. Twice. Her chest rose and fell hard, pushing her breasts up in my face. I tried to ignore them, but I failed, not with everything in me strung tight since the first second she stepped into the church, her lusciously sinful body shrouded in white.

I pressed a kiss to the swell of one breast, cupped her waist in my hands, and dragged my lips down the front of her until I could press my cheek right above her silk covered belly button. “You’re mine,” I whispered. “And I’ve always been yours.”

I didn’t dare move. I just held onto her. It was the most emotional declaration she’d gotten from me in years. I feared she’d hurl my words back at me, like usual. I braced for it, waiting for each syllable to tear me up from the inside. If I prepared, I could school my features better. Even when she struck me to the bone.

Her fingers delved over my head, and I held my breath, waiting for her reaction.

“Just don’t speak down to me again,” she said. Her heart beat through her underwear against my face. I could feel it fast and frantic.

“I didn’t think I was speaking down to you. I was just trying to keep from escalating a situation I already took care of.”

She wobbled into a crouch, and I gripped her hips to keep her from toppling. “When it comes to my sister, you don’t get to decide. I’ve been taking care of Bianca all her life. I’ve always been more of a mother to her than ours was. Don’t push me out of a situation involving her again, or I will walk out that door for good.”

I released her hips and seized her face. Her knees hit the floor, and she sank lower than me. I adjusted to her height forcing her to meet my eyes. “And you will never again threaten to leave me. We’ve been married mere hours. You were clear about the permanence of this situation. There is no walking out.” I kept my hands gentle, but all I wanted was pull her face into my chest and hold her there until she took it back.

We stared at each other, chests rising and falling. She wrapped her hands around my forearms, and I loosened my grip on her cheeks.

“I…I’m sorry. I won’t threaten it again.”

“I’m sorry too. I’ll make sure to include you if a situation involves Bianca.”

She nodded, and I helped her back to her feet. Free of the anger, I gazed down the line of her body. The corset made her impossibly small waist even narrower, and accentuated the wide curve of her hips.

She skimmed her hands down her body. “Do you like it?”

I could only nod, my mouth dry now.

“Good, help me out of it. This thing is so uncomfortable. I feel like I haven’t drawn a full breath all day.”

She turned, and I unlaced the ribbon carefully. Once the fabric sagged around her waist, she took over and pulled it free. Red lines marked a shadow of the corset on her skin.

I dragged her into me and rubbed the pink lines gently to ease some of the harsh lines indented there. “Are you okay?”

She reached out and untied my bowtie. “Don’t worry. They’ll go away. And don’t think I’m not angry over you deciding to bring us back here. I am keeping my penthouse.”

I held up my hands in surrender as she started on the line of buttons down my dress shirt. “I never said you had to give it up.”

“And you aren’t going too—“

I cut her off with my lips. Nothing more than a quick kiss and retreat. “I will keep doing that if it will get you to stop fucking talking.”

She swallowed loudly and remained silent. I rewarded her with a deeper kiss. Her hair still sat expertly twisted in coils on her head, so I softly clutched my fingers around the base of her neck to deepen it. She tasted like icing and champagne and the chocolate cake I didn’t smash in her face. I coaxed her into my arms with my tongue in her mouth and my free hand wrapped around the back of her rib cage.

When I ended the kiss, her eyes were glazed and her rigid shoulders sagged. This is how I wanted her. Sated and awake. With zero chance to doubt her choice in me.

Her hand trailed down my undershirt to the hard on pressed against the zipper of my slacks. “You’re wearing too many clothes,” she said.

“I couldn’t agree more.”

I shrugged out of the jacket and dress shirt while she worked my belt buckle, until thousands of dollars of fabric lay in a wrinkled mess on the floor. I scooped her up again and places her on the edge of the couch.

When I pressed her knees apart and shifted between them, she leaned back. “What are you going to do?”

I licked my lips and clasped my fingers around the top of her sheer stockings. Rolling them down her thigh and then knee and calf swiftly morphed into an exercise of restraint. I could smell her soap and sweat, and I wanted her so bad, my cock breached the top of my black boxer briefs.

She shifted her legs wider and tipped her other knee against my hip as I started on the opposite side. Once she sat in only her panties, I reached out and yanked her hips forward. “It’s our wedding night, Mrs. St. James. What does tradition dictate?”

She snorted and dropped her head back to lean into the couch again. I traced the edge of her panties with my pinky finger, the white lace separating me from everything I wanted right now. Needed right now. “If either of us were virgins, I’d suspect that would be the next step. But that boat sailed many years ago.”

I laughed. “I know. I pushed that bitch out of the harbor, and I enjoyed every second of watching your first orgasm play across your face.”

Her lips spread wide, and she yawned.

“Nope.” I slapped her thigh. “How about a drink?”

“So you can take advantage of me?” she asked and grinned again. Something felt right about this. Her naked in my hands and home. All the walls and games fallen away. I wondered what the rest of our lives would be like without them.

I bit the inside of her thigh, and she yelped and smacked my ear. “What the hell?”

I kissed the red mark. “You were falling asleep. I asked you if you wanted a drink?”

“No. I want your mouth on me.”

I shifted up on my knees. She shook her head and pressed the top of mine down.

I grinned. “Seeing as it’s our wedding night, I’m inclined to follow orders. Just this once.”

I stripped her panties down her thighs and jerked them roughly off one ankle. She shuddered as I traced the same path I did before, this time with no barrier between her warm flesh and my fingers.

She didn’t have a chance to prepare. I cupped her ass in both hands and dragged her into my face, delving deep. She tasted the same as she did the first time. The very first time I put my face between a woman’s legs, they were hers. These legs, older and more muscular now, but the same ones. She wrapped her ankles over my shoulders and rested them on my back.

I lost myself in her. The taste of her, each little moan she let out when I bit the soft bud of her clit. She melted, covering my mouth in her arousal. I plunged my tongue inside her and fucked her with it, reveling in each grittier sound I elicited.

My cock ached, but I couldn’t release her to deal with it. I pressed into the couch and used the lip of it to give me any kind of friction I could between my underwear, the hard edge of the couch, and my stomach.

“I’m going to come,” she said, over and over, repeating it like a mantra. I pushed in harder, fucking her with my tongue and let her find her own rhythm against my face to stimulate her clit. The second she broke apart, I felt it in the pulse of her body and the gouges in my arms from her finger nails. I heard it in the string of unintelligible curses she let out. Her body squeezed tight and shook. I gentled, slowed, and stopped. She ran her hands over my head as she peeled her legs off and put her feet flat on the floor on either side of my knees.

I grabbed my cock, now aching to the point of pain, intending to jerk off the edge until I could take her to bed. As I went to grip myself, she slapped my hand away, shifted off the couch, and pushed me flat on the floor. The cold hardwood jolted me but didn’t stand against the raging inferno my body stoked.

She crawled between my thighs, pulled the waistband of my boxer briefs down under my balls, and cast a wink up my body before her mouth enfolded the head of my cock.

The hot wet suction of her lips began immediately, and I reached out and wrapped my hand around the bottom of the couch to focus on something. Anything.

She didn’t go easy on me. She pressed down my length almost to my base and sucked back up. With each pass, my balls tightened, my toes curled, and I knew I wouldn’t last long. “Baby, you keep doing that, and it’s game over.”

She peered up at me all mock innocence, flushed skin, and wet mouth. Damn, this woman would ruin me. Fucking destroy me. And I needed more.

Her assault lasted another minute by my sheer will alone. Then she followed her mouth with her hand on an upstroke, and I came, harder than I had in my life. I tried to warn her, but syllables wouldn’t string themselves together right. She didn’t seem to mind. I pumped into her face as she met my body and swallowed it all. The world tilted until I found myself back in my body, everything tight and aching from the strain of keeping myself under control.

She released me, pulled my underwear off, and stood naked over me. “How about that drink?”