My escape from Asher lasted about as long as it took for the sun to rise. The next morning his body pressing up against mine, and his hands cupping my breasts awaken me as his lips trace the contours of my neck. My back is to him so he doesn’t know I’m awake. I pretend to be sleep, but it’s no use. It doesn’t stop his advances.
My body betrays me, aroused by his touch. As soon as he could feel the firmness of my erect nipples, he turns me over onto my back and I can no longer pretend to be sleep. Asher lowers his lips to mine, parting them with his tongue while his hand pulls my nightgown up above my waist. I can no longer prolong the inevitable. As his wife, he’s entitled to intimacy and it’s my obligation to give it to him. But I’m afraid. I’m afraid once we cross this line there will be no going back.
Still, I do nothing but lie there unmoving as Asher does all the work. He slowly undresses me, and then himself. Using my hands, I cover my breasts. I don’t want him to see me naked. It’s stupid really. As if that alone could stop what’s about to happen.
Gently, Asher removes my hands and replaces them with his lips, curving his tongue around my nipples. I shouldn’t be doing this is all I can think to myself. But I am. He parts my legs and positions himself between them. At this point I’m in freak out overload, but the feel of him inside me quickly snaps me back to earth. He’s as well endowed as his cousin.
Asher gives me a moment to catch my breath and then he continues the slow gradual onslaught inside me. Unlike Darius, everything he does is firm yet gentle. Darius is more like an animal between the sheets, but Asher…he’s gentle, passionate and attentive. It kind of makes it hard not to enjoy being with him. This is what Darius meant by not falling in love with him. Asher has a knack for meeting all of my needs even before I know what they are myself at times. Being with him now, I wonder why he isn’t already married.
All thought is pushed to the back of my mind as the first of many orgasms comes bursting out of me. Again Asher exercises patience, realizing I need to be worked up again. He’s not done. He works my body over for hours before forcing himself to reach an orgasm so I can get some rest.
By the time I open my eyes again, its nighttime. Asher motions for me to shower, but he won’t allow me to get dressed when I’m done. In fact, all of my clothes are gone. He motions for me to follow him out to the hot tub where dinner and drinks are waiting.
“You took my clothes.”
Smiling, Asher nods, “I figured it would help you feel more comfortable,” he teases.
“Ha-ha, very funny. Can I have them back?”
“No you may not.”
No? What does he mean no? He can’t possibly expect me to stay naked this entire time. “Why not?” I frown.
“You humans hide behind your clothes and make up…I figure if we want to get to know one another and earn each others trust, we can start by allowing ourselves to be vulnerable. Hence the reason neither of us have any clothes on,” he explains.
I could argue with his logic, but something tells me he’s got an answer for anything that’ll come out of my mouth next.
“I feel like a sitting duck.”
“Well you look amazing,” his eyes wash over me. Like a twelve-year-old girl, I blush. What the hell is he doing to me?
“Why me?” I ask, curious.
“It’s always been you.”
“How can you say that? You didn’t know me until the day you and your siblings came barging into Draven manor.”
“Actually, I met you before that. I didn’t know you were blind back then, which explains a lot now, but I’ve known you since you were twelve. Your father and my father have a long history together. Well…until Viktor found a way to steal his alliance away from us. I’ve even been to your home on several occasions and I’ve always been fascinated with you. I mean your stepmother tried her best to hide you for reasons that are obvious now, but I knew then I would have you one day. I just didn’t expect Darius to do something as underhanded as take you for himself first. He only did so to get underneath my skin.”
Speechless doesn’t even cover what I’m feeling right now. “So you’re saying Darius knew you had a thing for me and that’s why he married me,” I realized.
“He knew I had a thing for you, yes. He neglected to tell me you’d been given to him as an offering and when he realized who you were, he did nothing to stop what his father was trying to put into motion.”
“He didn’t want to marry me any more than I wanted to marry him.”
“And yet he did. I came to him, man-to-man and asked him not to, but he did anyway.”
“Viktor-”
“Spare me the history lesson on his lack of backbone when it comes to my uncle. I already know,” Asher scoffs.
“Then maybe he had no choice,” I defended Darius.
“You always have a choice, is just that some come with consequences,” he huffs, “Like marrying someone you’ve admired for a long time, even though they’ve been ruined by your best friend turned enemy.”
Darius. He’s talking about Darius. I can see the hurt from whatever betrayal he feels in his eyes. Whatever Darius did to him, it cut him deep. They had to have been really close at some point.
“Why didn’t you ever try to talk to me or tell me how you felt?”
“Well for the longest time you was underage. Then when you weren’t you were married to my cousin.”
Silence falls over us. Asher feels really betrayed by Darius and I wonder if Darius even knows it. He has to. Asher moves closer to me and begins to feed me food from my plate. “I’m not an invalid, you know.”
“I know, but I like doing it,” he smiles. He continues to feed me until there’s nothing left on my plate and then he pours me a glass of wine. “Drink up. I want you nice and inebriated for what I have in store for you.”
“It sounds a bit ominous, should I be worried?”
“No, but you’re probably going to be sore tomorrow,” he smirks.
I laugh. Asher isn’t at all what I expected him to be…what the Draven’s made him out to be. Perhaps their experience with him is different because of all the bad blood between them. Viktor and Lucien are in a tug of war over Esme, Darius and Asher have bad blood because of me. I never would have guessed that.
By no means have I abandoned my feelings for Darius, but this definitely helps me understand Asher a lot more. We have more in common than I realize. No wonder Darius felt threatened enough to ask me not to fall for him. He knew how well Asher and I would match up, which makes me wonder if he did marry me to get back at Asher. Now I wonder what would have happened if I’d married Asher first. We haven’t been married for very long, but in my heart I know Asher would never take my child away from me. He cares too much about me to hurt me like that. Not like Darius.
Having someone so attentive to my needs is new to me. The more I try and fight having any kind of feelings for Asher the more I feel like I’m falling for him. Every reason I try to find to hold him at arms length are feeble at best and he manages to get around all of the walls I put up between us. His patience knows no end.
When Asher isn’t all over me, he’s giving me space long enough to sleep. I always awaken at night, after the small town we’re in has long gone to sleep. He’s keeping me all to himself by making sure I don’t have the energy to do anything else. If I’m going to explore the island at some point, I’m going to have to find my voice and tell him no. But what if he reacts like Darius would?
Asher motions for me to shower for the fourth night in a row and I comply, but when I emerge from the bathroom I head downstairs to the kitchen. “What are you doing?” Asher asks.
“I’m making myself something to eat.”
“We have chefs for that.”
“Yeah well, maybe I don’t want them seeing me naked this entire trip,” I reply, “Send them home.”
“Can you even cook?”
“As a matter of fact I can.”
Curious, Asher watches me from the doorway, as naked as a jaybird as I make dinner for the both of us. The chef and his staff came hurrying into the kitchen thinking they’d dropped the ball and he sends them away.
“Do you still think about him?” Asher asks.
“Darius?”
He nods. Truthfully I think about him all the time but I can tell from the look on his face Asher was hoping to change that. I don’t know if he can. I don’t know if anyone can.
I opt for the truth. “Yes. Sometimes.”
“Do you think that will ever change? Do you think that in time you could forget about him?” He asks.
“I don’t know Asher,” I keep my eyes on the food in front of me. I feel bad whenever he asks questions like these. “Darius was my first everything.”
It wasn’t what he wanted to hear. His eyes went to the floor as he sank into deep thought. Once our meal is done, I make him a plate and serve him at the table. At least that put a smile on his face. He prays over his food before eating it. I didn’t think night-dwellers prayed to anyone. As far as some were concerned, they were Gods. I followed suit and prayed over my food as well.
“You’re upset.”
Asher takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. “Wouldn’t you be? He knew how I felt about you…they all did. Granted, I finally have you, but what good is that when every time you look at me you’re wishing I was him?”
“Not every time, just sometimes.”
“I’m a very jealous man Giselle, even sometimes is too much for me. I want to be all you think about. When you close your eyes at night and when you wake up in the morning, I want to be the man you think about. I want to be the one you love.”
Again I don’t know how to respond to him. He speaks with a passion I don’t understand. For the longest time he’d thought about being with me, and I only now have to accept that as a reality.
“I don’t know what to say.”
He nods in response. He’s irritated. He suddenly rises from the table without even touching his food and startles me. I flinch and it only upsets him more. He excuses himself from the room and disappears out the front door into the night. Great. I’ve managed to piss him off. I have no idea what he’s like when he’s angry and I don’t want to find out.
After eating dinner alone, I place his untouched plate in the fridge and return to our bedroom. There I wait for him to return, but after hours with no word from him I end up falling asleep. When I awaken in the morning Asher is nowhere to be found but our full staff is back. I still don’t have my clothes back, but the housekeeper brings me a robe to put on.
All day I wait for Asher to return. When he doesn’t, I began to worry. What if I’d just alienated the one person in this world who actually has my best interests at heart? If this marriage goes sour it will be all my fault.
For the next few days Asher is nowhere to be found. I would ask the staff for help, but they don’t speak English and I don’t know enough of their language to tell them what I need. I don’t have any clothes so I can’t just leave. I’m forced to wait here until he returns and hope he’s not still upset with me.
It’s early in the morning a day or two later when Asher finally returns. I open my eyes to see him sitting next to me on the bed, watching me sleep. Quickly I sit up and give him my full attention. I start to speak but he kisses me drowning out my voice in the process. His kiss feels like an apology. He hands me a pair of clothing and motions for me to get dressed.
“Where’ve you been?”
“Thinking,” was all he said in response.
“Where?”
“I’ve been around, I just…I needed to put a little distance between us for a moment.”
That’s exactly what I was afraid of. He was angry with me. “Asher I-”
“Sh,” he waves me off, “you don’t owe me any explanations.”
Again he stands to leave. I don’t want to be here alone so I panic. “Where are you going?”
“I need to be alone for a while so I’m sending you home. I’ll join you shortly.”
“Shortly?”
“When I’m ready,” he sighs.
Another response I’m afraid of. “When will that be?”
“Honestly Giselle, I don’t know.”
There’s irritation in his tone. If history has taught me anything, it’s not to let a Draven brood for too long, but how can I get him back into good spirits. He’s basically abandoning me on our honeymoon to be alone. That’s how irritated he is with me.
“Whenever Darius did something like what you’re about to do I always ended up regretting it. Either he ignored me or he found himself in the arms of the girl he eventually left me for. I don’t want to go through that again. Whatever we need to do to fix this, let’s fix it. Don’t go.”
After a moment deep in thought, Asher nods. Great. I’ve got his attention…now what? “How would you propose we fix this?” He closes the distance between us.
I need to think of something to say and say it fast…um… “Its too soon for me to definitively say I can give you what you want, but what I do know is that I’m willing to try if that’s what it takes to make this marriage work. I want this to work.”
“Then you need to put me first. I don’t care if you have to fake it until it becomes reality for you, but I must always come first,” Asher demands. I nod in agreement. “Darius mustn’t be allowed to touch you. You must hold him at arms length if not further no matter what. Your loyalty to me cannot be questioned and neither can your feelings for me. Is that understood?”
“Yes,” I nod. Asher examines me, deciding if he wants to trust me or not. “I’m sorry if I upset you, it wasn’t my intention. I just wanted to be truthful with you. I didn’t want there to be any secrets between us.”
“Well I appreciate your candor. I’m sorry I handled it so poorly, I just…I know you don’t feel the same way about me yet, but…my feelings for you run deep.”
I swallow hard. It looks as if I’ve managed to dodge this bullet, but how many more will I have to dodge to keep this marriage on track?”
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