A union that saw him taking over the company that mattered so much to all of them.
She had explained why. Exhaustively. Also why she was willing to let it go. To try something new.
Olive seemed to turn over her own motivations endlessly. The motivations of others.
And when she spoke of them, she made him understand. In a way he had never even understood himself.
He wanted only to strip her naked now. Forget dinner.
Because all of this overthinking was beginning to get to him, and he did not have any patience for it.
“I believe we can take our dinner later,” he said.
He pulled her up against him, pressing his hands flat to her bare back.
She felt like heaven. Like silk and cream and uniquely his Olive. “Little Olive,” he said, biting her lower lip. She gasped, rolling her body against him in that particular way she did. He loved that about her. It was not a move born out of experience, but rather she simply did what seemed to feel good to her. And she did it with abandon.
She did it out of desire.
It soothed something in him. To know that she was as caught up in all of this as he was.
“You like my dress?” she whispered.
“It is distracting as hell,” he said. “And don’t think I didn’t notice that it’s your preferred style.”
Her entire face lit up. She laughed. And she looked at him like no one else ever had. “You noticed,” she said. “That delights me. I love that you noticed. I thought that you would find it both amusing, and be slightly relieved that I didn’t wear black.”
“I’m surprised that you didn’t.”
“I wanted to dress for you. I wanted you to think that I was beautiful.”
And that took all of it and turned what had just happened on its head.
Maybe she wasn’t telling the truth. Maybe. Because he had been convinced that it was a performance for those who had been in attendance, but she claimed that it was for him.
That she had wanted him to think she was beautiful. But why would that matter?
“Of course I think you’re beautiful. The problem is, I think you are beautiful, even when you wear your black turtlenecks. I may not like them, but I am powerless against the desire that you create in my body, whatever you have on. Or off.”
She flushed with pleasure, and he was pleased for having been the one to create the response in her. Such a unique little Olive. Singular and bright. And his. Irrevocably his.
He moved his hands over her body, over the bare skin on her back, and it was not food he was hungry for. Not when he held Olive in his arms.
He kissed her, all that sweetness, and he had to look away when she stared up with those beautiful eyes.
He knew what it was to be on the receiving end of her ire. But this adoration that glowed there, it was foreign. And strange.
He had to turn away from it. He had to close the distance between them and claim her sweet, soft mouth. He kissed her, claimed her. Because that was what his blood demanded that he do. Because that was what made all of this feel real.
For he had married this woman today, making vows that he had never intended to make, facing the future he had never intended to have. Or rather, one he had never truly thought of. It was one thing to think that perhaps someday he might have a child. And that the child might inherit his company. But it was another thing of having a child with Olive, to know what she knew about growing up in the environment they had.
To be offering her the exact same thing for the baby that she carried. It felt wrong. In a way that he could never have anticipated.
And so he kissed her, because that was something he knew how to do. He knew how to pleasure her. He knew how to touch her. How to kiss her. He knew how to light the match that would ignite them both.
His skin burned with her touch, but at his core, he remained ice.
She moved her hands over his chest, down to his stomach.