She scowls, her eyelashes still wet from her tears. “What, you’re the only one who can throw a hissy fit and destroy everything?”
“No, but if you make me, I’ll restrain you until you calm down. Hurt me all you like, but if you do anything to hurt yourself, you’ll regret it.”
Her chin hikes up, and as she stares into my eyes, another piece of glass hits the floor in a crystalline clatter. “I have no intention of hurting myself. Why would I, when it’s so much more fun to hurt you…at least…when you finally let go of yourself and let me.”
Her barbs sink deep, drawing blood. My penchant for pain has never been something I regret, but with her, so perfect and beautiful, it feels wrong, out of tune with the symphony her body creates with mine. The pain I crave is a discordant harmony that isn’t meant to be played alongside it.
She moves her arm again, but this time, I catch her wrist and twist it behind her back, then the other to match. With both of her hands secured in one of my own, I press her into the wall, trapping both her hands and mine at the small of her back. “What are you doing?” she whispers, her tone no longer laced with the venom she’s been spitting for the past several minutes.
I use my other hand to scoop her cheek in my palm and tilt her head back to look into her eyes. “What does it look like, Angel? I said I’d restrain you.”
“If I hurt myself, but I told you I don’t plan to do that.”
I tighten my grip on her wrists until she gasps, but it’s not in pain. She’s warm, and a hot flush hits her cheeks the same moment she meets my eyes again. “Don’t even think about it.”
I’m already hard, but I won’t push her right now, not when she might take my balls for it later. “We are going back to the bedroom, and you’re going to see the doctor again. He’s going to confirm that you are okay, and then I’m going to feed you and tuck you into bed.”
She grinds her teeth together. “I’m not a child who needs to be taken care of.” As if trying to illustrate her point, she arches her hips forward despite her earlier warning.
“I never said you were, Angel, but I’m your husband, and it’s my privilege to care for you. Let me do this. Men care for their pregnant wives every single day. Many of them find it charming and doting. Why are you fighting me so much?”
She scowls and wiggles her wrists to test my give. “Most men don’t have a doctor on staff and refuse to allow their wives to leave their home. You’re being overprotective, and while I enjoy that most of the time, right now, all I want is to see Rose.”
“Doctor first.”
“Then you’ll take me to her grave so I can speak to her?”
I give her a noncommittal noise and then accede. “That will depend on what the doctor has to say about your condition.”
She rolls her eyes and lets out a heavy sigh. When she stops straining against my grasp, I know I’ve won. I release her and gently turn her toward the hall so she doesn’t accidentally walk over the mess of broken glass.
We enter the room, and I send a quick text to the cleaning staff for the foyer and then to the doctor to join us in my bedroom.
When the old man finally shows up, he sighs heavily. “I doubt her condition has changed in such a short amount of time.”
I like the old bastard’s attitude. It’s the only reason I pay him obscenely well to stay on my staff exclusively. “Do I look like I care?” I wave at Valentina. “Check her out anyway. I want to make sure she is good to go.”
The doctor settles beside her on the bed and takes her pulse while I watch, hating every second his hand is on her skin.
“I won’t do an exam, but from the naked eye and her vitals, she seems perfectly fine. The same as when I found her earlier.”
I wave at her. “Yeah, fine, but she keeps making demands and yelling at me.”
Valentina sucks in a breath. “Excuse me? That has nothing to do with the baby.”
The doctor considers and meets my eyes. “Hormones likely. They can sometimes make a woman do strange things.”
She sets her jaw and glares at us. “My standing up for myself has nothing to do with my hormones or this child. It has everything to do with you suddenly turning into an overly protective brute who refuses to touch me the way we both want to be touched.”
I wave the doctor out of the room. He doesn’t need to hear this conversation. When I take his place beside her on the bed, she looks like she might shove me off the edge. “I’ll touch you any way you like, Angel.”
She glares and folds her arms under her breasts. “No. I want you to touch me how you like…and not agonize over it afterward. How do you think that makes me feel?”
I reach out to take her hands, but she shifts her still folded arms away. “No. I don’t want to be touched right now. Not by the doctor, not by you, or by anyone. Please, if you won’t let me leave this place, then at least leave me alone so I can have a moment of quiet.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to snap back at her and give her a piece of my mind, then roll her to her back and fuck her senseless. Maybe then she'll stop yelling at me every five seconds.
“Angel,” I begin, intent on trying to mend this fence I didn’t even see from my bulldozer.
“No.” She looks away toward the windows. “I don’t want to talk, and I don’t want you to touch me. In fact, no one will until I’ve seen Rose.”
19
VALENTINA
I sleep in a guest room and cry myself into exhaustion. Hell, part of me can’t believe he actually let me go. That he didn’t enter this room in the middle of the night to drag me back to his bed and pretend to be satisfied with soft caresses and making love.
And it’s not even about the sex. Or the fact that he doesn’t trust me to know my own mind and body. It’s that he won’t accept this part of him. There are graves out there, dirt hiding the bodies of men he’s killed, but he won’t accept that he likes a little pain with his sex and that I can give him that.
A part of him wants me to be the virginal virtuous wife he married, but that girl is gone. Hell, I’ve shed that skin completely. The woman I am now loves his sharp edges, but he won’t accept that part of me either. That he married a woman who can enjoy hurting him that way.
I toss and turn in the gray dawn light, his shirt still wrapped around me, now tangled up in the luxurious bedding. Every piece of me wants to go back to our bed, apologize for what I said, for hurting him, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I’ve never stood up for myself before, but it’s high time I started. Especially if he continues this pattern after our child is born.
Well, that’s what he thinks at least. Hopefully, he’s starting to understand that we’ve both changed for the better.
It hurts me that he doesn't realize that. If he doesn't know that he's changed, how can he see that I have?
I shift back into the pillows and try to get comfortable. No matter how this bed feels, it doesn't feel perfect without his warm weight wrapped around me. But how can we keep going on like this? He's stopped trusting himself and me. Neither of us can live like this. I don't want the same kind of relationship as my parents or so many other high society families have.