Fifteen
Emmett knew it was exactly what Stefanie had wanted to hear, but at the same time, it hadn’t been a line. He’d have forsaken all others and waited for her if it would have guaranteed him even one night with her.
It was a realization that shocked the hell out of him. He was coming to terms with the amount of pent-up attraction for Stef that he’d apparently been disregarding over the years, but he didn’t suspect there’d been more to it. And maybe there wasn’t. Maybe this was the responsibility he’d promised when he’d said “I do” combined with a hell of a lot of attraction. Maybe the core of what he was realizing was about vows and honor—loyalty. Loyalty, he understood.
Stef had nothing to be jealous of where Sunday was concerned. The relationship with his ex-girlfriend had been about companionship. Someone to share dinner or watch movies with. He’d mostly gone to her house, though there at the end, she’d talked him into giving her his key. That’d been the beginning of the end. Sunday asking for the “more” that he knew he was incapable of giving. Yet he’d found a way to give that “more” to Stefanie.
He’d told himself that marrying her was to save Chase’s campaign and keep Stefanie safe, but if he were forced to admit the truth, he’d been attracted to her for years. Attraction had been dressed up as concern, but it’d been there all the same. He’d shrouded what he now recognized as jealousy with a cloak of anger.
Now with his lips sealed over hers and the tip of her tongue dancing with his, he knew he’d been both attracted to her and burning with jealousy that she’d been in anyone else’s bed but his.
He hadn’t understood when she turned an envious shade of green over Sunday. Him being jealous of whomever Stefanie touched was understandable. But Stefanie jealous of another woman who’d touched him?
It was heady.
Made him feel powerful.
Made him want to strip her bare and take her right on this countertop.
“My queen,” he muttered against her throat when he grazed her pulse point with his lips.
“Mmm, I really do like that,” she sighed sweetly in his ear.
“Is it too lowly to screw you here and now?” He slid one palm up her skirt and along one thick, honey-sweet thigh.
“You can screw me wherever you like, Keaton,” she said, raising her butt off the counter so he could shimmy her panties down her legs. His sly vixen. “I’m your wife. Not your ruler.”
“From what I’ve come to understand, those are one and the same.”
She snatched each side of his shirt and tugged him closer, her breath hot against his parted mouth. “Is that so?”
But she didn’t let him answer.
“Your mission this time—” she flicked her tongue out to lick his upper lip, and his balls tightened “—is to come before I do.”
He grinned, teeth and all. A low laugh rumbled in his gut. “Sorry, toots. You deliver first. Those are the rules.”
“We’ll see.” She grabbed his crotch and stroked his erection through his pants.
Up. Down. Hard. Fast. Then slow again.
He palmed her hand before he lost his mind. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
His wife smiled up at him. “Winning.”
Not on his watch.
He knotted his fraying self-control, snatching her hand and bracing it on the counter behind her back. He mimicked the move with her other hand so that her pert breasts were high and lifted with every breath she took.
Her pupils darkened with want, and his body protested not being touched.
“Is this how you want me? Under your control?” She hoisted one fair eyebrow in challenge. “I prefer things the other way around.”
“You deserve the royal treatment.”
Her expression softened, some of the determination seeping away. Stefanie wanted to be treated well. Deserved to be treated well.
And he was the man for the job.