“No,” I murmur as I lift her hand to my lips and kiss the back of it, steering clear of the parts that must hurt. “That’s not all you have, Faye. You’ve got me. Tell me what you need.”
She finally lifts her gaze to look at me then, and the vulnerability in her beautiful deep blues takes my breath away. She looks desperate and broken, and it fucking kills me, because I know exactly what it’s like to feel that way. I know how hard it is to claw your way out of that kind of darkness.
What I don’t understand is what brought this on. Is it me? She seemed fine all week. Did my leaving finally give her enough time to digest everything that’s happened between us? Did I do this to her? If being trapped in this marriage with me is destroying her already, how much will be left of her in the end?
“I need… I need to forget,” she whispers.
Pain unlike anything I’ve ever known tears through me, and I nod. I can pretty much guess what she needs to forget, or who.
I look into her eyes as I place my hands on her legs, my movements slow, careful. She inhales sharply when I part them, some of her despondency wavering as her nightgown bunches around her hips, revealing her white lace panties. “Let me show you a different kind of escape,” I murmur, my voice soft.
She nods, her gaze unreadable as I lean in and kiss her thigh, working my way up slowly, my touch rougher than she’s used to. I leave little marks all over her skin, and the soft gasps that escape her throat soothe my tattered soul.
My lips brush over the lace she’s wearing, and a soft moan fills the room. “Missed this pussy,” I murmur, my teeth wrapping around the fabric. I push it aside and press another kiss to her bare skin. Faye’s hand moves into my hair, and I glance up at her as I drag my tongue right down her pussy in one fluid, slow movement. She moans loudly, her eyes on mine, fire flickering in them.
I do it again, needing to see her burn for me. Both nights without her were torture — I’ve imagined fucking her with my tongue just the way I am right now, flicking past her clit, circling it the way that makes her arousal spike without sending her over the edge.
I drag my tongue down and push it in, drawing a whimper from her. Having her seated beside her piano, her gaze burning with need and her eyes blind to everything but me… fuck. I close my eyes when I feel her tremble, barely able to take it. My cock is throbbing with need, but this isn’t about me. I gently suck on her sensitive clit, and her moans get louder, needier.
“Dion,” she pleads. “Yes.”
Her grip on my hair tightens, and she pushes her hips into my face harder. There’s something so fucking sexy about seeing my wife be honest with her feelings for once — no hiding, no pretenses, just her chasing a high she trusts me to give. Her fingers graze over my scalp, and my own desire spikes as I flick her clit with my tongue, setting a pace that I know will push her over.
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more. I need her to come just like this, with my mouth on her pussy and my name on her lips. I need this as badly as she does. Knowing that I’m the one who took away her sorrow and replaced it with the pure lust that’s overtaken her is fucking priceless. I may not be able to offer her the consolation she needs, nor will I ever be the man she deserves, but I can give her this.
My wife comes on my tongue just like that, with her pussy fluttering around my fingers as her moans fill our living room, her legs wrapped around my neck. I keep lapping at her until she comes down from her high, my eyes finding hers. There’s still sorrow in them, but the weight of it has lessened.
I move from my position on my knees and sit back on the floor, extending my legs around her bench, my palms pressed to the marble underneath me as I lean back. I should move, but I’m enchanted — I can’t help but watch her for a moment, taking her in in all her glory, with her hair wild and her legs parted, a ravenous look in her eyes. It’s hard to believe that she’s mine, yet the wedding ring around her finger proves it.
I expect her to snap out of it and hide away, but instead she reaches for me and places her hands on my shoulders, her grip tight as she lowers herself onto my lap. She looks up at me as she seats herself on my thighs, her hands trembling as she undoes the button on my pants. I inhale sharply when she frees my cock, my eyes falling closed for a moment.
Faye lifts herself up a little and positions me at her entrance, her eyes on mine when she slowly takes my cock, her pussy tight, hot, and utterly perfect. “Fuck,” I groan, my hands still behind me to hold me up. I’m itching to touch her, to turn us over and take her with desperate strokes, but instead, I let her take control. “Ride me,” I whisper. “Take what you need from me, Faye. I’m yours for the taking.”
She whimpers and lowers her full weight on top of me until I’m buried deep inside her. I groan, my heart hammering in my chest.
She looks at me like I’m her salvation, blissfully unaware that I’m the reason she needs saving. I’ll lead her to her ruin, and in doing so, I’ll damn us both.
Even so… I won’t let her go. I can’t.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Dion
I’m not sure how long I’ve been staring at my phone before I finally click the dial button. Silas picks up almost immediately, before I’ve even figured out what to say to him.
“Something is wrong,” he murmurs when I don’t speak up straight away, his usual mocking tone absent. “What happened, Dion?”
I sigh and glance out my office window. “Careful,” I murmur. “You sound so concerned that I might start to believe we’re friends.”
Silas chuckles. “We are,” he says simply. “Tell me what happened so we can fix it.”
“I’m not sure,” I admit. “It’s Faye.”
He falls silent then. “Had it been any of your brothers, I’d have worried you were calling with some kind of dumb unreasonable request,” he says, his tone light. “Ares called me with a weird request once, you know? It was long before he knew he’d be marrying Raven. He asked me to put bodyguards on her secretly because he’d been so worried about her safety. He was too stupid to realize his concern far outweighed what is acceptable between friends.”
I smile, my mood lifting slightly. That sounds exactly like the kind of thing Ares would do.
“And Luca once called to ask me which restaurant Valentina was going to on a date, only to buy the entire place and crash the date. This was after he tried to enforce a company-wide dating ban to stop it from happening, mind you.”
This time I chuckle, and it strikes me then — he’s trying to cheer me up. In his own way, he’s trying to tell me I’m not the first Windsor to call him with a potentially strange request relating to my wife.
“Every fiber of my being is telling me something is wrong with her, but I don’t know what it is. She seemed fine after the wedding. Things were better than I’d even dared hope for, until I went on a trip to Canada for the weekend. I came home to find her… in a precarious mental state. She seemed more broken than ever before, more so than she had been in the months leading up to our wedding.”
“Were there any signs that something was wrong before you left?”
I hesitate. “Yes. She seemed reluctant to perform that weekend, but I hadn’t given it much thought and left anyway.” I pause, a hint of contempt running down my spine. Did she see Eric at her performance? Or did she sneak away to meet him while I was in Canada?
“Your grandmother requested invisible but impenetrable protection for her from the very second you were married,” he says quietly. “She’s been more restless about Faye than she has been about Raven or Val, so I oversaw your wife personally while you were away. There were only three people she came into contact with in that time: your driver, your housekeeper, and her father. She didn’t linger after her performance. Faye went straight home and didn’t leave the house until you came back.”
I nod, uncertain. “She denied anything was wrong, but something triggered her,” I murmur. Her behavior was too similar to my own in the past, and I’d recognize that kind of despondency no matter how hard she tried to hide it. She hadn’t been like that in Hawaii or in the week prior, when we’d been wrapped up in each other, both of us trying to get used to our marriage in our own ways. When I came back from Canada, it was almost as though she’d lost all hope and wished despair would swallow her whole. It terrified me, because what I saw in her eyes was the same kind of sorrow that nearly stole me away from my family. “I want you to watch her closely. If she steps foot outside of our house, I want eyes on her. I’m not sure what kind of threat I’m looking for, but I can feel it, Silas. Something is wrong.”