Page 109 of The Vow

“Why are you watching me sleep?” She sat forward, not bothering to catch the sheet as it fell to her waist, exposing her chest, her nipples red and beaded to my hungry gaze.

“Because it’s been fifteen years, Robber. Fifteen years I’ve woken up alone. Woken up to fantasies of the woman I left. The only woman I wanted. Fifteen fucking years…” I trailed off with a ragged inhale. “You’ll have to excuse me for having a hard time reconciling that waking up to you in my bed isn’t just a dream.”

That sultry smile was dangerous, but never more than when she stood from the messy bed like Botticelli’s Venus rising from the Egyptian cotton waves, her hair curling down over her curves.

My stomach tightened, and my cock that had rested at half-mast on my thigh now pulsed again with want.

Her teeth captured her bottom lip as her attention caught on my waist, which only made me thicken more.

I’d never considered body modifications, and definitely not on my dick. Why would I? I was already larger than average, and I’d never gotten any complaints. Definitely not from my wife.

I understood the appeal of metal. I’d visited dozens of body piercing shops that offered me things like a Prince Albert or Jacob’s ladder. But this wasn’t a modification for pleasure or any other kind of wow factor. This was a testament, carved and then embedded under my skin as surely as the vow of faithfulness to my wife had been.

The idea that my modifications had given a whole new meaning to the wordmonsterwas now only a benefit because she’d enjoyed it.

God, the way she’d fit me. Taken me again and again, even when her muscles still quaked from her last orgasm, her body so wrung out, it was only the soft“please”that let me know I could still take more.

“Damon…” She stopped between my thighs, close enough now for me to admire the way her pussy glistened, wanting more in spite of how many times she’d taken me last night.

I grabbed her hand and pulled her fingers to my lips. “The sight of you in my bed takesmy breath away.”

A dose of pink dropped into her cheeks, her eyes shimmering underneath their hoods.

“Did you sleep?”

A smile volleyed to my lips, tipping up one side as I grabbed her waist. “I don’t think either of us slept much, Robber.”

Leaning forward, I kissed her sternum, breathing in the steady beats of her heart.

She was here.She was mine.She was here, and she shouldn’t be. She wasn’t supposed to be anywhere close to this.Goddammit, Pat.

I squeezed my eyes closed, unable to stop myself from rocketing back to the moment she’d been brought into the dining room by Belmont’s man.

The first thing I’d done was grab the steak knife, sure that I was about to realize I’d been played. That they’d taken her to force my hand. For what, I had no idea, but I would’ve given them anything to keep her safe.

And then Belmont told her to take a seat.

It wasn’t a trick. She wasn’t a hostage. She’d come on her own, and Belmont, Shazad, they looked at her like a lamb being led to the slaughter.

They were wrong. My wife was no lamb, but if the heads mounted to the walls were any indication, Belmont preferred the death of lions to lambs.

And that was why, even after I’d spent most of the night losing myself in her body, I hadn’t been able to rest when sleep had claimed her beside me.

I had her. I had my wife back. All this time. All these years. All the things I’d done…I took her hand and brought it to my lips and then lowered my forehead to the ridge of her knuckles.

“You shouldn’t be here, Robber,” I muttered for thethousandth time, which was only a fraction of the times that I’d thought it in the last eight hours.

I’d sold my soul to find her. Protect her. I’d shed every oath I’d taken to protect this country and uphold the integrity of its laws. I’d defied every law and rule, and I would continue to do so until I’d eradicated the men from her nightmares.

“Damon.” Robyn dropped to her knees, forcing her face in front of mine.

I tried to turn my head away. I didn’t want her to see what I was reduced to. The kind of worry I hadn’t felt since those first days in the Japanese prison, wondering how the hell I was ever going to make it out alive. Fearful of an enemy I never saw coming. Fearful of everything she was enduring because of me.

Fear had no place in the world I was trying to conquer. Nor in the man I needed to become.

But the armor of that man molted with Robyn back in my life. I could no longer keep up the facade of the criminal who cared for nothing but his empire when his empire was the first thing to be sacrificed if it meant having her back.

“I wasn’t going to let you go on a suicide mission on your own.”

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