Page 74 of Dragonfly

DAMIEN

Long before I knew anything about my wife except for her false identity, I knew that she was the perfect woman for me.

In so many ways she’s like many I’ve known. She loves chocolate, and is sweet on cake. She’ll sit on my couch with a box of tissues and purposely watch a sad movie. Her cat is her best friend, and isn’t even bothered when I tease her that he is.

But in other ways, she’s unique. Savannah doesn’t want flowers and candy from her husband, though. She wants to spar with him, to practice her punches while he wears the padded gloves, and spend time lunging with a blade in her hand so that, if she should ever choose to take a life with a blade, she knows precisely how to.

So long as it’s not my throat she’s aiming for, that is.

We tried lessons down at the shooting range. Bianca was a saint, despite Savannah’s obvious and instant dislike of her, but it became obvious early on that the gun wasn’t her weapon. She yipped whenever it went off, could hardly hit the target, and said the weapons Bianca selected for her were too bulky in her hand.

So I brought her Glock, and she hated shooting with that so much, she handed it back to me when the lesson was done.

No trying to convince me to give it back to her for good. No making a sly comment about how she could blow me away with the weapon. Just a wrinkled nose and a sigh as she shook her head and said, “Well, that was a waste of two hundred bucks.”

And that was about when I first had the spark of an idea to win her over…

Like preparing the tattoos, it took some time. Then I didn’t want to start up our self-defense lessons until they were healed, not because I cared about the pain, but because I didn’t want to cause Savannah any.

They are now. And, this morning, I picked up my latest gift for my wife. I keep it in the pocket of my exercise shorts during our warm up, but before we start our lesson, I pull the leather case out and dangle it in front of Savannah.

With a curious tilt to her head, her ponytail settling over her shoulder, she snatches it from my grip. “What’s this?”

“It’s a holster.”

She rolls her eyes at me. “I know that, babe.”

Babe? “Did you just call me ‘babe’?”

“Sure did.”

“I’ve got ten years on you, wife.”

“So? Does that mean you can’t be my ‘babe’?”

I lift her free hand, pressing a kiss to the top of it. “So long as I am yours, you may call me anything you want, ragna mia.”

She sticks her tongue out at me.

I laugh. “Unless you’re willing to use it, keep that pretty tongue in your mouth where it belongs.”

“Why?” she says, daring me. “You gonna spank me again?”

My cock twitches. No matter how often we find the time to train in my gym, between the scent of her sweat and her musk in the air, plus the sports bra that molds to her tits so perfectly, I’m constantly aroused down here. It’s fair to say that I’m constantly aroused whenever I’m near my wife, but something about her trusting me to take full control over her body, knowing I could never bring myself to hurt her… there’s a reason why she teases me that I think of our sparring sessions as foreplay.

It’s because it is.

But spanking? I’ve never had a partner that I wanted to take over my knee and spank before—until the first time she rode me after a training session. Since then, I haven’t had the reason to bring me hand down on her ass again… but, oh, do I want to now.

Later, I tell myself. When I see how she reacts to my gift…

Without realizing how suddenly desperate I am for her, Savannah runs her thumb over the initials embossed on the leather. “S.L.?”

“Savannah Libelulla,” I tell her. “It’s yours. So is what’s inside of the holster.”

Her cheeks flush. As though she doesn’t know what to say, she busies herself with unsnapping the full holster so that she can see the hilt poking out from the top. Grabbing it, she checks to see if the blade’s attached—as if it wouldn’t be—then looks up at me again.

“You got me my own knife?”

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