Page 31 of My One Week Husband
In his world, pleasure is reason enough to indulge.
Is it in mine?
I don’t know, but I delighted in the voyeuristic thrill of listening to the stories of their bedroom antics, the kind where everyone said yes.
Where everyone wanted the game.
“I’ve never really indulged in bedroom games. Not like that,” I tell him. “And I don’t want a threesome.”
“I wouldn’t want to share you,” he says, then takes a drink, sets it down.
His lips are a ruler; his eyes are resolute.
That decisiveness turns me on. I don’t want to be shared. I’m a one-man kind of woman. “I’m glad you don’t want to share me. I don’t want that kind of bedroom game.”
“I sense that about you.”
“Is that why you don’t want to share me?” I ask, needing to know, craving the answer. “Because you can tell I don’t want that?”
He hums. Maybe a few notes from Beethoven. Perhaps “Ode to Joy.” A sign that he’s thinking. He licks his lips, inching closer. “No. That’s not the reason. Here are the reasons. I don’t want to share you for you. And I don’t want to share you for me. So make of that what you will.”
Part of me wants to make everything of that, but that’s a risky bet. “What do you make of it?” I ask.
“I’m trying to figure that out,” he says, and his forthrightness lures me. It makes my skin tingle. But also, it excites my mind.
That’s what electrifies me the most.
That’s what excites my body—when a man speaks his truth. When a man acts from truth. When he doesn’t lie.
Honesty is an elixir.
For all our flirting, all our games, Daniel has never seemed like a liar. Not once.
Right now, his eyes are etched with longing, a longing he’s letting me see fully. “But the one thing I don’t need to figure out is how much I want you,” he adds in a low, dirty whisper. “I don’t need to mull it over. I know I’d like to explore it, and I believe we can go back to who we were. We’re mature, thoughtful, caring. We can fuck and not let it ruin us.”
A pulse beats between my legs.
Fine, my brain isn’t the only organ that’s turned on.
My body longs for him. For the way he says fuck with such assuredness, such confidence.
“Are you asking me, Daniel? Are you asking me to engage in bedroom games with you?”
He lifts a hand and brushes the red strands that don’t belong to me off my shoulder. I tremble under his touch.
“It’s up to you, Scarlett. I’d very much like to indulge in you. What would you like?”
I lick my lips, lift the glass, and take another drink.
What would I like?
I would like to feel indulged in.
I would like to know what that’s like.
But I also don’t know what happens on the other side. How to make the exit neat and orderly. How to ensure I’m not ruined. “Our friendship matters to me. Our partnership matters to me,” I say. “I don’t want to lose any of that. We can make promises that nothing will change, but can we keep them?”
He knocks back his drink and sets down the glass. “We can certainly try.”
People make all sorts of promises. People try to commit. But promises are often broken. “I’d like to sleep on it,” I finally say.
A flash of disappointment crosses his blue eyes but then disappears, like he’s rearranging his features to hide it. “Fair enough.”
The hint, as brief as it was, touches my heart. If he’d had zero reaction, I’d think he didn’t care one way or the other. That he could take this or leave it.
We finish our drinks, pay the tab, and head to our suite, where I hope the answers will come to me at night.
But once the door clicks shut, I fear it’ll be that much harder to resist now that we’re alone together.
Since I’m not so sure I can simply take him or leave him.
12
Scarlett
This is not the first time we’ve been in a hotel room alone together.
Obviously.
There was Aix-en-Provence, as well as countless other times since I’ve become a partner. We’ve visited many of our properties together, stopped in rooms, checked them out.
This is de rigueur for us, just a regular part of a day in business.
Tonight is business, true.
But it’s also personal, because this is the first time we’ve set foot in a hotel room after I pretended to be his wife. After I learned how thrilling games with Daniel are. And after he uttered those seductive words—we can fuck and not let it ruin us.
Words that send a shiver over my body as the echo of them resonates in my mind. I hear them over and over, along with other words like . . . indulge in you.
And . . . our friendship matters to me.
