Page 124 of Marrying My Ex's Brother
For once, I’m the one who stills.
Anya rises on her toes, one hand still wrapped around my injured knuckles, the other gripping the front of my shirt, and presses her mouth to mine. It’s not soft. It’s not careful. It’s angry, shaken, and hungry enough to make my control snap tight in my chest.
For half a second, I let her do it. I let her choose.
Then I take over.
My clean hand slides into her hair, ruining whatever the stylist did to it, and I kiss her back hard enough that she makes a small sound into my mouth. Her fingers dig into my shirt. She pulls me closer, and I feel the tremor running through her body.
Not only fear. Something else.
Something I recognize because it lives in me too.
The fight in the bathroom didn’t just scare her. It woke something. I felt it when she cleaned my hand. The way her breath changed. The way her eyes kept dropping to my split knuckles. The way she saidhe scared me, but looked at me like my violence had answered something inside her she didn’t know how to name.
I should be disturbed by that.
I’m not. I understand it too well.
Some people break under violence. Some of us thrive in it.
My pretty, furious wife is far more like me than either of us understood.
I back her against the sink. She goes willingly. Her hips hit the edge, and she gasps against my mouth. I slide my hand down to her waist, then lower, gripping her ass through the red silk. She arches into me, and the movement drives my cock hard against her stomach.
She feels it, and her breath catches.
Then she presses closer.
Well, fuck me.
I drag my mouth down her throat, biting lightly under her jaw. Her head tips back, giving me more. Her pulse hammers beneath my lips.
“You liked it,” I murmur against her skin.
She goes still for a second. “What?”
“That I hurt him.”
Her breathing turns uneven. “No.”
“Liar.”
Her nails scrape over my shoulders. “I don’t want to be a part of any of that.”
“Yes,” I say, kissing the side of her neck. “And it still made you wet.”
Her body jerks.
There. Truth.
Her face burns, but she doesn’t deny it quickly enough.
I lift my head and look at her. Her pupils are wide. Her mouth is swollen. Her chest rises fast under the red dress, the silk tight over her breasts.
“Yaromir,” she says, but it’s not a protest.
It’s a warning. A weak one.
