23
NIALL
Ilie there with my eyes closed, breathing evenly, long enough for Isabella to think I’d fallen asleep.
The truth is, I’m far from it. My body is throbbing with pain and the aftershocks of an intense orgasm, a mind-bending mixture of hurt and pleasure that sends all my nerves firing in strange ways. I don’t know how to feel about any of it.
I just had sex with my wife. Mywife.It’s not something I’d ever thought I’d do. I never thought I’d say vows, have a wedding night, any of it. It doesn’t matter that this isn’t going to last; it’s just a temporary measure until I can make sure Isabella and the baby are safe.
I still stood up in front of a priest and said those words, slid a gold band onto her finger, and kissed the bride. The fact that the vows are temporary, that they’re going to be broken, doesn’t make me feel better.
In fact, it makes me feel so much fucking worse.
Isabella was right when she said I didn’t want a wife because I didn’t want to make promises I might have to break. It’s why I’d been so curt with her when she’d said that, cutting right to the heart of the matter. How does a man promise to love someone for the rest of her life, honor and cherish and protect her, when his very job means that he might die long before she does? Even as things are between us now, the thought of dying and leaving Isabella and our child unprotected makes me feel sick to my stomach.
I hadn’t meant to fuck her tonight.
When I’m sureshe’sasleep, I glance over at her, my chest tightening at the sight of her under the blanket, her face soft with sleep. Hearing her say that she’d wanted to stay before, hearing her apologize for the first time being like this, cut me to the core. I don’t want to feel more for her than I already do. A part of me wants her to stop apologizing and stop trying to make up for it because it’s going to be so much easier to keep distance between us if I can keep being angry.
Having sex with her was the wrong move, if that’s what I’m trying to accomplish.
But it had been so fucking good.
I close my eyes, feeling my cock swell a little just at the memory of it. I hadn’t realized she’d be naked under her wedding dress, and just seeing her like that, suddenly bare in front of me, pretty much sealed it. I’d been rock hard the instant the lace had slipped off her to the floor, desperate for her with an almost violent need. And then, when she’d slid to her knees—
The sight of Isabella begging forgiveness on her knees with my cock in her mouth, had made me nearly come on the spot. I couldn’t think of anything more beautiful, her glossy black hair everywhere, those wide liquid eyes staring up at me, teary from my cock choking her as she wrapped her lips around it and sucked. Just the thought is enough to have me half-hard again, wanting her even though I know there’s no way my body could take a second round right now. I know I could wake her up, and she’d submit, telling me to use her any way I want, and I bite back a groan in the darkness as I picture it.
My need for her feels like something I can’t understand. I’ve never desired a woman so deeply, not even Saoirse. If I’d known there was something more out there, something even better, I’d have torn the fucking world apart to get to it. And in a way, I suppose I have.
Isabella is my wife now. Mine, for as long as I want to keep her—and I’m not sure she wants this to end. She came so easily into my arms, went to her knees for me without my asking, spread her legs for me willingly, even begging for my cock. It’s going to be me who has to walk away from this, for both our sakes, and I know already it’s going to take a greater strength of will than anything I’ve done before.
But I’ve walked away from a love that wasn’t right once already, and I can do it again.
What if it’s a mistake to walk away this time, though?
I shouldn’t even be thinking about it. My words to Isabella earlier, the blunt way I’d told herI don’t love you,come back to me, and it’s enough to make me cringe. I’m not so sure that wasn’t my first lie to her—but I’m also not sure that I’m not confusing lust with love. It can’t be love that has me rock hard under the blanket in the dark, struggling not to wake my new bride up and fuck her until she’s sore all over again. That’s just desire. Need. Lust.
It doesn’t last, so far as I can tell. Love takes something else, something that I’m not sure we can have.
I reach down, stroking my cock lightly, but I’m too exhausted and in too much pain to really do much about it. I have a vision of Isabella between my legs, sucking my cock to an orgasm as I lay there, letting her pleasure me, and I know I shouldn’t give in to it. She’s just as exhausted as I am, and I shouldn’t wake her.
Until I feel her shift next to me, the bed too small for me to not feel her every movement. “Niall?” she asks in a sleepy voice, so sweet and clearly half-dreaming that it makes my chest ache. “Are you awake?”
I swallow hard. “Yeah,” I manage, gritting my teeth against the wave of desire that rocks through me.
“What’s wrong?” she asks sleepily, and I close my eyes.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, give me strength.
“Nothing,” I tell her, a bit more curtly than I meant to, and that wakes her up a little more. She rolls towards me, releasing a soft moan of pain, but my cock registers it as something else. I feel it stiffen against my belly, the heat of my pre-cum on the ridged flesh of my abs, and I nearly bite my tongue trying to stop myself from groaning.
The irony of it. Here I am, a freshly married man, doing my best not to ravish my wife.
Her hand lands on my cock, and in the dim light from the moon coming through the window, I see her eyes widen. “You’re hard,” she whispers, her voice thickening, and I know I’m so fucking close to losing control.
“You can—if you want—” Isabella shifts next to me, her voice almost shy, and somehow that turns me on even more.
“I don’t think my body can take fucking you again,” I tell her honestly, my voice low and rough in the darkness. “I nearly came apart at the seams the first time.”