AslansDesire-ARE-epub (2 page)

She’d laughed it off and he’d made slow love to her that night. Several times. Making love to him fulfilled her in ways she never thought she’d be lucky enough to have. Sex really was…more…with an emotional connection.

Making love.

She’d only ever done that with Zeke.

Growing to rely on the physical, mental and emotional connection she shared with him when he made deep, sensual love to her had taken years for her to trust. To need. It made her feel raw and exposed on such a visceral level, and somehow she’d come to depend on it.

But the other kind?

The raw, dirty sex like they had in that limo?

She needed that too. And somehow she had to be brave enough to tell him all of it. Her desire for it and her fear that maybe he wasn’t as attracted to her as she was to him.

Maybe he just wasn’t that into her.

Fuck.

Blowing out a pent up breath, she put her shoulders back. Pasting on a somewhat fake smile rubbed her the wrong way as they stepped closer to their electrical engineers beside the pool. Talk about being the embodiment of “fake it ’til you make it.”

She had to figure out a way to be brave enough to tell him tonight. Worrying about it anymore wasn’t going to get her anywhere, especially if she expected him to be brave enough to let his monster out to play more often. She had to be brave enough to reveal the little girl inside who wondered the scariest question of all.

Am I good enough?

Hours later, sitting alone on the couch at home where the sun had long since faded to black, Aslan took a deep breath. Then another one. With her back against the end of the couch, she hugged her knees to her chest.

Her chin rested on the tops, which were covered in fuzzy pink pajama pants adorned with sleeping lambs and colorful stars.

She’d gotten home a few minutes before her husband and had jumped in the shower to wash the very long day away. Nearing the end of the final stages of their newest vessel, the hours were long and the days took their toll.

They were worth it.

The hours, the stress, the headaches. All of it. Seeing their business flourish as they continued to make a name for themselves in the cruise ship industry gave her more satisfaction than she could describe.

Knowing that Zeke and she had built the business from the ground up, hand-in-hand—first with investors and then all on their own—staggered her on a daily basis.

It also gave her something to bury her nose in, AKA something to hide behind instead of dealing with the needs and fears coursing through her every morning and every night.

But her time of being a coward was at an end.

She owed it to the man of her dreams to trust him with something that involved him. Something that revolved around him. Them.

Their future.

Her spine automatically straightened when Zeke entered the living room from the kitchen. She released her knees and tucked her legs beneath her. A glass of what smelled like her favorite white wine appeared in front of her nose.

“Liquid courage,” he joked as she took the glass from him.

With her eyes closed, the sweet liquid coated her tongue and slid down her throat. It immediately sent a buzz to her head and made her think of another sweet liquid she craved.

She opened her eyes as the couch dipped beside her. Zeke sat next to her and placed a hand on her thigh. He took a drink from a short, square glass that was half-filled with amber liquid. Bourbon, if she wanted to hazard a guess. After he took another drink he rested his head on the back of the couch with a long sigh.

“For me or you?” she asked. “The courage, I mean.”

Turning his head to the side, she nodded to his glass and then raised hers.

His smile. Damn. It could stop traffic he was so hot.

“Maybe a little for each of us.” He smiled again and raised his glass toward her. Clinking their glasses together, he took another sip.

Hers?

Not so small.

“Should I pound mine down, too? Damn. If I was the nervous type, I’d be pacing the room right now.”

“No. One of us needs to have their wits about them and I’m nominating you for that job.” Aslan downed the rest of her wine before setting the glass on the coffee table.

Regardless of her suggestion, he downed the rest of his bourbon and followed her lead by putting it on a coaster beside them. “I need to ask a question first or I’m not going to be able to breathe for the rest of this conversation. Okay, that’s a lie. I’ve got two.”

One more deep breath and she nodded. “Fair enough. You gave me ’til tonight before talking about it and that couldn’t have been easy. So go ahead and ask your questions.”

He pulled at his bottom lip with one hand as he turned to face her. Placing an arm on the couch beside her, he leaned into her just a bit. “You said it’s something you’ve been thinking about for a while. How long’s a while?”

Nibbling her lip wasn’t gonna get her anywhere, so she grew a pair and responded. “More or less since our honeymoon.”

“You’re shitting me.”

A snort snuck out of her nose when she laughed. The wine was definitely a good idea. “No, I’m not actually. It wasn’t really something I was completely cognizant of at the time but that’s when it stemmed from.”

“Hmm…” Lowered eyebrows accompanied the noise out of his throat.

“And the second question?”

“Actually, I’m going to change it. I was going to ask if I did something wrong recently to trigger your worrying. I was still positive it had something to with the pitstop, but that can’t be it. We got married more than ten years ago. So, why now, I guess? Why not talk to me about whatever is on your mind years ago?”

“I actually need to probably answer all of those questions. You didn’t do anything wrong. You did something very, very right, which made me think of something that happened on our honeymoon. Actually, it was on the way to the honeymoon. It’s something I’ve thought of off and on since then but now I can’t get it out of my head. I’m thinking about it constantly and it’s grown big enough that I need to address it.”

“Address what?”

“My next fantasy request.”

“You’ve lost me.” Reaching over, he took hold of her hands and squeezed them. “I thought you were mad at me or thinking about leaving me. Hell. I don’t know what I thought. But I certainly didn’t think it was going to bring on a fantasy.”

“Oh God, Zeke. I’m so sorry. I’m so…sorry.” Without another thought, she crawled onto his lap and straddled his thighs. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she held on tight. “I would have stopped being a pansy weeks ago if I knew you were thinking anything like that.” She kissed his neck and he squeezed her hard.

“You’re my whole world, Aslan. All of it. Work, home, sex, love. My future. Without you there’s just—” He shrugged. “Nothing. You’re everything I need. Everything I want. Fuck. You’re the only woman that turns me on. If you ever left me, I think I’d just become a monk.”

Tears filled her eyes as she moved back to stare at him. “That’s just it. I’ve been worried I’m not what… Wait. Let me start at the beginning. Do you remember what happened on the way to our hotel after we got married?”

“Ugh.”

“No ugh. Just answer the question.”

“I ripped your dress in the limo. Pretty sure you had to make coasters out of the material when I was done with it.”

“Exactly.” She smiled but he’d put his head on the back of the couch again so he couldn’t see.

“Exactly, what? I destroyed your dress. Not just any dress. Your wedding dress. Ugh.”

Instead of asking, she took his head in her hands and lifted it to face her again. “It was perfect. You were perfect.”

“No. I wasn’t. It was the only time, until recently, when I let my control slip with you. I freaked out afterwards, thought I’d hurt you.”

“You didn’t.”

“But I could ha—”

She cut him off with her fingertips over his lips. “Until recently, I’ve never felt more sexy, more desired than I did in that limo. You are the most attractive man I’ve ever met. You could have any woman. Don’t make that face at me. Any woman. And in that limo, you couldn’t take the time to remove my dress by the buttons and zipper. You had to get to me, to take me.” His cock jerked beneath her and she sucked in a sharp breath. Her confession tumbled out of her, unable to keep it inside any longer. “Since it never happened again, I’ve been scared you didn’t want me like that anymore. Because I’m older. I’m not twenty-two anymore.” She shrugged, feeling shy. “I’ve been afraid you didn’t find me as attractive, so you had no problem holding yourself back from just taking me when you wanted to. Needed to.” Her voice dropped to a whisper again and her gaze dropped to his chest.

She counted to ten.

To twenty.

Thirty.

She got to forty-three before he finally spoke.

“How could you possibly think that? How could you even for a second believe that I thought you were anything but the sexiest, hottest, most perfect woman on the planet—much less in my bed every night?”

She shrugged again. “You didn’t seem to need me the same way. With the same intensity.” Meeting his gaze, she had to convince herself to hold his eye-contact. “And don’t get me wrong, I love making love to you. Love it when you roll me over in the morning and slide into me without speaking. Love it when we make love in the shower with the steam all around us. But I want the other, too. I want the raw sex. Need it. I need to know that I still do it for you.”

With his hands on her hips, he ground her down on his crotch as he rubbed against her. “Can you not tell that you really,
really
do it for me?”

“I know I turn you on sometimes.”

“All the time.” He nodded before he continued. “All. The. Time. I’m not shitting you. There are days that I could jack off three times at work watching you walk by in those bouncy skirts you wear.”

“But that’s it right there. You’re still so in control of yourself. Which brings me to my fantasy and if what you say is true—”

“Which it is, since we don’t lie to each other.”

“Then fulfilling my fantasy a few times shouldn’t be a problem.”

“A few times?” He eyed her, and she rubbed against his cock a time or two before gathering more courage to ask for what she needed.

“A few times. I want what we had in that limo. When the urge to fuck me overcomes you, I don’t want you to fight it. I just want you to take me. Raw. Dirty. Rough. I want it all.”

“But I could hurt you.”

“Intentionally, maybe,” she conceded. “And I’m pretty certain we’ve covered that a time or two recently. That bite of pain?” She dug her fingernails into his dress shirt, making him hiss. Licking her lips, she reiterated what she’d been telling him for weeks. “I like it. Dream of it. Need it, on occasion. And if you need to give it to me, then I most definitely want to take it.”

The muscles along his jaw pulsed in time to the clenching of his teeth together. “How exactly do you see your fantasy playing out?”

“That’s just it. It’ll be up to you. When the mood strikes you and you want to fuck me so bad you can’t see straight, then stop fighting it and just take me. In a movie theater, in the car on the way to dinner, at work. Whatever.”

“At work? Are you serious? We’ve always been very careful about how much PDA we share at work. I barely give you a peck on the mouth if anyone is around. And people are always around. Now you just want me to lift your skirt and go at you just because I want to?”

“With a little bit of precaution, yes. We have doors to our offices. Maybe we should use them more. Maybe sex during the day would be awesome.”

“This coming from the woman who works more than I do and refuses to leave the office if things aren’t done.”

“What can I say? I’m a rockstar.”

“But you can be a bit…snippy…when you’re at work and you get interrupted.” He brushed his hand over his hair. A trait she’d begun to associate with him choking the very tight leash he had on his control. “And I’m not certain if you realize but we actually make quite a bit of noise when we fuck. What do you want me to do about that at work?”

“Bring a gag?” she offered as a joke. Sort of.

He stopped rubbing his hair and slowly lowered his hand.

With him staring into her eyes, she dropped another wall she knew she’d placed between them a long time ago. She let him see her need, her sincerity in what she said. In what she needed.

“But what if I’m ready to go and you’re not?” He asked.

“I’ll get there.”

“That’s not consent.”

“Consent comes in many forms, Zeke.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t believe me?”

“Not entirely.”

“So when you roll me over onto my stomach in the middle of the night are you stopping to ask for permission?”

“Well not, but—”

“And when you climb between my legs and push inside me in one…slow…thrust…are we stopping to have a discussion about whether I consent to what you’re doing?

“Of course not, but—”

“What’s the difference, then? Because one is soft and gentle it’s okay, but when it’s rough and aggressive I need to specifically give me approval each and every time?” She shook her head. “That’s not how this works and you know it. I’m giving you my consent right now. To take me. To use me. To fulfill whatever sexual needs you have. I’m asking you to just let go. I’m telling you I want you. All of you. Now you just have to give yourself the same permission. I need you to want me like that. I need it. Desperately.”

“You’re serious.” His voice held several emotions she wasn’t certain of. Hesitancy, disbelief and something far more precious.

Hope.

Staring back at him, she nodded and clasped her hands together tightly behind his neck. She brought their foreheads together with a sigh.

The unease and worry she’d felt for weeks melted away. It slid from her body and disappeared like a bad dream.

In its place?

Desire and love. The unconditional kind she’d only ever felt for Zeke. But this time it was magnified. Stronger.

Amazing.

She hated that he’d doubted her love for him. Even for a second.