“No!” she hissed and stumbled away from me, her eyes wide and horror-struck.
What the hell did she mean? “No?”
She glared, but behind her bravado was another emotion I was too angry to read. “What? Have you never heard the word ‘no’ before?”
“Oh, I hear it often. The guy whose throat I crushed said it over and over and over again until he couldn’t say it anymore.”
She backed away. “So you’re going to crush my throat, too?”
She really knew how to push my fucking buttons. Did she really think that making me angry on our wedding night was the way to go? I’d sworn to myself that I would hold back for her. “No, that would defy the purpose of our marriage, don’t you think?”
“I don’t think my father would be happy if you hurt me,” she said haughtily.
“Is that a threat?” I asked quietly, feeling my pulse pound in my veins. I had to fight the urge to throw her on the bed and show her what I really wanted to do to her. Maybe she was more like her insolent brat of a sister, Gianna, than she’d let on. Maybe the shy, innocent act had been for show.
But then she dropped her gaze and I could see her shivering as she whispered, “No.”
Anger still simmered under my skin, and I wasn’t in the mood to let her off easy. “But you deny me what’s mine?”
“I can’t deny you something that you don’t have the right to take in the first place. My body doesn’t belong to you. It’s mine,” she said fiercely, eyes shooting daggers my way. I couldn’t believe her audacity.
I reached for her shoulder to pull her against my body and silence her with a kiss before she said anything else that drove me up the wall, but Aria flinched violently and clenched her eyes shut as if expecting a blow. I dropped my hand, stunned by her reaction. Did she think I’d hit her? I was a violent man with hardly any patience to spare, and my brutal reputation preceded me, but I’d sworn to myself that I’d never abuse my wife. I’d watched my father rape and beat my mother before she’d killed herself. I didn’t want to become him in that regard at least. In all other areas of my life, I was already too much like him. “I could take what I want,” I said, because I wasn’t sure what else to do. Aria didn’t need to know that it was an empty threat. While I could certainly follow through with it, I would never do it.
I hated my own confusion. I always knew what to do, but with Aria things were more complicated.
She peered up at me with her beautiful eyes. “You could. And I would hate you for it until the end of my days.”
Hate was the prevailing emotion in most marriages in our world, from what I knew. “Do you think I care about that? This isn’t a marriage of love. And you do already hate me. I can see it in your eyes.”
This discussion was a waste of time, anyway. We had our traditions. Both Aria and I were bound by them. I pointed at the white sheets. “You heard what my father said about our tradition?” It was a ridiculous one. Not all women bled the first time, unless the man made sure to be rough, which some husbands actually did to guarantee the expected splotch of blood. I had absolutely no intention of being rough with her. I wouldn’t hurt her more than absolutely necessary, but I was a big guy. It would hurt, and she would bleed.
Aria walked away from me and toward the bed, looking down at it as if it were her doom. Had she thought she could talk me out of consummating our marriage if it weren’t for our tradition? Then she didn’t know me very well.
I walked up to her. She looked like a goddess. I couldn’t wait to get her out of her dress, to taste every inch of her. I put my hands on her naked shoulders. She was warm and soft, but she didn’t turn. I stifled my annoyance at her refusal to acknowledge my presence. I would be patient, even if she provoked me. I brushed my hands over her collarbones to the soft rise of her breasts. I could feel my cock responding to the feel of her perfect skin, to her tantalizing scent. Fuck, I burned to bury myself in her.
Something wet dropped on my hand. I didn’t have to see it to know it was a tear, a fucking tear. She was crying. I grabbed her shoulders and turned her around before I hooked my finger under her chin and tipped it up. Tears rolled down her cheeks. I knew some women could cry whenever they wanted, but the look in Aria’s eyes told me all I needed to know. She was terrified and hopeless. I was a good judge of human character—I had to be to keep my men in check. Aria wouldn’t fight me if I pushed her toward the bed, ripped her clothes off and took her. She’d lie back and let it happen. She would cry, but she wouldn’t refuse me, not anymore. She was mine for the taking. It was expected of me to take her, to make her mine. Tears had never weakened my resolve. But before now, those tears had never belonged to my wife, to the woman I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with.