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He heard. “Just keep your legs together and try to be modest, if you even know what that means.”
I flushed. How could his mouth be both the nicest and meanest thing I’d ever encountered?
He opened the curtains and I shut my eyes against the bright strobing lights. Darkness was better, especially after that.
I still couldn’t look at him. I was sitting somewhere between mortified, disgusted, and completely smitten.
There was really no hope for me.
He sat back down beside me and threw an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into him. My face was hot. I felt his breath against my skin a beat before his soft lips kissed my temple. It was almost sweet.
What was that? What were we doing here?
“Well, you’re better at taking oral than you are at giving it,” he murmured. “At least you’re good for something.”
Ah, there it was. The venom hadn’t gone away, not for one second.
I didn’t even realize we’d been joined by a few of his friends until he leaned away from me and started casually chatting with one of them.
I stared in a daze at absolutely nothing. I was drunk on more things than the champagne.
After a short while, we went back into the smaller, private room. Our groups’ booth was empty. Everyone else was out dancing now. Calder didn’t seem to care.
We sat in silence for a time. I sipped sparingly at the virgin OJ he’d autocratically ordered for me while he tried to drown himself in bourbon.
Something was bothering me, and I knew it was a bad idea even as I felt the question leaving my mouth. “So why didn’t you marry one of the debutantes?”
He paused mid-drink, then resumed, finishing the glass, and giving me a thorough, less than friendly once over.
Personal questions were not welcomed in our marriage, and I’d had the gall to ask one anyway.
I’d displayed very bad fake wife manners.
I cared less and less about that.
Finally, surprisingly, he answered, “First and foremost, I didn’t want to. Second, I had no desire to marry someone that I and at least half of my close friends have plowed.”
I winced at his vulgarity, his misogyny, and his snobbery. “Isn’t that a double standard? Have you been a saint?”
“No, I haven’t and yes, it is, but that doesn’t change anything. I don’t know what to tell you. I was never going to marry one of them. That was never on the table. If one of them implied otherwise, they didn’t get the idea from me.”
“Because you wanted a virgin.”
“I told you. That wasn’t my stipulation. But now that it’s all said and done, I’m not sorry about it. It all worked out for the best.”
Well, I’ll be damned. Almost a compliment.
“Not the marriage,” he corrected hastily. “I still fucking hate being married to you. But I don’t entirely hate that your body’s my exclusive territory.”
And there it was.
His hand slid shamelessly between my closed thighs. They parted for him in spite of my shame, and he fingered me. “No one else has been here,” he whispered and promptly withdrew.
He proceeded to ignore me in favor of his phone.
I withstood it for a solid thirty minutes before I broke. My mind snagged on something, fixating on it to the point that I found myself stewing until I finally just addressed it out loud. “So am I getting this wrong, or did you imply that you’ve slept with most or all of my bridal party?” I asked him.
His face stiffened. He turned his head and eyed me with spectacular detachment. “My, my, aren’t you full of questions you don’t have any right to ask?”
I thought that was his answer, and we lapsed back into silence for a time.
“I never slept with Millie or Veronica,” he said suddenly. “As for the rest, we were all dumb, horny teenagers together. What can I say?” He saw the look on my face. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to. And need I remind you? This is not a love match. Where I’ve put my dick is not your business. So I think it’s fair to say this whole discussion is less than productive.”
It was only the brutal truth. I’d walked into this knowing I’d have no ownership of him.
The thing was, I hadn’t been fascinated with him then. There was no obsession in my bloodstream when I’d put ink to that paper. I wasn’t sure how or why, but a lot had changed since then.
I tried not to show how much I was appalled by what he’d just revealed. A part of me had been expecting and hoping he’d deny it, but this was not going to go my way. “I don’t suppose it is. Making me hang out with them is also less than productive.”
He had the grace to at least look somewhat uncomfortable. “I didn’t know Millie was bringing the entire messy crew,” he said stiffly. “But it is what it is. This is your social circle now. It’s what you signed on for.”
“Understood,” I said smoothly.
We lapsed back into silence, and I could feel him staring at me. I kept my gaze trained down at my hands.
“You’re very composed,” he remarked after a time. I couldn’t tell if it was a compliment, insult, or simple observation. “Are you always so quiet?”
I chewed on my lip, stealing a look at him. I couldn’t seem to get a word out. I could feel the blush staining my cheeks. My mind was stuck firmly on what he’d done to me earlier. I hadn’t been quiet earlier when he was making out with my cunt and making me scream.
He smirked. It wasn’t friendly. It was some mean mix between self-loathing, irony, and utter disdain. “Well, I guess not always, huh?”
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
CALDER
I could still taste her, still feel her on the bed of my tongue. I hated her guts, but she tasted like paradise.
It was a mistake to come here, to go anywhere near her. I’d known it was a bad idea from the start. I didn’t want to do it, but I was still fully culpable. I had let my friends talk me into it with barely a struggle.
The second I saw her, I regretted coming. Two hours later, I was regretting it even more. I wanted nothing to do with her, had in fact vowed to neglect her as much as it was possible for a husband to neglect an unwanted wife, but that didn’t seem to matter exactly the second she got close enough for me to touch her.
Eating her out and getting addicted to the taste of her in the process had not been in the plans. Training her to melt at my touch, to ignite when my lips made contact with her were counterproductive to my intentions. All of my actions were at odds with my goals for the evening and in general: to drive her away through humiliation, estrangement, or flat out cruelty. In other words, by any means necessary. I despised this sham marriage, and I wanted her to know it, feel it, resent it as much as I did.
I wanted her to hate me more than she loved the millions she’d sold herself for. Hate me enough to call the whole thing off. I couldn’t do it, but if she did, I knew that would prove a very important point to my father: this scheme of his was doomed from the start.
I’d left her sitting alone some time ago. I couldn’t be that close to her. Across the room was too close.
I’d set up camp at the private club room’s small bar, downing one drink after another to erase the honey sweet flavor of her. So far it wasn’t working.
She was looking down at her phone, and I couldn’t stop watching her for more than short stretches of time. As I stared, a few of my friends joined her. She looked up and responded to a question, her lush lips shaping the words attractively, her flawless face somber and serious. I could see the little dimple in her lush bottom lip from across the room. That fucking dimple.
My balls hurt. My dick was still hard as a rock. I’d had to drape my jacket in front of my raging erection after the incident behind the curtains in the main club. If she so much as brushed up against me again tonight, I was going to come in my pants. Another solid reason to resent her. She made me lose the control I’d come to take for granted at this stage of my life.
Hell, maybe I’d bought myself a slutty little virgin.
Or perhaps she was just a very good liar. I liked to think so. She didn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. Not by a long shot.
She’d sold herself into marriage. That was fucking calculated. But just how calculated was she?
Calculated enough to fake an orgasm that made her lose her fucking mind? Yes, of course. But was she talented enough to pull it off so well? Who the fuck knew? Not me.
She laughed at something my friend Bradley said. She threw back her head when she did it, her gorgeous tawny blonde locks flowing back like she was a fucking Disney princess. Her laugh tinkled like a bell. It grated on my ears. Her teeth were white and perfectly straight, her big aquamarine eyes tilted up like a cat’s. And her soft, lush pink lips were every wet dream I’d ever had as a teenager. Hell. As an adult.
What on earth was I thinking when I picked her out? What a short-sighted thing to do, marrying someone that I wanted to fuck this badly. I hated myself for it, but I hated her more.
I glared at Bradley but he wasn’t looking at me, he was looking at my too gorgeous for her own usefulness wife.
My jaw clenched as I saw her face relax into happy lines. Not a fake smile for the cameras. Not a photo shoot. A genuine, candid smiling moment. It wasn’t something I’d been privy to personally. I didn’t like it. She was even more beautiful when she smiled like that, and it was already fucking enough.
Flashes from our wedding night came to me, as they tended to do at odd moments even when I wasn’t this close to her. Her lean, luscious body lying sprawled on the bed, long legs spread, blood and cum on her thighs. The perverse pleasure of feeling her virgin cunt squeezed around my bare dick. Skin on skin, Jesus. I’d never fucked without a condom before that night, and I’d certainly never had a virgin. The idea was still appalling, but the sentiment was shallow. I hadn’t lasted thirty seconds once I was inside of her. The feel of her gripping me like I was her last lifeline was too much. It had flat-out done me in. I hadn’t gotten off so fast since my first time inside a woman. That’d been twelve years ago. I flinched as my mind made that connection, while I’d been fourteen at the time, the woman had been older than my wife was now.
That night at least I’d had an excuse to touch her. Consummation was a nonnegotiable part of the deal.
What I had no excuse for was the rest. I never should have felt how wet her sleek cunt could get with just the barest brush of my fingers. I never should have let her wrap her lush lips around my cock. Never should have fucking tasted her. Never discovered how wet and hungry her smooth little pussy was.
She was setting a worse trap for me than my father had, and I couldn’t even tell if she was doing it on purpose.
The more I watched her, the more a dense fog of desire enveloped me. My balls were so fucking heavy I didn’t think I’d last ten more minutes let alone the rest of the night.
Resolutely, I turned to the bar. I wouldn’t so much as glance at her again, I decided. Out of sight, out of mind, out of fucking myself to death distance.
“Hopefully the women weren’t too rough on her before we came by,” my friend Preston spoke as he moved in beside me at the bar. He was the sweet, caring one of the group. He and Millie were perfect together. “Millie says it was a bit tense. I don’t know what that even means, but I hope they didn’t scare her off. Sorry, man.”
I shot him a glance. He was turned the opposite way of me, facing the room.
I shrugged both of my shoulders. It was a restless motion, more for me than him. “She’s a grownup. She can fend for herself.”
“I hope she didn’t have to is all I’m saying,” he remarked.
I didn’t respond to that. I didn’t know what I hoped for. Nothing I felt lately made any damn sense.
“What do you see when you look at her?” I asked him. I had my back to her, but I knew he was staring at the incomparably gorgeous creature I was married to.
My best friend appeared distinctly uncomfortable. “Your wife.”
I laughed, and it was actually amused instead of bitter. “Look deeper. And get rid of that stick up your ass. The question wasn’t a trap.”
“A beautiful woman.”
“Look deeper.”
“Unbelievably beautiful. A bombshell. A modern day Brigitte Bardot.”
“Deeper.”
“When I look at that woman, I see the best sex of your life, you lucky bastard. How’s that?”
It was my turn to look uncomfortable. We’d always been honest with each other. It was one of the reasons we’d stayed friends since childhood. “Yes, of course she’s beautiful. An irresistibly attractive shell on her part was a condition of our union. But do you know what I see what when I look at her?”
“What?”
“My ruin. My own self-destruction strutting around on killer legs. Chaos. The ruination of my peace of mind. The way I react to her looks is the death of my principles. The way I respond when I feel her pussy is the vindication of a tyrant.”
“The tyrant being your father, I presume?”
“Of course.”
“Who the hell cares?” he said harshly.
“Excuse me?”
“Who the hell cares what your father thinks? You’ve always been at war with that man, and it’s got nothing to do with that poor girl. Yes, your father can be a tyrant, but she’s not.”
No, she was a whore, I thought, but I didn’t say it aloud. It was one thing for me to think it, but no one else got the privilege.
The thought made me freeze. Hell no. I would hold nothing sacred about her. About us. “She’s not a tyrant,” I agreed. It surprised me how much effort it took me to muscle the next words out. “Tyrants have brains, and voices, and choices. She sold off all three. You know what she is?”
He was staring at me with wide eyes, giving me a look that said, what are you even thinking, man?
I answered my own question. “She’s a piece of art that my father bought for me to fuck on the regular. An expensive blow up doll. A gorgeous fucking cum dumpster. She’s my own private whore.”
“Banks, stop,” my best friend said in a very careful voice.
I turned. She was standing right there. I wondered exactly what she’d heard. I felt color climb up my cheeks in a guilty flush, but I told myself that I didn’t care. She deserved everything I’d said. It was nothing but the brutal truth.
“May I go?” she asked with quiet composure. It made me want to shake her.
“No,” I said, feeling cruel. “Go earn your keep and mingle with my friends.”
Without a word, she turned away.
“And Noura,” I called out, voice hard, dick harder.
She turned to look at me. Her eyes were insolent.
It made me wild.
“Yes, husband?” There was a bite to her words.
She had some spirit. I found that almost unbearably provocative.
It made me lash out all the harder. “I know this is asking a lot, but try your best not to embarrass me.”
Something fascinating happened to her face. It barely moved, but her eyes snapped at me, and her lips trembled.
I couldn’t tell if I’d broken her spirit or lit a fire in her. Why did I perversely want to do both?
“Is that all?” she shot back.
I raked my eyes over her, top to bottom. Her nipples were erect, and it was visible through her top.
Well, hadn’t that backfired in a hurry?
“No,” I drawled. “You may be a whore, but you’re my whore. Stop flirting with Bradley.”
Without another word, she turned and walked away.
> “Jesus, Banks,” Preston sounded shocked. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Her. She’s what’s wrong.
“You’re going to have to get over this.”
“You’re not the one who had to marry some dumb model.”
“Do you even know that she’s dumb? One thing I know for a fact about your father, he would not allow you to breed with someone with a low IQ.”
I knew he was right about that one small point. I even knew that I had access to all of her information, from her shoe size to her SAT scores, but stubbornly I refused to look at it.
“Did you see that picture she posted a few weeks ago?” I changed the subject.
Preston nearly choked on his drink. I glared at him. That was answer enough. “Stop following her on social media, you fucking pervert,” I ground out.
His eyes tried to bug out of his head. “I only follow her because I thought it was the polite thing to do. I was the best man at your wedding!”
“How sweet. Well, stop. And you better not have that fucking picture saved on your phone.”
“You’ve lost your mind.”
He probably had a point.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
NOURA
For some reason I could not fathom why my husband drove back with me to my apartment. I even got past my helpless rage enough to speak to him once. “Will you be staying at my apartment tonight?” Because why the hell else was he in my car?
He didn’t bother to look at me. “No. I’m going home. I need sleep. I haven’t had a solid night of rest for days, and I know I’ll sleep better in my own bed.”
Fair enough. Good riddance. I wanted free of his company ASAP. It was nothing but a relief.
It was also a relief to catch him letting loose that hateful tirade at my expense, I told myself. I’d been going a little soft for him. Can’t have that. I knew deep in my gut that I couldn’t show him an ounce of weakness. Showing your belly to your enemy was always a stupid move.
I bid him a cursory goodnight. He didn’t bother to respond or so much as look my way. Asshole.
Chester escorted me up to my apartment in silence. I knew he had opinions about my husband and my marriage, but he always had the grace to keep them to himself. I knew there had to be some conflict of interest there.