"There are things you seem okay with. You handle them better than I do."
"Are you referring to the sex?"
His voice lowers. "You seem unfazed about anything with others around us. When you're ordered to submit, it's..."
My stomach flips. "It's what? Say it, Malin."
"Most women don't like it. I see it in their eyes. But your eyes..."
I step closer to him and gaze up. "My eyes what?"
"Fire burns in them."
I stroke his cock and push my other hand through his hair. "I always thought you loved my eyes and the desire for you sizzling in them."
"I do. It's the ease at which you do it. And how good you are at doing it that worries me."
"Why? You would rather I shake in fear and not enjoy it?"
"No."
"Your wife likes sex, Malin. You taught me to love it. But with you and only you. I do enjoy submitting to you. I enjoy submitting to the other men because they will never get what they want. You will always get it. And it fuels me to know they want me, but I'm yours. And if anyone touches me, you will kill them. So while they think they are breaking me, I am the one breaking them. They are vile, disgusting human beings who always get everything they want. But not me. Only you get me. And it burns them. I love every minute of their desperation to have what only you will get."
He stays silent. His worried expression doesn't fade.
"And I'm your wife. You are my husband. If you want me, you shall take me. I do not want you to deny yourself if I am what you crave. And I don't want to worry about anyone else and what they think about us. Especially men I hate, and when we are in the pit of sin. All I want to focus on is you and to know I can make everyone else disappear because all you are fixated on is me, your ma belle."
He slides his hands in my hair. "I'm always fixated on you."
"I know."
"I don't need to prove anything to any of those men, and neither do you."
"I didn't say that."
"Didn't you?"
I shake my head. "No."
"It sounds like it to me."
I stand on my tiptoes and kiss him. "I want a dark corner, Malin. If we are to be there all night and into the morning hours, I want to do whatever we want with no boundaries."
"We have boundaries for a reason, ma belle."
"I know. For normal situations."
"Nothing is normal about the underworld," he growls.
"I mean the usual dinner events. This is not one, and you know it."
His face turns red with anger. "I hate this world. As soon as this is over, you will never be in any situation like this again. And I loathe myself every day that I got you anywhere near it."
"So, you would rather I was with the President?"
"Of course not!"
"Do you forget I was supposed to be his gift from the Belizean government?"
"No."
"Either way, I was going to be involved in this world. At least I chose and love who I am with."
Every time I see the self-loathing in his eyes, it pains me.
"Maybe there was a different option, and I couldn't see it because I wanted you so much," he says.
"There wasn't. Why are you still debating this and beating yourself up?"
When he doesn't answer me, I step around him. "Look."
He turns. "This is whose property I would be. Maybe the reason we're in this room isn't that I need to be. Maybe it's to remind you who would destroy me every day if I were not with you."
He scowls. "I've never wanted anyone dead as much as him. And he will be soon, ma belle."
I spin and tug Malin's face to mine. "I want a dark corner tonight. If we have to be in the room, in the pit of sin, then I'm going to embrace it. And you are going to enjoy me. Make it happen."
32
Malin
"I voted for you," Gustave informs me.
My stomach twists. I grumble, "I don't want to know what conversations were going on about whatever poor woman they've been breaking in for that bastard's offspring."
"It's best you don't look," Gustave mumbles. "But there is no picture of the woman this time. Only a video from Evandro Torres. It must have been taken before he was killed. He wished the President's son a happy thirtieth birthday and claimed she is worth every penny