Page 50 of Souls and Sorrows

“We share a bed at night, but you won’t even touch me in it,” she said, though she couldn’t be more fucking wrong.

I’ve never wanted anythingmore.

My body aches with the need to feel her. I want her invading my blood, replacing it with whatever the hell makes her so beautifully chaotic.

That’s the entire problem, and exactly why I told her not to wake me at night, because having her so close makes me want to forget my goals and just sink into her.

Swallowing hard, I lift my hand and let my palm hover over her. My heart beats against my ribs, drowning in desire, as I graze my fingers across her neck, dragging her hair back to the pillow. Exposing her.

My breaths are harsh, labored, as they come from me. I travel lower, still hovering, but enough so the heat from our bodies mingles like two perfect strangers becoming acquainted.

A tremor racks through me, and our skin meets briefly.

Her snoring ceases.

So does my breathing.

Silence stretches between us, as thick as the dead of night.

“Touch me,” she whispers, so softly that, for a moment, I fear I imagined her plea.

My chest heaves. I’m frozen, suspended in time as I wait for some sort of confirmation that she’s awake.

Her chin moves slightly. As if she’s searching for me.

“Please.”

The broken desperation dripping from that one word, that single syllable, almost does me in. My mouth dries up, and panic seizes my limbs, immobilizing me.

Ariana turns more fully, and I feel her stare on me. On my hand, still dangerously close to temptation.

“Cash.”

I grit my teeth until my jaw aches. Fuck me, I want to. So badly that I think I would combust on the spot if she asked again.

“I’m your wife now,” she said that day in the car. “This is what I’m supposed to do for you.”

And I suppose there’s a kernel of truth there, although our marriage is certainly not traditional in any sense. I’ve barely spent any time with her since uprooting her life and forcing her to sleep in my bed every night, and my entire reasoning for making her mine stems from an insecurity brought on by a dead man.

I have a meeting next week with Ricci Inc. shareholders to discuss financial matters, given that I’m the unofficial figurehead of the operation now. So, technically, that part of my plan is in action, waiting for things to start rolling.

I could indulge a bit. Give myself over to the baser desire within me. The one that wants to see what enamored so many with Ariana Ricci despite the complications she would bring.

Part of me wants to test the lust that reared its head when it saw her. Lust that had been essentially dormant inside of me since puberty, but one look at this woman, and every single ounce of my control unraveled. Almost like I’d never worked at keeping it sewn up to begin with.

Sighing, I roll onto my back, my hand dropping onto the mattress between us. Ariana stays with her head turned for several beats, and I know if the lights were on right now, she’d be glaring at me. Maybe she’d even try to lash out—I certainly haven’t forgotten the oleander at our wedding.

Instead, she lets out a soft, almost-imperceptible scoff. Like she’s unimpressed.

For some inexplicable reason, the sound makes my dick hard, and I twist my fingers in the bedsheets, watching from my peripheral as she re-situates herself on her side.

“Coward,” she mutters, the remnants of her pity party at dinner completely gone.

The normalcy of the insult almost makes me laugh.

When her breathing evens out again, I slip from the bed, change out of my pajamas, and go for a three-mile run. The sun is just starting to peek through the clouds when I get back to the apartment, and Ariana is dead asleep, her angelic face resting on my pillow.

My jaw tightens as I notice the comforter has been pulled down, and her position in the bed tugs at her top, exposing a breast.

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