But she was just a transaction for him. And the sooner she ended things the better for both of them.
She couldn’t allow him to touch her anymore. She was going to need the little pride and control she had left to see her through this. She couldn’t let him weaken her fully.
Chapter Nine
“I need to get off this ship.”
Everleigh didn’t waste any time in stating her command. While she had showered and dressed, the feeling of being overwhelmed had taken root. She forced herself to calm down. Breathe and break her problems up into small chunks and then handle them one at a time.
She couldn’t ask to be relieved of the marriage again because he might be truly tempted to spank her again. Oh, how she hated that her nipples tightened, and her clit pulsed at the thought.
She couldn’t do much while on the ship, but once they were on land, she’d have more resources available to her. Not much, considering her opponent was the mafia himself.
How was she not shivering with fear, hiding under the bed, afraid for her life when he had admitted how dangerous he was, she would never know.
“Why?”
“It’s making me feel unwell.” It wasn’t a complete lie.
“All right.”
Parker picked up a phone and soon she heard him delivering instructions to the captain to turn the ship around. She couldn’t believe it was that easy.
“Anything else?”
“An Akhal-Teke horse called Solange. A diamond shaped like a muffin. Emily Dickinson’s handwritten poems.” Her mother loved Emily Dickinson who was also a particularly good baker. They would scour the internet and libraries for the little poems she would attach to her baked goods.
“A di…”
She swallowed the worddivorceas Parker rose from his seat, like a sleek panther, daring her to say the word out in full.
“Thank you for taking me back home,” she said instead, sat down, and ate her breakfast.
Parker spent the rest of the day in front of his laptop. She gathered up all her things and prepared to disembark.
They hadn’t sailed that far away and soon she could make out the New York port.
Her head still reeled on how her life had changed.
Well, part of the cruise was to lose her virginity to a nice stranger who was normal and polite and then never look back. She had done that.
But he was her husband.
She blindly followed Parker off the ship. With his hand on the small of her back, ensuring she was constantly on fire, aroused, and needy, he guided her until she was seated in his limo.
“Better?”
“Yes, thank you. Will you be able to drop me off at home, please?”
“Of course,” he said. Was it really going to be that easy? Did he only want her virginity? She reigned in her urge to start a fight. It was fine. They were going their separate ways. It was totally fine.
Except she didn’t live in the humongous mansion in the richest part of New York.
“But…”
“This is your home, Everleigh.”
Damn. Fuck. She had let her guard slip, thinking everything was copacetic. How stupid.