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But I stayed on my side. I kept my hands at my sides, lying still beside her in the dark.
I listened to the steady rhythm of her breathing as her guard lowered into sleep. Looking at her relaxed face in the moonlight, I made a quiet vow to the shadows in the room. I would be her protector. I would stand between her and every threat in this world, and nothing would ever hurt her again.
Starting with me.
CHAPTER TEN
ROSALIND
Gunnar spent the weekend mostly leaving me to my own devices, though he never let me drift too far out of reach. When he took me through the house and around the grounds, his hand was always at my elbow or the small of my back. He acted like a guide, but I knew a claiming touch when I felt it. I'm just not sure when and why I stopped minding so much.
His deep voice anchored me as he explained where every turn, step, and threshold lay. He didn't push for anything more. No claws gripping my hip. No accidental brushes over my ass or my breasts. He didn't try to cop a single feel. I was a little offended.
I'd arrived at Blackwood Manor with a suitcase full of dresses and heels. Gunnar made space for me in his closet, moving things aside and helping me hang my clothes. My fingers had encountered silk, cashmere, and hand-beaded lace on my side. Across the divide, I found cotton. Polyester. Denim.
My husband owned enough tracksuits to outfit a small athletic team. Somehow my fingers lingered over one of his shirts. The cotton was ridiculously soft. So were the T-shirts he slept in.
That first night, Gunnar had kept to his side of the enormous bed. He hadn't reached for me once. I was the one who'd somehow ended up rolling across the mattress in my sleep and waking with my face nuzzled against his chest.
It had to be the cotton. My sheets at home had always been silk. Silk was luxurious but slippery. There was nothing to hold on to. Cotton held.
The next morning, the first thing he did was feed me. He reheated leftovers his mother had stocked in the fridge. I was forced to admit that Mei Ling Blackwood was a magnificent cook, and Gunnar wasn't incompetent in the kitchen himself. I was used to men waiting on me hand and foot, so the rhythm felt comfortable quickly.
Getting him to serve me, however, came with conditions. My husband refused to take a single one of my snapped orders. Every time I barked a demand, Gunnar would simply pause, standing over me in expectant silence until I forced the word please past my teeth. Then, after handing me a plate or a glass, he would wait in that same stubborn silence until I added a thank you.
I decided to make the concessions. Things could have been immeasurably worse. If he was actively choosing civility, I could play along.
He hadn't tried to get back between my legs. He hadn't even attempted to kiss me. There were only those gentle touches whenever he guided my steps through the halls. It didn't take me long to get the lay of the land and have Blackwood Manor's layout committed to memory.
Late in the afternoon of the second day, the quiet was broken by the heavy thudding of leather striking leather coming from the home gym. I sat in the living room, listening to him punish the heavy bag; the sheer violence of his exertion echoed through the floorboards.
It turned me on.
The contrast between the careful way he held my elbow and the brutal force he took out on that bag set an itch beneath my skin. Gunnar had spent the entire weekend treating me as if I might shatter. Meanwhile, somewhere down the hall, he was hitting something hard enough that I could feel the impact in my clit.
My body had already healed the tear from his monster cock. The soreness was gone. A lingering throb tingled between my thighs every time I remembered his weight over me.
Had it been as bad as I remembered?
The memory had changed around the edges. The sharpest parts faded, leaving behind the memory of stretching and fullness and being surrounded. His enormous body covered mine. The impossible size of him. The feeling of being overwhelmed… but not being able to do anything about it.
That was the part my mind kept circling.
I'd never been frightened beneath him. Even when I'd realized exactly how much stronger Gunnar was, I'd known he didn't want to hurt me. He'd been the one trying to stop. I'd been the one demanding more.
The bag took another hit. My thighs pressed together. I wanted a release. I wanted to walk into that gym and poke at him until the gentleman disappeared, and the beast beneath the surface rose up and —
Our quiet weekend of wedded bliss was shattered as the crunch of tires on the gravel driveway announced the intruders before they even reached the door. Through the cracked window, the scent hit me—Mei Ling’s subtle jasmine, Fenrir’s heavy pine, and a third scent that smelled like a younger, sharper blend of them both.
"Whoa, your eyes are freaky."
It was only as the door swung open that I realized I wasn't wearing my dark sunglasses. Over the past forty-eight hours, I had gotten so used to navigating Gunnar's presence in the dark without hiding my pale, cloud-struck eyes that I had completely forgotten to put them back on.
"Ivar, watch your manners." That was Mei Ling's voice. The fine hairs along my arms lifted. I couldn't see where her eyes landed, but I knew they were on me. Twenty-plus years of being watched had taught me what attention felt like.
"She's vision-impaired, not blind." Gunnar said, coming up behind me and placing that massive paw on my lower back.
I leaned into it, wishing he'd scoop me into his arms like he had that first night and carry me away. I couldn't go willingly, of course. I'd have to kick and scream a bit. But that would all be for show. I couldn't let anyone know I was into my big brute of a husband.
