“Unlike your first husband, we are honorable. We don’t stray. We aren’t anything like him, doll,” Walker added.
I laughed then, as there was no comparison between the thin, pale man I’d married five years ago and these two strapping cowboys. “No, no, you’re nothing alike. But I was only married to one man, not two.”
“You have reservations,” Luke said.
“I have questions,” I countered. “Such as, how does it work?”
“Being married to two men?” Walker asked. “This is a first for us, as well. First for the town, too. I think we can make this marriage work any way we wish.”
I bit my lip. “Yes, but… I meant in the, um… bedroom, specifically.”
Luke’s eyes widened, then he smiled. “You enjoyed fucking me, sweetheart?”
I nodded, because I couldn’t lie. They were both witness to my first pleasure.
“Being married to both of us gets you two men to give you pleasure.”
He said it so simply, so easily, confident that they could both satisfy me.
I flushed hotly and turned away, looked blindly down at the food on the table.
“What do you want, Celia?” Luke asked. “What do you want from a marriage? You’ve been married and know what it’s like, what you were missing. What is it you’d hoped for? We’ll give it to you.”
I felt frayed, my emotions revealed. The scars of my first marriage ached and Walker and Luke seemed to know how to expose every single one. I picked up a fork, studied the detail work in the silver. “How can you say that? How can you know what I want?”
“Is it money? You never have to worry about going hungry, I promise you,” Luke said.
“Is it protection?” Walker asked. “No harm will come to you when you are with us.”
I thought of how Luke had hidden me from the porter’s view.
An ache filled my chest. That was what I wanted so very badly, to know that they would take care of me, that the bad things in the world, like Carl Norman, would never affect me. But they couldn’t protect me from my past. No one could.
“Tell us, sweetheart,” Luke prodded.
Was it as simple as just telling them my wants and they would give them to me? It was never that simple. I’d wanted a marriage with at least mutual respect, but John didn’t respect me. I’d known him for some time before we wed, but these men. I knew nothing about them. And yet they could promise to fulfill my every desire?
A knot of frustration and anger formed in my chest. My hands clenched into fists. If they wanted to know what I wanted, then I’d tell them. What did it matter at this point? When they announced Walker was also my husband, it seemed civilized rules didn’t matter. And so I opened my mouth and told them.
I spun about, lifted my chin and said, “I want a man who won’t ignore me. Who will smile at me and offer reasonable conversation. I want a man who is respectful and courteous. I want more than a man to give me food and shelter. I want a husband.”
“You get two, then, doll, who will do all that,” Walker said when I took a breath.
I held up my hand. “I’m not done. I want someone who is all mine. To share secrets and laugh.”
Once I began, it was easy to just let it all out, to share what I wanted. That’s why I didn’t stop.
“I also want to be fucked, well and good. I don’t want it at night, in the dark. I don’t want a quick rut, then nothing. I want fulfillment, wild abandon.” I thought of John’s mistress, how she’d loved what he’d been doing to her before they were discovered. “I want to be tied up. Taken. Do things I never even imagined.”
I was breathing hard, my skin hot and prickly. There, I’d said it. I’d said exactly what I wanted, everything I never said to John.
Both men’s gazes darkened and turned intense.
“I’m proud of you for sharing that. It must have been hard for you to admit the last,” Walker said, his words of praise acting like a balm. “You had a taste of what it will be like with Luke. While it was a quick rut, it was wild and full of abandon.”
I felt the soreness of our actions between my thighs, unaccustomed to a man of his size and his… vigor.
“Yes. That’s true.” I shook my head slowly. “But I won’t be married to a man… to men, who stray. I won’t be cast aside again. If I’m not enough, turn me away now.”