Brave Enough(55)

Tag gently rolls me fully onto my back and parts my legs. He runs his hands from my knees to my groin and follows them with his lips. They continue up my body, stopping only to pay homage to my navel and my nipples before I feel them at my throat. Still, I don’t look at him. I can’t.

He goes still after he settles between my legs. I feel him throbbing at my entrance. I feel my entrance lapping at his crown, begging him to come inside.

“Look at me, Weatherly,” he orders softly.

I squeeze my eyes shut tighter.

He shifts on top of me, rubbing the head of his cock between my folds, a move specifically designed to drive me mad. I grit my teeth and pray for strength.

“Please look at me. I want to see your eyes,” he pleads, dragging his lips over my chin and my jaw, to my ear. “Please.”

There’s something earnest in that one word. It sounds different. It feels different, different even from the first one in the sentence. It seems . . . desperate. Maybe that’s why, against my better judgment, I open my eyes.

I’m held the moment I meet his gaze. His gray eyes are deep, shadowy pools of mercury that suck me in and steal my will, destroy my resistance. With our gazes locked, he slides slowly into me, a sweet promise made without words. His eyes never leave me, penetrating me deeper than his body. All the way to my soul. “I think I’m falling in love with you, my fair Weatherly.”

I gasp, his words so close to the ones I’ve waited and longed to hear from him. They melt into my blood as orgasm spreads through my body, his confession an accelerant to the fire in my belly. Like a blazing heat, it starts at the place where we’re joined and radiates outward, suffusing my every cell, warming my every muscle.

I groan at the feeling, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Rather than violent and explosive, as it normally is, this is deep and steady. Reverent almost. It pulses gently through me with a ceaselessness that rocks me to my very core.

Tag doesn’t take his eyes off me. Not when his breath hitches, not when his body jerks, not when his muscles quiver. We savor every second, every subtle nuance together, locked. Joined.

And when the heat starts to wane, when the ecstasy begins to abate, Tag leans forward to brush his lips across my cheek, capturing the single tear that escaped from the corner of my eye.

—

When I wake again, Tag is gone. I feel him as if he were still here, though. My body remembers every touch. My heart remembers every word. If only I could believe either.

I think I’m falling in love with you, my fair Weatherly.

God, how I wanted to hear those words a day ago, a week ago! But now? I can’t help wondering if somehow he knew how much I wanted to hear those words and he’s using them against me, another manipulative tool designed to get something from me.

My eyes burn with unshed tears as I’m overcome with that feeling of loss again. I grieve what was. Or what I thought was. I grieve what will never be. I mean, where could we possibly go from here? He married me to get Chiara. To my soul, that feels like he married me to steal from me.

Searing pain pulses through my chest. The truth hurts so much. But I have to push back the pain. I almost blew it yesterday. I can’t let him know that I know, which means that today I have to act more normal. Starting now.

I shower and dress and make my way to the kitchen. It’s empty, but there is a basket of warm muffins, covered with a towel and a note from Tag. Enjoy, beautiful. I’ll be back before lunch. T.

I bite into a moist blueberry muffin and pour myself a cup of coffee from the still-warm pot. I don’t taste either. I might as well be eating cardboard and drinking wet air. I glance at the clock on the wall. It’s just after eight, nowhere near lunch. I perk up as my brain starts to form an idea. A plan. Maybe during his absence, I can find something to use against him, or something to help us. To help me.

After I brush crumbs off my shirt and rinse out my mug, I sneak back up the stairs to the room that Tag moved into the day that I arrived here. When he was forced to move out of mine. I can’t be certain that he’d even keep anything incriminating here, but if by chance he did, I intend to find it.

Only not in the bedroom. I find some clothes, some personal hygiene things that have not yet made it into “our room” and a few other uninteresting odds and ends. Nothing important or telling. Or helpful.

As I make my way back down to the first floor, I rack my brain for other places he might’ve left things. I can’t believe that there wouldn’t be anything of a business nature here. Not one scrap of paper, not one note. A laptop or computer. There has to be something somewhere. I just have to find it.

I meander through the house, hoping I’ll be inspired, but I’m not. I head outside and into the grass, following the curve of the yard around to the back of the house. I see the caretaker’s quarters with its open front door, although I don’t see Stella. She might be resting. Tag kept on the housekeeping services, just to a lighter degree, while we were gone. I imagine he might keep them on full time so that Stella doesn’t have to work in her condition.