Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 107660 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107660 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
“Yes?” she inquired—my silence stretching on too long.
With a blink, I refocused on proving a point and offered a smirk of my own in return. “If your sunshine attitude hasn’t deterred me yet, then your bright ass furniture won’t either.”
Her lips flattened as her eyes rolled back.
I smiled harder.
Satisfied with my amount of gloating, I moved past her and called back. “You can leave your vay-he mask down here, and we’ll find a prime position for it. But first, I’ll show you around.”
“It’s vejigante,” she corrected, teasing me again with that alluring accent, and followed me up the stairs.
“You saw the downstairs, as it is mostly open. There are guest rooms at the end of each hall if you turn left or right off the foyer. Up here is another seating area and a library with billiards. If you go right off the stairs, there is a guest room and my office,” I explained as we walked past the rooms and gestured to the others as we headed down to the end of the hall. “And this is my room. Or I should say, our room.” I opened the door and extended my arm wide, allowing her to enter first. However, she stood still at the threshold, staring.
“I assumed I’d have my own room,” she said softly.
My jaw snapped shut, biting back a sarcastic retort. At first, I took the comment as her usual stubbornness, but when I paused to take her in, I noticed her eyeing the room like it was some kind of trap. Like if she stepped through, she’d be stuck in a nightmare she couldn’t escape.
And I hated it. I wished the comment was her snarky attitude digging in because she could. Anything other than her just not wanting to share a space with me.
The thought split, creating two opposing emotions. One that scoffed with indifference, uncaring where she wanted to spend her time as long as I got what I needed. The other curling around a strike of pain that resembled too closely the rejection I felt when Daria left me.
The discomfort alarmed me, and I quickly shoved it aside with the assurance that I didn’t care what the hell anyone else wanted. I reminded myself that I wasn’t the young man who craved a wife who loved him unconditionally. I reminded myself that it wasn’t possible to feel that emotion because I didn’t allow anyone close enough to hurt me that way again.
Shoving the feeling aside like it never existed, I smiled and explained, “As my wife, I will not have you sleeping in the guest room.”
“You’re really going through with this real marriage thing, aren’t you?”
“At any point in our conversations, have I ever wavered from that statement?”
“I guess not,” she admitted begrudgingly.
“And despite my different views of what our marriage may look like, I can assure you sharing a room with you as my wife is something I very much imagined.”
She sucked in a slow breath, her chest rising to press against the thin material of her shirt. When she turned her gaze to me, heat lingered in the depths, but the trepidation that kept her from stepping in dominated it.
“I understand that we should be sharing a room if we will be doing the real marriage we agreed on…” She paused and rolled her lips between her teeth. “But I just left my own apartment and most of my belongings to move in with a man who can barely stand me. Or who I can barely stand. Can I have a little time to adjust before we dive headfirst into everything?”
“You had no problem sleeping with me the last time you were here.” I made the suggestive comment to ease the tension pouring off her. I said it lightly to cover the returning twinge to my chest.
She laughed. “I barely remember. I was so exhausted by the time you carried me to bed.”
Pride had my lip twitching into a subtle curve, remembering how thoroughly I’d worked her over. As soon as she saw the smirk, she rolled her eyes, but I caught her own lips pursing, as if to hold back her own smile.
“You can have the bedroom down the hall,” I conceded.
Her shoulders lowered in small increments from around her ears as she sighed. “Thank you.”
Despite the unusual circumstances of how we reached this point together, I didn’t want her to continue thinking of me as a man she could barely stand. And to be honest, our sexual chemistry—among other things I refused to acknowledge—made it more than easy to stand her. I wanted her to know it so we could move past this tension that kept her in another room. I wanted her to feel comfortable enough to settle into the simple married life I kept telling her I wanted. If that meant allowing her space for a couple weeks, then so be it.