not right now, not when she’s so weak. Her lids rise, revealing those dark pools of lust. It releases electricity through my body, and my cock flexes against the outside of the tub. I want to fuck her, fuck her, fuck her, but this isn’t about me.
It’s about her and the way she melts into the white ceramic. The way she becomes soft and malleable in my hands. The way it gets her wetter to give in.
I circle her clit with slow deliberation, making her wait and yearn. Enjoying the way she moans in the small space. “We’re married now,” I say, my voice low. “I can do anything I want with this sweet body. I can fuck you in the bathroom, in the kitchen. Wherever you are, I can press you against the wall and get inside my favorite place.”
She moans again, and I know the words make her hot. She likes the idea of being taken by force, my little mermaid, my own personal siren. I crash against the rocks, not because she sings. I crash because she exists. Because I’m weak, and she’s strong.
So I give her more words, more fantasies. If she were my wife, I would only let her out of bed for the pleasure of dragging her back. I would wrap my belt around her throat and make her beg to suck my cock. “I’m going to lie next to you on that bed, and whenever my dick wants a nice warm place to rest, I’m going to spread your legs. There’ll be nothing you can do, no way to say no because you’re already mine.”
On the last word, the word mine, I flick her clit, and she comes with a high, keening cry, one that surely the couple downstairs will hear and recognize. It’s the sound of ownership.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Holly
I’m learning how to knead dough with Marisol when Elijah comes downstairs. He looks fresh in a worn button-down shirt and jeans. The farmer’s clothes. I’m wearing a peasant blouse and a long skirt that make me look like I belong among the wheat stalks.
And my hands are covered in flour.
Elijah comes up to me from behind and grasps my waist, planting a kiss on my cheek. The move makes me blush, but I can’t say anything because we’re supposed to be married. Marisol gives me a secret smile, and I know she thinks it’s because this is new. New as in we’re having our honeymoon. Not new as in we’ve been pretending for the past twenty-four hours.
“Like this,” Marisol says, doing something smooth and knowledgeable with her hands.
My copy looks much more clumsy.
Even though I’ve been copying her from the beginning, my dough looks more lumpy and harder than hers. It’s clear that I didn’t miss my calling by becoming a fiction writer instead of a baker, but there’s something soothing about working with the food in my hands. Elijah snakes his hands under my skirt, and I squirm away, spraying him with a little bit of excess flour.
“Don’t,” I say, laughing. “I’ll be lucky if my dough rises.”
“You’re making something rise,” he says.
It’s easy to imagine this is how it would be if we were actually a newly married couple, if I were sore from having sex with my husband, if we were recovering from a dishonest Uber driver. The truth is much less optimistic. He’s an undercover operative in some shadow military department, and I’m… me. Holly Frank. Best-selling author of children’s novels. The scariest thing in my life is a speaking gig in front of sixth graders.
We were thrown together, literally, but we don’t belong together.
You’re mine, he told me in the bathroom, but that’s only sex talk.
It’s not real. The way he took me again and again last night, spreading me wide, holding down my wrists, or turning me onto my hands and knees, that was real.
That’s the only thing we have.
There’s a knock at the door, and Elijah moves quickly. In a blur he has a knife from the block and he’s standing beside the door. Marisol lets out a little shriek of surprise and fear, and I block her with my body. Instinctively I understand that Adam might have found us here, and I don’t want our hosts to be hurt for helping us.
Elijah uses the blade to move aside the white eyelet-pattern curtain. There’s a pause where the entire room holds its breath. Then he relaxes. The change is infinitesimal but very real. If I were an