I didn’t answer. In truth, I couldn’t move at all because my eyes were on her pussy. The scent of her fear and the moisture I saw on her delicate pink lips inflamed a craving I didn’t know how to suffocate anymore. I wanted to fuck her mercilessly. I wanted to plunge my dick inside her tight little hole over and over again until I stuffed her full of my come.
Her breasts were heaving, and her body was shaking, and I wanted her more in that moment than I could ever remember wanting anything else in my life. I longed to torment her. To punish her and teach her exactly how weak I wasn’t. I wanted to taste the tears she cried for me while I fucked her so hard she wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week.
She sensed the change in me. Gypsy knew how to spot a predator, and right now, that was me. She yanked against the restraints, the fabric chafing her wrists. Her panic rose when her eyes locked onto mine. Her breaths became shallow. Her pupils larger. Goose bumps filled the exposed spaces of her skin.
When I tied her up like this, I knew how it would affect her. But in the depths of her panic attack, my vindication slipped away. There was no glory in exposing her vulnerabilities the way she always seemed to expose mine. And when she started hyperventilating and shaking her head back and forth, it all came crashing down on me.
I did this to her.
Because I was still a monster, and I always would be.
I moved to her side, frantically trying to untie her, which was difficult when she was thrashing with all her force. It took me longer than it should have. I’d had years of practice, but suddenly, I felt as unskilled as the day I first experimented with the dark side of my desires.
“Gypsy.”
I tried to get through to her as I pulled her into my arms and cocooned her against my chest, but there was a disconnect I couldn’t breach. She was despondent. Broken. In the span of a few minutes, we had both regressed twenty years. The only thing I could do was rock her back and forth, whispering apologies that weren’t ever going to be enough. Her tears soaked into my skin, a long overdue event, but one that never should have happened this way.
“Talk to me, pet,” I encouraged. “Tell me what I can do to fix it.”
“Nothing,” she sobbed. “I hate you. I hate this situation. The only thing you can do is let me go.”
I held her tighter. “You know I can’t do that.”
“Why?” she pleaded. “I don’t even know why you’re doing this. One minute you act like you want me, and the next you’re with someone else.”
Her words turned every muscle in my body to stone as clarity sank into the pit of my stomach. Emily. She’d seen me with Emily, and that’s what triggered her. I should have known better. I should have realized that behind her wrath, there was something else, and that something else was jealousy.
A warm feeling filled my chest, but it was quickly replaced with sorrow. I couldn’t blame her for being confused. I hadn’t been clear with her, and I kept overstepping my boundaries, but moving forward, I would have no choice but to set the record straight.
I tipped her chin up and met her glassy eyes. My thumb dragged over her cheeks and wiped her tears away, and I ached to kiss her again. To give her assurances that weren’t true or realistic.
“Emily is a colleague, and nothing more,” I told her. “We were discussing a case. But you are right to be confused. I’ve been giving you mixed signals, and for that, I apologize.”
“I don’t understand,” she murmured. “Why are you with me? You act like you want me and then—”
“I do want you.” I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against hers. “I want you so fucking much sometimes it physically hurts. But it wouldn’t be right to take you. And the things I like… I can’t ask them of you. It was never my intention to consummate this marriage.”
She didn’t respond. I could feel the tension in her body, but I wanted to know what she was thinking. I wanted her thoughts, her feelings. It was a selfish desire, and one I couldn’t act on.
“What kind of things do you like?” she breathed.
“Things I couldn’t ask of you.” My grip on her deepened. “Things I wouldn’t ask of you.”
“Tell me,” she begged. “I just want to know.”
I sighed. “I can’t tell you, pet. It’s hard to explain. The only way I could think of… is to show you.”
A storm reeled in the gray landscape of her eyes as determination grew roots in her soul. “Then show me.”